This is a Feature request for future GL iNet firmware: Support for USB WIFI Adapters
For multiple reasons users need to add a USB WIFI adapter to their GL iNet travel router, which the GL iNet GUI does not handle, and I have seen the GL iNet GUI overwrite changes that I have made to my router configuration with LUCI, to get my USB WIFI adapter to work. Right now the only way to configure a USB WIFI adapter is to flash the router with a generic version of OpenWrt, and give up on the GL iNet firmware. You loose a lot of features when you do this.
My reason for needing a USB WIFI adapter is I need to reach an AP that is out of range of my AR300M16-ext. Using generic OpenWrt firmware on my AR300M16-ext with a $10.00 RT3070 USB WIFI adapter shows more then a 20db improvement over the AR300M16-ext radio. I purchased the “ext” model of the AR300M16 so I would have an extended WIFI range device, but the product is not that good when compared to some inexpensive USB WIFI adapters that are readily available.
Alzhao Sorry not ignoring. But didn’t have a good solution for you. We are not good at antenna design.
The GL iNet travel routers support USB modems, USB storage, and USB tethering, but there is no support for USB WIFI. Even if the support started with only supporting the RT3070 chipset, that would help most of the requests I have seen in this forum. As the driver for the RT3070 is already in the GL iNet routers, it is only a user space software change.
Here are several posts to the forum looking for help or support of USB WIFI devices on GL iNet routers:
3070 and 8187 chipset are very common old wifi 2.4G chipset and should already been supported. But you need to configure in luci.
Supporting every chipset that openwrt has already supported, may be that you can install the kmod of the wifi driver and configure that manually. Luci is also developed for compatibility. We are not replicating its job, but rather, just reserving it.
For some new dual-band wifi chip, may not be supported by openwrt as well. So on MV1000 we did a lot of work to make them work. Pls note, some of the wifi drivers may not be open source because of the code license.
So, things are complicated and we always try to improve, but with priorities.
Like you want a wifi dongle to cover an entire baseball field? If that’s your goal you’re probably going to be better off with a real wireless access point.
Hi,
so can i add an usb wifi adapter now as wan interface (to use hotspots as inet source) and have the build in wifi of e.g. the beryl ax router as lan wifi for my devices?
And if so are there any specific wifi chips/adapter models i should look out for?
For me the whole point of a travel router is to put it in between the “public” inet (mostly wifi) and my devices ( e.g. smartphone/tablet)
You may be able to do this using Luci or the command line interface, but for the most part it’s not officially supported.
The MT76xx chipsets would be good, except they are currently affected by a kernel bug which limits their txpower severely. I checked a couple weeks ago and the fix has not yet made it into OpenWRT: GL-AR300M Shadow 5GHz dongle?
Chipsets on this list may work, but be sure to search first and see if they actually work in practice. Just because something works on desktop Linux does not mean that the driver in OpenWRT is the same, or up to parity with what’s being used in a desktop Linux distro.
Still no update on this? I want to attach a usb wifi dongle to Brume 2, and then have Wifi access in the Glinet web interface so I can configure it as tether.
I think you miss understood the whole point of attaching additional USB wifi dongles.
Its not to add wifi but to have a second wifi network and to route between them.
If i can buy that from GL inet i would. (i dont want to have 5Ghz be one and 2.4ghz be the other. full 2x of each is what im looking for)
Can i have the wlan if as client in one wifi and serve a ssid to connect to by clients in the same freq. band at the same time so i can route/fw between them?
MY usual scenario is: i am in a hotel , on a train etc. And they offer wifi. i want my travel router to be able to connect to that (most likely on 2.4GHZ) and then have my own wifi for my phone etc. to connect to at 2.4ghz so it reaches every where in e.g. my hotel room.
Ehm, that is exactly the way the GL router works. You don't need different Wi-Fi. It works out of the box. You will connect to your upstream Wi-Fi and the router will broadcast it's own Wi-Fi. That is what GL devices are made for.
Thats what i at least was hoping for this thread achives: official gl.inet ui support for such a setup. i can ofc. hack myself such a setup but im lazy and others might not be able to.
I see this as a very common setting with most devices not having ethernet and most places as well only offering wifi not ethernet.
Yes. Your are to fast.
I was under the impression because it has one radio for each of the freq. bands (5 and 2.4) it can only connect to one wifi on one freq. and offer a wifi on the other (e.g. connect to 2.4ghz hotspot and make its own ssid on 5ghz). thats whay i wanted to ad a second adpater to have a second set of radios in 2.4 and 5 so i can support older devices or have more reach using 2.4 for upstream and own wifi.
I played arround with GL.inet devices a year ago and couldnt get that to work. but maybe i did it wrong or something was added. i will get hold of another current model and check again.
Just ordered a GL.iNet GL-MT3000 Beryl AX, AX3000 i will report.
