Yea the Intel version is much more rare compared to the Realtek ones, was looking for one that has the port right there without the bracket but guess doesn’t seem like there’s any.
Some updates:
- my
ethtool -K <interface> tx off rx off scatter-gather offworkaround for the r8152/r8153 problems was not surviving full blown usb resets for some reason. Had to add networkd-dispatcher daemon from the arch AUR, and configure a script to fire on each interface reaching the configured state to re-run this command. Stability is significantly improved yet again. - CF-953AX USB Stick ( MT7921AU based ) and MT7921K m.2 card have been tested more thoroughly with custom compiled hostapd ~2.11 from git. I have successfully enabled WPA3, 6ghz (if wireless reg domain is spoofed, US is set as no IR, grr), 802.11ax (aka Wifi 6), and up to 80 MHz channels. These cards do not appear to support 160MHz channels.
- Still having stability issues with the CF-953AX plugged in to the mainboard working as a router, but not seeing the same stability problems if the stick is connected to my laptop mainboard. They are running identical kernels and distros, so this is a real head scratcher. I even went as far as to include another r8152 device, with and without bridging the CF-953AX. The only differences in the two test cases is the presence of the battery and now BIOS 3.10 vs 3.17, but I was not seeing stability issues on the laptop on 3.10, so that is unlikely to be the culprit.
- Tested the framework provided antennas for suitability as a wireless access point antenna solution. Link quality to another Framework antenna, smartphone, etc falls off pretty quickly once you exceed about 5m in range, or about 30 degrees off axis in any direction, but especially vertically. For a small studio, maybe even a 1 bedroom apartment, this might be okay. For a multi-story house, or longer range, get some cheap MHF4 to (RP-)SMA adapter cables and some proper antennas for the angles and distances that you want to throw signals. Amazon sent the wrong set the first time (they were MHF2 sized, too big), but MHF4 sized ones are on their way.
TODO:
- Update to BIOS 3.17
- Investigate HE options in hostapd.conf to see if any better link rates / throughputs can be achieved.
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Small update:
MHF4 to RP-SMA adapter wires arrived, installed (with much fiddling with those silly tiny connectors), and now 2x 5dbi wifi antennas are hooked to my MT7921K for testing.
MT7921K does produce 80Mhz wide 802.11ax (HE-MCS) channels as AP, but the actual throughput is pretty limited. iperf3 testing shows 160-200 Mbps actual throughput, regardless of signal strength and most options I have tried in hostapd.conf. Definitely usable speeds for normal interneting, but not quite what I was hoping for. Need to test CF-953AX more next, as I think I have solved the stability issues (connecting via USB hub was causing random resets). May also go back to trying the AX210 in AP mode on 2.4ghz also.
MT7996 cards with “draft” 802.11be (Wifi 7) are supposedly going to be released sometime soon as well. News: new mac80211 driver for MediaTek Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be) devices · Issue #150 · morrownr/USB-WiFi · GitHub
The major feature I am looking forward to in this Multiple Link Operation (MLO), allowing the same STA to connect on multiple frequency bands to the same AP. Some OEMs have had implementations of dual band concurrent connections before, but as far as I know this is the first industry standards based implementation of this.
MT7996 firmware might not support Wifi 7 out of the box. But it does somewhat validate my thoughts about making the radio hardware independently upgrade-able from the server/router part of the hardware.
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Just a quick update:
Mainboard as router + wifi AP + docker host + several other functions still working well. I know I’m way behind the ball on finishing the case design, as well as a more complete recipe writeup here, but I’ll get to it at some point.
CF-953AX still giving me trouble when bridged in with other interfaces. Suspecting there’s a bug in the mt76 kernel module still. I need to retest with 6.2.x, though…
Alfa Wireless high powered external Wifi6E cards based on MT7921AUN are released. Stock has been intermittent, but pre orders are available here:
- ALFA AWUS036AXML 802.11ax WiFi 6/6e 3000 mbps Tri Band WiFi USB Adapte – Rokland
- Alfa USB Adapter AWUS036AXML | Getic
MT7922 pci.e cards are also on aliexpress:
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804852139928.html?gatewayAdapt=glo2usa4itemAdapt&_randl_shipto=US
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I am wanting to start working on the recipe and known hardware lists for this. However, the forum will not let me edit old posts after a certain period of time. Can I get edit rights to a new wiki page so that I can continuously edit as new findings and hardware are available? Thanks.
