Wireless adapter for linux gateway

[Aquinus]

Hello,

Recently I've shed away the restrictions of the firmware on the E4200 and decided that a full blown linux gateway would be faster and give me better control. So I've done that. I have a box serving up DHCP, DNS, and iptables.

It's fast and it's running great and it's everything I could hope for. Now i want to start eliminating the E4200 from the mix. It's now only serving up wireless on both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz. What I would like to do is find a (maybe two?) good dual band PCI-E wi-fi adapter that runs well on Ubuntu Server 12.04.2 LTS so I can turn the E4200 into a wireless network bridge.

It would be ideal if the card has an antenna that can be moved elsewhere. The back of my gateway is a very bad place to broadcast wifi and I would like to put it somewhere that gives my apartment the best exposure (It wouldn't go too far, I can't imagine more than 5-10ft (~1.0-1.25m)).

Does anyone have any recommendations for a good wireless adapter that will fit my criteria or at least most of it? Natively working on Linux is a must, I don't plan on relying on ndiswrapper.

Thanks ahead of time.

[Geofrancis]

I am looking for the same thing for my new router project so I hope you find something. I need a good 54mbit adapter for all the phones and a fast 300mbit 5ghz 11N adapter for the pcs and tablets. 2.4n is no use to me because there is too much interference from the neibours routers and it drops to 54g when a 54g device connects.

[Aquinus]

Originally Posted by Geofrancis

I am looking for the same thing for my new router project so I hope you find something. I need a good 54mbit adapter for all the phones and a fast 300mbit 5ghz 11N adapter for the pcs and tablets. 2.4n is no use to me because there is too much interference from the neibours routers and it drops to 54g when a 54g device connects.

Have you scanned to see what channels are being used? There a good bet that at least one doesn't have much activity.

[Geofrancis]

2.4ghz only has 3 separate channels for wifi 1,6 and 11 and I can pick up 12 other routers most of them on 40mhz wide 11n channels that use almost half the 2.4 band. 5ghz is totally unused so no unpredictable performance issues.

[Aquinus]

Originally Posted by Geofrancis

2.4ghz only has 3 separate channels for wifi 1,6 and 11 and I can pick up 12 other routers most of them on 40mhz wide 11n channels that use almost half the 2.4 band. 5ghz is totally unused so no unpredictable performance issues.

Ahhh, yeah. That's no good. You know, you could sniff all the wireless packets that come your way and find out which networks are the least active, that way you might be on the same channel as someone else, but if they barely use their internet, who cares. Not to say you're going to have amazing success but it's something worth checking, but yeah. Having 5ghz is a good idea. That is the reason I ended up getting a dual-band router. Not to say it was a bad router but I wanted the flexibility of iptables and DNS was acting a bit sluggish, so I wanted to make a local DNS server that everything would use. DD-WRT also acts weird on the 5ghz band on the E4200 so that wasn't an option.

[Geofrancis]

I run my 2.4ghz 11g radio on channel 13 so I bypass most of the interference on 1-11 1-13 is legal in the uk it's 1-11 in the us. But very little uses 13 so its almost a clear channel it has a little overlap with 11 but not much.

5ghz works for me it's just the wndr3300 tops out at 30mbit so I would like double that. and I know it can be done with the right access point.

[Geofrancis]

new motherboard with retro 1gb drive for testing.

[Aquinus]

Still looking for a good dual-band PCI-E network card. Any recommendations before I start winging it? I really would like a good place to start because wireless doesn't always place nice with *nix.

[Geofrancis]

I have used wireless adapters under Linux but never as an access point. With windows you always had to use the utility that came with the adapter to do it. Is that the same with Linux?