[ath9k-devel] AR9220/9280 minipci card

[ath9k-devel] AR9220/9280 minipci card

[Gabriel]

Hi,

Based on this[1], I was considering getting an AR9280 card for my
alix-2d3 board. However, all I could find were minipci express cards.
Then I read this[2] where it says the AR9220 is essentially the same
as AR9280, but minipci instead of minipci express.

I found the R52n[3] from Mikrotik, but I'm not sure if it matches
alix-2d3's minipci port (some site mentioned something about a type
IIIA+ miniPCI format, I need to do some more research).  Also,
Ubiquity SR71-15 looks like it's using the same chip, but it's twice
as expensive and has MMCX antenna ports (I need u.FL).

So, I guess what I'm asking is a confirmation that AR9220 cards
perform similarly to AR9280 ones and a recommendation of such a card.
Also, if someone can confirm that a R52n can be successfully paired
with an alix board, I would appreciate it.

Oh, and regarding miniPCI format, according to wikipedia[4], the
difference between miniPCI type IIIA and IIIB involves only the Y axis
(which is orthogonal to the axis that gets inserted into the slot), so
there ought to be no compatibility issues...

Thanks

[1] https://lists.ath9k.org/pipermail/ath9k-devel/2011-July/006544.html
[2] http://adrianchadd.blogspot.com/2011/01/ar9220-support-why-ar9280-is-broken.html
[3] http://routerboard.com/R52N
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_PCI#Technical_details_of_Mini_PCI

[ath9k-devel] AR9220/9280 minipci card

[Adrian Chadd]

The only obvious operational differences (so far) that i've found
between AR9220 and AR9280 are occasional whacky, strange bus
behaviour.

I still have an unexplained PCI bus panic on FreeBSD with AR9220 NICs
in certain conditions (but only with certain kinds of debugging
enabled, so you can still use them in production.)

There are likely other differences - like throughput limitations based
on PCI-33 versus PCIe x1, likely some sleep/power use differences (as
you can put the PCIe PHY partially to sleep, but I don't think you can
do that with PCI?) but I haven't really come across them.

One of my customers has done an AR9220 + FreeBSD based mesh deployment
and they're working fine for him. There are dual-band AR9220's out
there, which the Ubiquiti SR71-12 and SR71-15 are not.


Adrian

[ath9k-devel] AR9220/9280 minipci card

[John Nielsen]

On Sep 22, 2011, at 5:49 PM, Gabriel <jarod125@gmail.com> wrote:

> Based on this[1], I was considering getting an AR9280 card for my
> alix-2d3 board. However, all I could find were minipci express cards.
> Then I read this[2] where it says the AR9220 is essentially the same
> as AR9280, but minipci instead of minipci express.
> 
> I found the R52n[3] from Mikrotik, but I'm not sure if it matches
> alix-2d3's minipci port (some site mentioned something about a type
> IIIA+ miniPCI format, I need to do some more research).  Also,
> Ubiquity SR71-15 looks like it's using the same chip, but it's twice
> as expensive and has MMCX antenna ports (I need u.FL).
> 
> So, I guess what I'm asking is a confirmation that AR9220 cards
> perform similarly to AR9280 ones and a recommendation of such a card.
> Also, if someone can confirm that a R52n can be successfully paired
> with an alix board, I would appreciate it.

I have a pair of Alix 3d2 boxes, each with two Wistron dnma-92 (dual-band ar9220) cards in them. I got the boards and the cards from pcengines.ch. They work very well running Gentoo and (thanks to Adrian) FreeBSD (still need to re-test 11n in FreeBSD on this hardware, on my short TODO list). Depending on how I set things up (encryption, etc) the cards are limited a bit by the processor speed, but they can easily keep up with the 100Mbit/s Ethernet interface in a bridge.

I don't know anything specific about the Mikrotik cards or miniPCI specs.

JN

> Oh, and regarding miniPCI format, according to wikipedia[4], the
> difference between miniPCI type IIIA and IIIB involves only the Y axis
> (which is orthogonal to the axis that gets inserted into the slot), so
> there ought to be no compatibility issues...
> 
> Thanks
> 
> [1] https://lists.ath9k.org/pipermail/ath9k-devel/2011-July/006544.html
> [2] http://adrianchadd.blogspot.com/2011/01/ar9220-support-why-ar9280-is-broken.html
> [3] http://routerboard.com/R52N
> [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_PCI#Technical_details_of_Mini_PCI
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