dual band wifi repeater
existing setup
My present repeater is a GL.iNET GL-AR300M Shadow, a 2.4gHz device. I like the interface but have been seeing better stability on 5gHz devices in the last couple of years.
So I’d like a dual-band solution if it’s not too spendy.
buy or build
- buy a dual-band router like the Glinet Opal, ~$35 as of this writing
- build a dual-bander out of a Raspberry Pi I already own and a 5gHz-capable dongle
testing OpenWRT + travelmate
OpenWRT loaded just fine on the Pi. Within a few minutes I was able to connect it to local open wifi. I used the luci interface to install travelmate and travelmate-luci-interface. travelmate is
a wlan connection manager for travel routers
A connection manager is not needed if you stay connected to the same AP all the time; just set that up in your vanilla router. But if you move around (like a nomadic vandweller) it is useful to have a pool of known APs you can connect to at will.
travelmate seems to be one of those “works or doesn’t” things. Support happens mainly in one giant thread and the git docs elide the very topics that gave me trouble.
I could either get the router’s AP running or I could get the router to glom onto open wifi.1 Further reading suggests this is because the Pi3’s wifi chip is a broadcomm and cannot do both at the same time. I had some 2gHz dongles I tried in a vain attempt to separate the functions but they were all Realtek-based and OpenWRT didn’t like the chipset.
decision as of now
I decided to buy a relatively-inexpensive dual-band dongle confirmed to work with OpenWRT. It’s also Realtek but the RTL8812BU chipset plays nicely with drivers built into the kernel.
I’ll report back what I find.
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could use it over ethernet ↩