Hi All,

I was wondering is there a way to set up a onboard WiFi device rather than having to use Ethernet?

I don't mean to passthrough for a VM to use but rather as a bridge for all VM's to use.

 

Thanks,

Jamie

Not directly.  You could potentially use a gaming type adaptor - Ethernet from your server to the wifi device.

 

Why wouldn't you want your VMs to share the Ethernet connection, though?

Sometimes you just don't have a Ethernet node handy. I was wondering if you could could create a interface for it.

Well you could go the gaming adapter route, but Wifi is spotty, inconsistent, subject to interference and obstruction, etc. - basically not suitable for attaching a server to a network.  My recommendation is to move your server to a place where it can be hard wired.  I'd go Ethernet over powerline or MoCA before attempting Wifi for a server.  Actually I'd drill holes for Ethernet before any of those, but you get what I mean.

What do you mean gaming adapter?

Something like: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833156258

 

You have a wired Ethernet connection from your computer to this device, and then it connects via wireless into your home network.  Since all unRAID sees is the connection out via the wired Ethernet connection, it's happy.  Read all the bad reviews, I don't recommend this approach - but it exists.

I was thinking more the Linux route e.g. using wpaconfig to set up a wireless network, if at all possible.

1 hour ago, jbonnett said:

if at all possible.

It's not, but you don't need an expensive gaming adapter, any wireless router with a wi-fi bridge mode works, e.g.:

 

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833315167&cm_re=BR-6428NS-_-33-315-167-_-Product

Thanks guys, not really the solution that I was after. Hopefully there is a alternative sometime in the future.

Much appreciated though :).

I think you are going to be waiting a long time.  Think of it this way.  There is a long freeway with two lanes of traffic in each direction and a speed limit of 70 miles per hour.  In the middle of this freeway there is a construction zone that is serviced by a one-lane section with traffic in both directions and a speed limit of 35 miles per hour.  That is essentially what you have when you put a server on WiFi.  With minimum traffic, things will run relatively smoothly.  With a high traffic, things will  virtually grind to a halt.  Any mix of traffic in between will be a mixture of these two scenarios. 

 

I think any alternative (in the future) that you seek is going to be going to be a replacement for both WiFi and Ethernet.  But I have not seen anyone even propose a  possible theoretical idea of how such a system might work.

WiFi is quite often fast enough, which is why lots of media players can be run over WiFi.

 

And it allows a backup server to be placed in a room that doesn't have wired networking.

 

The important thing is that different users have different usage cases and different needs.

I see this thread has been idle for a month or so but I found it because it is the most recent thread that comes up on google when searching for "unraid wireless"... which I think is a much needed feature based on quite a few threads coming up on google asking for it.

I live in a small one bedroom apartment where the only wired access to the internet is at a small desk between my bathroom and bedroom doors. There is not enough space there for my unRAID server and my gaming PC. I have placed my unRAID server in my living room by the TV because that is the only place I really have space. I also plan on having it run a gaming VM to play VR off of in the future (so I don't have to move my gaming PC back and forth for VR and normal PC games).

 

I purchased an AC power adapter like this one based on most threads saying that is the best option... but I think my apartment building has too much interference on the AC power lines because I only get around 6megabits/sec... its not like its going that far either, my apartment is small. Running an Ethernet cable across the floor in front of doorways is not an option, and since I am renting the place I can't drill into the walls or tear up the carpet to run cables either... I own a pcie wireless card that I could add to my server but unRAID doesn't support it.

 

Like pwm said, the important thing is that different users have different use cases and different needs. Even though it is optimal to have a wired connection, it is not always practical/possible, especially when wireless would be a better/faster solution for people like me where any possible wired option is actually slower than my wireless speeds... so slow that I can't even stream plex movies to my chromecast from it...

 

Anyone know if there is a way to contact the devs for a formal feature request? I feel like this feature should at least be given a look at.

16 minutes ago, Jacrushar said:

Anyone know if there is a way to contact the devs for a formal feature request?

 

Probably in this section:

       https://lime-technology.com/forums/forum/53-feature-requests/

 

 

15 minutes ago, Frank1940 said:

 

Probably in this section:

       https://lime-technology.com/forums/forum/53-feature-requests/

 

 

 

Thanks, as you can see by my post count, I'm new here...

As someone else that lives in an apartment this would be a huge help to me as well. As I am getting ready to build my first server.

 

I do believe what @johnnie.black suggested up above is a decent and cheap alternative until wifi support if ever is built into unRAID. 

Its basically giving you a Ethernet into a wireless device that can bridge the connection from wired to wireless. I used to use something similar for the longest time because I had a printer I couldn't connect to wired and it worked very well. 

Wifi support in Settings->NetworkSettings would be very useful.

 

Just like Ethernet NICs are listed as eth0 eth1 and so forth, a wifi device should be listed in the same place like wlan0 wlan1 and so forth, one for each wifi device present, with relevant wifi configuration parameters.

 

Like Network Manager in Redhat:

 

~]$ nmcli con show
NAME              UUID                                  TYPE            DEVICE
Auto Ethernet     9b7f2511-5432-40ae-b091-af2457dfd988  802-3-ethernet  --
ens3              fb157a65-ad32-47ed-858c-102a48e064a2  802-3-ethernet  ens3
MyWiFi            91451385-4eb8-4080-8b82-720aab8328dd  802-11-wireless wlan0

 

WiFi support could be had by passing through a WiFi device to a VM with a tiny Linux installation. That way the VM will give a network connection over WiFi to the rest of the server.

