I know this might well be an old chestnut to many. But I am new to Unraid and have just built my first DIY NAS. Slightly conflicting messages all over the place about WiFi. Does Unraid support or not support WiFi ? I have a Gigabyte Aorus b550 Pro Ax motherboard with built in AX WiFi.

 

Happy to use a mesh extender on my TP Link Deco mesh and then hard wire from that to my NAS in lieu of WiFi support.

 

Also assuming no WiFi support in Unraid does anyone know why this is and is it on the  radar ?

 

Thank you

I have not used it, but Unraid sees the built in wifi in my gigabyte trx40 master.   

1 hour ago, 1topgazza said:

I know this might well be an old chestnut to many. But I am new to Unraid and have just built my first DIY NAS. Slightly conflicting messages all over the place about WiFi. Does Unraid support or not support WiFi ? I have a Gigabyte Aorus b550 Pro Ax motherboard with built in AX WiFi.

 

Happy to use a mesh extender on my TP Link Deco mesh and then hard wire from that to my NAS in lieu of WiFi support.

 

Also assuming no WiFi support in Unraid does anyone know why this is and is it on the  radar ?

 

Thank you

Wifi Drivers are not included hence no wifi support. I dont know of any plans to support currently.

Interesting 😀

11 hours ago, 1topgazza said:

Happy to use a mesh extender on my TP Link Deco mesh and then hard wire from that to my NAS in lieu of WiFi support.

This is the recommended way to handle this so the server thinks it is hardwired and the extender handles the transition to WiFi.

 

9 hours ago, SimonF said:

Also assuming no WiFi support in Unraid does anyone know why this is

Not certain, but I suspect that there are several reasons:

• Many people are focused on speed and WiFi is typically significantly slower than wired (although this is becoming less true with the latest mesh systems).
• Unraid loads into RAM and then runs from there, so including support for any significant number of WiFi chipsets is likely to significantly increase the RAM footprint.
• End users cannot simply install drivers so the central Unraid team has to invest time and effort any time a new driver is to be included into the next Unraid release.

All of this is supposition though so there could be some other driving factor.   It would be nice to have it as an option, but as you found using WiFi extenders is a simple workaround.

Makes sense itimpi

 

When you start adding drivers for all sorts of things it would be difficult to manage. Most NAS don't have WiFi capabilities even the SOHO ones although with some you can by overpriced WiFi modules. But its not essential for me.

 

As it stands the Jonson N2 case I'm using has a very quiet case fan and I'm using a Noctua fan on my CPU. All pretty quiet. I will only be using the NAS for Plex at the moment so it should be fine with an extender should I need one

Sad 😢. I am using Unraid for my backup system, which is not always on. I do not want to waste a port on my router, as I need every single one. The system is slow and has only SATA2. So network speed won't be an issue. It would have been awesome to place the system anywhere in the house, where there is power.

I bought the Asus USB-AX55 Nano with Relatek RTL8852BU.

Theoretically it should be possible to add a driver, as there is a community plugin, which adds a driver for other Realtek network adapters.

Luckily, I just wanted to test Unraid over Wifi. The USB adapter will go into my other Windows PC, which has no Wifi built in.

For about half the cost of the WiFi adapter you could of bought a 1Gbe switch and some Ethernet cables.

Sure. But an extra switch needs extra energy. Around 15$ per year here in Germany, if I assume 5W. And as I said, I am not that flexible to position the server in the house.

TrueNAS has the same limitations. Only Windows Server would work out of the box.

1 hour ago, Hellsfoul said:

Sure. But an extra switch needs extra energy. Around 15$ per year here in Germany, if I assume 5W. And as I said, I am not that flexible to position the server in the house.

TrueNAS has the same limitations. Only Windows Server would work out of the box.

an active wifi module will use that power anyway, its a zero sum game.

5 hours ago, Hellsfoul said:

Sure. But an extra switch needs extra energy. Around 15$ per year here in Germany, if I assume 5W.

 

So you spent 3 years worth of extra energy usage on hardware which you didn't research if it would work in your application?

 

Adding WiFi to Unraid is not a trivial task.  Linux OS in general has a hit/miss history with WiFi support.  Changing standards, multiple hardware solutions, closed source proprietary drivers are just some of the issues to address.  General purpose Linux distributions can allow for installing the latest/greatest unknown driver release, but systems such as Unraid have a much greater integration.  Look at Realtek Ethernet NIC drivers.  They have been problematic for many users (both Unraid and general Linux distros) where the in tree drivers and drivers available from others have a spotty history.

As I said, it was a test. The Wifi module goes into desktop pc. Also the unraid server only runs a few times a month for backup.

Nevertheless it is still sad that it does not work. Thought we were past that driver problems on Linux.