Laptop with (supported) 802.11n?

The MoBo on my laptop puked so I’m shopping for a replacement. Since my purpose for a laptop is to remain connected when I’m on the road, I’d prefer an 802.11n WiFi NIC. Looking at the OpenSUSE HCL, the only supported 802.11n NIC I see is the RT2870, and that’s a USB device.

Does anyone know of a laptop (or a laptop WiFi NIC) that supports 802.11n under OpenSUSE (or any other Leenuks, for that matter). Or am I smokin’ crack …again?

Hi
Smoking :wink:

My netbook ASUS 1000HE has an atheros ‘n’ card using the ath9k driver


Model: "Atheros AR928X Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express)"
Vendor: pci 0x168c "Atheros Communications Inc."
Device: pci 0x002a "AR928X Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express)"

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn

I don’t have an ‘n’ router to test with, so am unsure if it will work.
I asked our resident Kernel Wireless Dev lwfinger awhile back but no
news (is good news?), maybe he will see this thread and comment.


Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 (x86_64) Kernel 2.6.32.12-0.7-default
up 1 day 15:13, 3 users, load average: 0.10, 0.07, 0.07
GPU GeForce 8600 GTS Silent - CUDA Driver Version: 195.36.15

Hi,

I have an Acer Extensa 5635ZG with an Atheros AR928X, which is supported out of the box.

I’m running openSUSE 11.2.

The default install had some issues with the driver, but is has been updated with a official kernel update. It uses ath9k driver.

/Anders

On 06/07/2010 01:18 PM, malcolmlewis wrote:
> I don’t have an ‘n’ router to test with, so am unsure if it will work.
> I asked our resident Kernel Wireless Dev lwfinger awhile back but no
> news (is good news?), maybe he will see this thread and comment.

I think that ath9k does 802.11n, but I have no experience. I only just
got my first “n” AP and a D-LINK DWA-130 USB device. The Linux driver
for it is not even close to inclusion in the kernel as it has many
issues with endian considerations, and does not work with 64-bit
architecture.

What aspects of 802.11n do you want to achieve - higher speeds, dual
bands, or what?

I would not look at the RT2870 or the PCI equivalent (RT2860). The
driver is vendor-written and of unknown quality.

You might also consider the Broadcom BCM432X units. There will be a
built-in driver some day. The code is being written now. Until then, the
Broadcom wl driver is available and seems to work quite well.

Mine has an Atheros AR9285, uses ath9k driver, worked out of the box on 11.2 and M7. All hardware works OOTB btw, except for the 3D acceleration, which needs the NVIDIA driver.

My netbook ASUS 1000HE has an atheros ‘n’ card using the ath9k driver

Same here with the 1005HA, I know it’s a n card, but I have a only a g router so I can’t confirm that the n mode works, but form what I’ve read on other sites it does. It can also use the madwifi driver, but I don’t know if n mode will work under that.

lwfinger, speed primarily. I have an “N” WAP on my home network. My dearly departed laptop had an 802.11g card but would only clock 24 Mbit/s, regardless of whether the network was “G” or “N”, which made syncing and data transfers and especially back-ups painfully slow.

Knurpht, is your laptop a globally-available brand?

If I have read Knurpht’s signature right
maybe I can give a hint so long:
ASUS: ASUSTeK Computer
ASUS K70IO: ASUSTeK Computer Inc.
Under Downloads>Wireless I can find more than one Software link (for two or for one?) WLAN Card but it seems to me only different (later and newer) versions of “Azurewave Wireless Lan Driver and Application”.
I found also:
Asus K70IO [Linux Laptop Wiki]
ASUSTeK Computer Inc. -Support- FAQ K70IO FAQ K series bundled with Linpus Linux 9.5

Greetings
pistazienfresser

Well, how about Intel Wi-Fi-cards? I suppose they are quite good… And many quite many laptops have them installed by default.

I have pretty old one 4965AG, which is ‘semi-N’ (quite strange, beacause it works in 2.4 GHz N Wi-Fi - I definitely have N-speeds, but not in 5 GHz). It works pretty well in most cases. Another ‘sub-version’ is one that should work in 5 GHz N networks too: 4965AG**N **(note N in the end), though I did not test it.

There are many more of them:
Intel Ultimate N WiFi Link 5300 and Intel WiFi Link 5100 Products

Wireless Networking

Also, notice this page:
Intel® WiFi Link 5300 Intel® Drivers for Linux*

Kernel modules (drivers) for these devices, as far as I know, are pretty mature now.

But be accurate, when choosing one, so you get features, that you want (for example, I think, 5 GHz is a must). As you see with my card name, absence of one letter makes difference. Compare:

  • 4965AG - 2.4 GHz N

(amusingly, if you judge by the name N shouldn’t work at all, and it doesn’t - in Windows Vista, but does work in Linux)

  • 4965AGN
  • 2.4 GHz N + 5 GHz N

(this should be good one with 5 GHz, though did not test it myself)

Forgot to add that I use Linksys WRT-320N with my 4965AG - pretty stable, though I can’t say that I use my network very heavily - just ordinary day-to-day work and from time to time dowloading something big or rsync to my desktop computer.