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Small update:
Both my RZ608 (MT7921K) NGFF card and a Comfast CF-953AX (MT7921AU) USB dongle are up and running as APs. Recent kernels (6.1/6.2) and updates to the mt76 kernel module have significantly improved stability of the latter, though it’s still not perfect. Supposedly much more driver dev and kernel patching in progress, so it should continue to get better over time. Hostapd versions in many distributions are still very behind though, so you may need to compile your own from their git source to get all the latest feature goodness.
Important things I have gotten to work on both of the above cards:
- 80Mhz channels in 5Ghz
- WPA3
- WiFi 6 (HE) features (mostly)
Sort of but not really working:
- 6 GHz is still wonky due to regulatory domain (no-IR) issues. There are workarounds, but not something I’m going to suggest here.
Not yet working, maybe in the future:
- Scanning to unlock DFS channels in 5Ghz is still unreliable
- multiple AP ssids from one card
- dual band dual connect (unknown if hardware actually supports this, conflicting info out there, but drivers definitely don’t yet).
Performance is good, not great, not horrible with each of the above set to either 2.4 or 5Ghz.
Framework is going to be selling the RZ616, based on MT7922, but it uses a different kernel module IIRC (mt7921e ?). I believe this card should also be able to do 160Mhz channels also.
I’ll see if I can my hands on one to test out. Anyone at Framework willing to help me with a WiFi card without AMD mainboard order? I know I can buy them elsewhere like AliNotExpress, but would prefer to get it from Framework if possible instead.
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Also, does anyone have a source for a USB to NGFF A/E Key adapter? You can find USB to B/M key adapters all day long, but I’m having trouble finding an A/E keyed one. Having those would mean it would be easy to add multiple adapters to the F.w Mainboard, or other SBCs…
New card option, based on MT7915 chipset. I think it may be too long to fit in the FW13.5 chassis, but for a standalone mainboard in a custom case, the length should not matter.
I have not tried it myself, so your mileage may vary.
There are also older and cheaper options as well at this site.
And here’s the first one I’ve stumbled across with B/M key M.2 form factor:
Anyone know if a USB to M.2 B/M key adapter would run this?
Glad I found this thread. I’m working on a similar project. I ordered an Intel 11Gen motherboard that I plan to use primarily for a firewall and SMB storage share. I already have a dedicated NAS so this is a backup for the backup.
Hardware:
Not sure if it’s going to work but I’m getting an M.2 to PCIe adapter to connect a 4 port multigigabit Ethernet card.
USB-C to NVMe M.2(512GB SSD) adapter to boot from.
2x USB-C to SATA adapter for HDDs
Software:
I’m being lazy so I plan to trick Win10 Pro into booting from the 512GB SSD, create a pfSense Hyper-V VM and dedicate the 4 multigigabit ports to pfSense.
Why?:
I want to retire my aging Dell 9020 with an i7 4770K that I’ve been using for 5+ years. It has the same software setup that I plan to use and performs very well reaching 900Mbit up/down with very low latency basically getting the most out of my FiOS fiber line but this old machine is very power inefficient. So that’s the main reason I want to change things up.
Expense:
My only expenses are the framework motherboard and the M.2 to PCIe adapter everything else I already have laying around doing nothing. I’m not sure about the enclosure for it yet. I may work with a friend to 3D print something for it.
Concerns:
Not sure if the M.2 to PCIe adapter will work but I really want it to work because it should give me lower latency compared to using USB-C to Ethernet adapters.
If you made it this far, thank you.
