I couldn’t stand it…
I’m not a great fan of “throwing money” at a problem to solve it. But after some more digging, I didn’t manage to get the Wifi to go any faster.
So I bought a USB 3.0 Wifi dongle. Netway U1811 to be exact. Just to see if it helped (plus, it was Black Friday today, so I got it a bit cheaper (but not real cheap either)).
Now up front, from the last experience with the integrated wifi card, I checked and I now know this dongle will not allow for lots of coverage, i.e. the wifi will not be reachable (probably) from the bedroom. After some thinking, I consider it a plus, rather than an issue. As long as the wifi is fast, and works from within the office… Fine by me.
Next
lsusb sees the card, but of course, no drivers. Plus it’s not packaged (yet anyway)… I found the solution here:
https://github.com/aircrack-ng/rtl8814au
Missing stuff (which won’t be a big bother anyway): gcc, dkms. So I apt-get those (and their dependencies).
I finally get the expected results for:
modprobe -v 8814au
And
iw list
shows the new card (now, two of them).
Changing the configs to use the new physical Wifi interface
This time around it’s pretty straightforward: Let’s look for all references of the older wifi card and try to edit accordingly to point to the new one (with an impossible name, by the way).
Now, after minimal hardware compatibility settings in the hostapd config file, and a few iptables rules updates, I managed to get the AP back up and running using the new network card.
Keeping most of the config from last week, i.e. in 802.11 g mode, switching to the USB 3.0 Wifi interface just gave me a boost, duplicating my Wifi <-> Internet speed up to 40 Mbps.
That’s better (let’s say twice as good, and about 12 times better than with the initial config and integrated card), but I selected this particular Wifi Dongle for its AC configuration.
Trying to go much faster
OK so I have a working Wifi with 40Mbps. But I know I can get the Wifi to pass from 2.4GHz to 5GHz, and that should help increase the speed quite a bit… Let’s see if I manage…
[time passes…]
It took a couple of tests (but by now, I know how to look for the correct config :)), and I just tested speed of 95Mbps downstream and 60 upstream…
Well, I think I’ll settle for these speeds. (Finally).
Also, good news: The USB Dongle + hostapd config brings up the AP upon reboot, which didn’t work with the integrated wifi NIC…