Single Wifi card, both AP and STA?

Software SW help
1

Hi, does anybody have experience running both an AP and client on a single Wifi card on Omnia? Does it work well? Do the standard cards support it? Do the Wifi 6 cards support it?

A colleague of mine has mentioned that he saw in some OpenWRT forum that it can be done, but it is problematic (something about the unpredictable order of execution of the iw commands or something like that).

My idea is to have a card that is always an AP, and also tries to connect to some upstream in client mode, but that upstream might often be unavailable. And the unavailability of the upstream network(s) might not make the AP unstable.

Thanks for sharing your experience

2

I did some tests with my Indiegogo Omnia. First of all, neither of the two original cards can run AP and STA on different channels. Here are excerpts from iw list:

Wiphy phy1
	valid interface combinations:
		 * #{ managed } <= 2048, #{ AP, mesh point } <= 8, #{ P2P-client, P2P-GO } <= 1, #{ IBSS } <= 1,
		   total <= 2048, #channels <= 1, STA/AP BI must match, radar detect widths: { 20 MHz (no HT), 20 MHz, 40 MHz }

Wiphy phy0
valid interface combinations:
		 * #{ AP, mesh point } <= 8, #{ managed } <= 1,
		   total <= 8, #channels <= 1, STA/AP BI must match, radar detect widths: { 20 MHz (no HT), 20 MHz, 40 MHz, 80 MHz }

As I learned, what is important is channels <= 1. That means STA and AP have to have the same channel.

I’ve tried adding a STA in Luci to my AP, but without much success. Maybe I did something wrong, I don’t know yet.

Can anyone with the newer (especially Wifi 6) cards share this part of iw list output?

Thanks!

3

One possible option: if you want a single card that do both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz at the same time, then what you are looking for is hardware that supports dual-band dual-concurrent (DBDC). See Turris supported minipcie-wi-fi-cards. There might be other solutions out there which can do multiple channels in 5 GHz, but a dual-band dual-concurrent (DBDC) solution might work for you, so I thought I’d mention the option.

4

iw list for AsiaRF AW7915-NP1 4x4 (Wi-Fi 6) (Note: AW7915-NP1 is not DBDC)

valid interface combinations:
	 * #{ IBSS } <= 1, #{ AP, mesh point } <= 16, #{ managed } <= 19,
	   total <= 19, #channels <= 1, STA/AP BI must match, radar detect widths: { 20 MHz (no HT), 20 MHz, 40 MHz, 80 MHz, 80+80 MHz, 160 MHz }
1 Like
5

Thanks. My question is not about setting an AP on two channels - AFAIK that’s what DBDC is about. However, most cards can make an AP and a client at the same time. If I get it correctly, if the card is not DBDC, both the client and AP have to share the same channel. But I’m not sure if there aren’t non-DBDC cards that support different frequencies for AP and client.