Interesting thought. I had considered going m.2 to pcie for a 4 or 5 slot SATA controller, but hadn’t thought about putting a beefy NIC there. I don’t really need the performance, though. The CableMatters 1Gig USB NIC/switch I mentioned above has been working well since I turned off features that were making it choke. There are also Thunderbolt to PCI options too, but I have no idea about performance and Windows compatibility.
Let us know how your hardware plan works out for you for sure.
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Hey this is cool, thanks a ton for the detail! I want to do something like this but with my old 11th gen intel mainboard from batch 5 after I upgrade my mainboard to 13th. But I also want to do a nextcloud backup and a CI server on the same box (plus maybe later a matrix server, running conduit to postgres server). Do you recommend trying to augment a coolermaster framework build into a router? I’m not super experienced with networking (I actually still get confused about the router/modem distinction if I don’t look it up, and I don’t know to make sure particular hardware won’t be veto’d by an ISP)
I’ll be receiving my amd framework board in a few weeks, and will be using it for a home server, upgrading from a raspberry pi 4 cluster and multipass vms on a m1 mac mini that works fine but is so slow. Will be running about 40tb of btrfs usb drives attached to it, with samba, syncthing, plex, gocryptfs, dns, etc. Also planning to use it for self-hosting web services, such as discourse and other projects.
Depends on whether you want to mount external higher dBi antennas or not. If sticking with antennas integrated into or attached to WiFi dongles I imagine that cooler master case would probably be fine.
If your ISP complains about you making your own router, get a better ISP! lol. Obviously, if you’re creating a problem with an open mail relay, or letting upnp traffic in and out too much, etc then yeah sure that’s on you to fix. But as long as it isn’t creating a problem upstream they really couldn’t / wouldn’t / shouldn’t make you use a particular brand of anything… at least I hope not lol.
Arch Wiki has a lot of good information about using systemd-networkd to set things up in a very static and stable way that comes up the same way every boot. Assuming no USB devices fail to come up at boot, which has been the biggest hitch in my setup really, USB devices not appearing or going away after being up a long time. No idea if NixOS uses systemd or not though…
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Oh and a good firewall too. There’s lots and lots and lots of bad actors and bot nets knocking at my door all day every day. If you’ve got a public ip (not behind NAT), this is definitely something to consider.
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definitely-- nixos has a bunch in common with arch, you’d just never do systemd imperatively and it generates all the systemd stuff from a centralized spec file (to a more aggressive notion of “centralized” than other linux flavors).
The LTE modem expansion card looks immensely promising for me! Mainboard as Internet Router + Wireless AP + NAS Project - #55 by Jacob_Eva_LES that’ll come later
Hello, I am considering a project such as this.
I currently have a fairly large unRAID NAS. This is composed of the unRAID host, which is an unremarkable ATX pc case, and 2x 4U cases for the drives (up to 15 drives in each).
The drives in each 4U case are connected to 4 ports on an internal SAS expander, which then connects via two external mini-SAS cables to the unRAID box. The unRAID box has a single HBA with 4 external ports (9206-16e).
I have upgraded my framework laptop to AMD, and have the 12th gen mainboard in the CoolerMaster case. To connect my drives, I am considering going Thunderbolt → NVME → pci-e by buying 2x thunderbolt NVME adapters, and 2x ADT-Link NVME to pci-e adapters (such as M.2 NVMe to PCIe x4 Extension Cable, there are lots of variants). I can then place one of these inside each of my 4U cases, and put a 2-port SAS HBA card (e.g. 9207-8i) in each ADT-Link pci-e slot to connect to the drives via the SAS expander.
I am not looking for ultimate speed, just ease of connectivity, and ultra low power usage. I see reviews for some Thunderbolt NVME adapters to be quite low, e.g. 1 to 1.5 Gbit/sec, but others approach 2.5, which would be sufficient (across 15 drives this would be 166 MB/sec during unRAID parity check).
Interested to see if anyone has thought of doing similar, or anyone who has experience of speeds using Thunderbolt - > NVME → pci-e or similar.