Specific WiFi NIC Support

[marcolino]

Hey y'all,

It's been a while, but I'm getting back into the game. I have a new (to me) PC, and I've installed FreeBSD 13.1 on it. Naturally, the next day, 13.2 is released... but I digress.

To my chagrin, the WiFi NIC I have isn't supported. So, I'm shopping.

Ive checked the iwlwifi page, and it seems that the WiFi 6E AX210 PCI-E WiFi Card is supported. I'm wondering if anyone has used this particular card, and can verify that it works well. If not, is there another anyone could recommend?

[J65nko]

Welcome back ;-). There are not many FreeBSD users here anymore. You could have more luck in getting feedback on the official FreeBSD forums.

An USB WiFi thingy is not an option?

[blackhole]

According to that FreeBSD wiki page, wi-fi 6 AX210 is supported, but wi-fi 6E AX210, is not. At least it's not specifically listed anyway - and that list looks pretty specific to me.

Also, from the iwlwifi man page:

BUGS
Certainly.

SEE ALSO
iwlwififw(4), iwm(4), iwn(4), wlan(4), ifconfig(8), wpa_supplicant(8)

HISTORY
The iwlwifi driver first appeared in FreeBSD 13.1.

And:

While iwlwifi supports all 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax the compatibility code
currently only supports 802.11 a/b/g modes. Support for 802.11 n/ac is
to come. 802.11ax and 6Ghz support are planned.

This is an experimental driver, a port of the Linux driver, which is still under development.

I'm not sure how far off n support is, but ac and ax support are probably still far away. But even when implemented, it will likely take quite some time (years) to debug and bring all drivers up to speed. Even then you will still get a lot of unsupported devices.

I would go for a cheap USB device capable of decent 801.11n support. I also think you're better off asking on the FreeBSD forums.

[bsd-keith]

Just for info, I'm running NomadBSD, (FreeBSD 'live/installable'), & I'm using a TP-LINK TL-WN822N, (urtwn driver).