# [SOLVED] List of Wifi devices that support master mode

## alegioit

Hi,

First i'd like to excuse me for my bad english...

I'm building a gentoo router and i need a wifi nic that support the master mode ( or ap mode if you want...).

I've tryed a lot of wireless adapter: some were broadcom (bcm4318), others were realtek (rtl8187), but none of them had the master mode support.

Until yesterday i used my home router with an ad-hoc connection, but now i've bought a nexus one that doesn't support this type of wifi mode....

So i ask if someone could give me a list of wifi devices that support at 100% the master mode.

Thanks a lotLast edited by alegioit on Thu Jul 01, 2010 11:12 am; edited 1 time in total

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## BradN

Well, I can give you a negative example at least... prism 2.5 pcmcia cards should be able to do master mode but I wasn't able to make it work with hostap.  It kinda worked but only when I left a ping running on the access point to the client - without that the connection wouldn't properly exchange data.

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## alegioit

 *BradN wrote:*   

> Well, I can give you a negative example at least... prism 2.5 pcmcia cards should be able to do master mode but I wasn't able to make it work with hostap.  It kinda worked but only when I left a ping running on the access point to the client - without that the connection wouldn't properly exchange data.

 

i've found that the atheros adapter support the master mode, but i don't know the exact model.... someone could help me?

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## cwr

I use a PCI card made by someone called TP-Link, the TL-WN851N.  It's about

a year old, so the company might still be around.   The card uses an Atheros

chip, the AR5008 (though I can't find any indication of that on the packaging)

and works fine with hostapd.

Good luck with your search - wireless stuff moves so quickly, and is so badly

documented, that it's pretty difficult to know what you are buying.  The TP-Link

card is the third I've bought, and I couldn't get either of the first two to work.

(Admittedly I failed the second time because I got my checks on the version

number wrong.)

Will

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## alegioit

I've read that the dlink dwa-552 and the pci-e version dwa-556 support the master mode.... is it true, someone can confirm it???

Also i'm searching information about the intel chipset, but i don't have found many....

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## BradN

I ran across someone on the forums that's doing this (maybe with an ath5k card but he didn't say explicitly) - maybe he can provide some assistance:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-833901.html

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## alegioit

finally it works.........

I've bought the dlink dwa-556 and i'm using the in-kernel ath9k drivers with hostap... it works!!!!!

I hope this could help someone!!!

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## spockpv

 *alegioit wrote:*   

> finally it works.........
> 
> I've bought the dlink dwa-556 and i'm using the in-kernel ath9k drivers with hostap... it works!!!!!
> 
> I hope this could help someone!!

 

How did you manage it? I'm trying to set my atheros  AR928X wireless card as an access point. Using the ath9k driver does not allow me to set the card in master mode...

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## alegioit

 *spockpv wrote:*   

>  *alegioit wrote:*   finally it works.........
> 
> I've bought the dlink dwa-556 and i'm using the in-kernel ath9k drivers with hostap... it works!!!!!
> 
> I hope this could help someone!! 
> ...

 

I've had a lot of trouble at the beginning....

after some tries i've found how to configure my conf.d/net and my hostap.conf:

/etc/conf.d/net

```

config_wlan0="192.168.xxx.xxx netmask 255.255.xxx.xxx broadcast 192.168.xxx.xxx"

mode_wlan0="master"

essid_wlan0="xxxxxx"

channel_wlan0="09"

txpower_wlan0="25"

```

/etc/hostap/hostap.conf

```

interface=wlan0

driver=nl80211

ssid=xxxxxxx (the same as conf.d/net !!!)

hw_mode=g

(The rest of the file isn't modified....)

```

I've found that you need to specify in your conf.d/net the ip address (is needed also if you use a dhcp server (in fact i'using dhcpd, but i need to use this line....)) and also that you need to insert the " mode_wlan0="master" " line: you will have an error when you'll try to bring up the interface using "/etc/init.d/hostap start", but it will work.... and this is the only way for me.....

i hope this could help you....

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## spockpv

That was it! Thank you! Everything is working now!

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## alegioit

 *spockpv wrote:*   

> That was it! Thank you! Everything is working now!

 

Glad to hear it!

Byez!!!!

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## andrewwalker27

Did you need the madwifi package installed to get this to work? If so, did you need to use the overlay as when I build madwifi-ng-0.9.4.4133.20100621 it reports at the end 

No AR5008 support in this release; support is available in trunk

The board I have is a D-Link DWA-556 which like others here I want to use as a wireless gateway in 'master' mode.

Do I also need madwifi use flag enabled in hostapd?

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## cwr

I use the nl80211 drivers - I don't know if (or how) you could use madwifi instead.

I've found that I have to set the AR 5008 card in ad-hoc mode, or it complains;

hostapd then switches it to master.  Also the CRDA regulatory domain setup seems

to need the AR 5008 driver to be loaded as a module, not built into the kernel.

Or I could relocate to China ...

Note that you need hostapd 0.7.3, which is masked, for kernels > 2.6.33

Will

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