On 1/28/2020 at 6:59 AM, jonnyczi said:

WiFi support could be had by passing through a WiFi device to a VM with a tiny Linux installation. That way the VM will give a network connection over WiFi to the rest of the server.

im wondering if this would actually work  for any 'decent'  unraid aplience itself 

 

for exaple  i was trying it out today  on my former mini-itx desktops that i fitted with some spare harddrives. 

 

when it got time to get a trial key,  nothing!   -  obviously it had no internet connection and i could not aply for a key.

 

here is what i find after a long scroll through these forums. 

 

1  you shouldn't run a server on wifi, 
A: why not, as i run heavy duty games as wel as conferencing and remote control software tools on it? 

 

2:  wifi is spotty,  
A:  its true that wifi has been hit or miss over the 2 decades or so.   but fact of the matter is  that  about the time that wifi 4 (N) was swapped for wifi 5  (AC) things changed alot for the better with  WPA2 (and its linux wpa_suplicants packages) being now mature, after thair introduction in wifi N,  and the new  2x2  and  3x3 mimo  both speeds and  stability became less of any issue.  

 

B To make an even bolder statement  my wifi running a stable  800mbit  at 5ghz ban 32  wifi network on 2x2 mimo with an intel chip   hass about  1ms  less lagg and about 10% less framedrops on hight-bandwidth protocol tests  than its wired counterpart running on cat5 cables and a broadcom nic.   i can only emagine what improvements i would have if i upgraded to  wifi 6 (Ax) 

 

3:  you could run a cable to a 'hacked'  wifi range-extender  to let it act as bridge for your wifi, 

A:  true, this could in face be done,  matter of factly i have done this in the past  for a 'smart-tv'  that didn't have wifi  
---   the problems i had with this solution where  that the bridge was barely powerfull enought to support  youtube streaming in 4k  and that the device go hot (really hot) on longer periods of action
---    another large drawback is that most such devices are really exspensive or are of utterly inferior quallity.   

>>>  most of the times you'd be lucky to find a device that even has a gbit nic, and if it has one  that it is not connected internally to a usb-hub leaving it only a shared  480mbit wide bus (usb2).  where'as a  decent  pci-e  4x4 mimo  wifi ax  controller  could be had for about  65 to 90  and my  wifi Ac card is only 45 

 

 

4:  go cabled its faster anyway. 

A Not all situations allow for a neat cabled  solution,  for example a rental flat where you cant (are not allowed to) drill for cable. 

but even if you did manage to lay down some nice cat6e cables,  if you follow the news about  "home IT"  stuff  you may have noticed that only just now the first ever true 2,5gbit switch for consumer-use was released in taiwan for aprox 90usd.   by a brand called  Qnap also known for it storage-solutions.   ___ Mind you that its even just an UNMANAGED switch.  ____ 

.

B  compare this  to the gigantic leap that wireless technology has had over the last 10 years from aproximately   300mbit  (wifi N ) to  more than 1200mbit  or even  slightly over 2000 for  wifi  Ac and Ax  respectively.  

 

In regard to the actual work neaded for a wifi main connection:  

 

1 add wifi drivers to the kernel during build time, ar add them as loadable modules. 

2 add wpa_suplicant, 

3 add a simple conection wizzard - its been done over and over again and should not give any issues. 

 

4 there is only 'one' tricky part,  as  wifi bridging is not well-supported. not in the 802.11 protocol  no'r  in most linux implemetations of any type of lvl 2 bridging.   
This means that any of your virtual network interface (your virtual machines) can not live in the same network as your other pc's  (including the virtual-machine host itself).  so connection your VM to the same router as the host will not easely be possible. 

 

A:  however if you google on the matter there are some ways to trick all parties (computers) in thinking that its atually still done.  (google:  wifi bridging kvm)

 

B   there is also the option of inter-network-routing: meaning that you have to tell your router (and its routing table) that there is a another network  with all new ips behind your vm-host's ip-adres.  your vm host would than have to act as an osi-model level 3 router. 

 
C    the least eligant but easiest setup hover is to not try at all and instead use a tunned interface between your vm's and the router  as allmost ALL home routers support some sort of vpn-module  with settings to let the remote users share the 'home ip range'   all your issues would also be solved at the cost of a slight to moderate performance hit. 

 

IF you opt for option C however, i would strongly advice you to losen your security setting to near zerro for the encryption-settings.  as your vm-host lives on your home-network there is hardly any use (unless you really want to) to add more performance hit to your connections.   this is true espeially on the router-side because en- and de-crypting the  data from your virtual network connetion  is the hardest part for its tiny cpu.  Unlike modern intel- and AMD- CPU's  most mps-based routerbords do not support  hardwarebased AES-decrypting.   

 

 

So far my  2020 'updated' view on  wifi can, and should be supported. 

 

 

Edited July 20, 20205 yr by i-chat

@i-chat, perhaps you should make this a new feature request and present your points in that forum.  You can find it here:

 

https://forums.unraid.net/forum/53-feature-requests/

 

WiFi may be maturing to the point where it might be usable.  (I know that it will introduce another variable when we see threads complaining about about transfer speeds.  I know that I for one, will avoid those involving WiFi like COVID-19...)

Edited July 20, 20205 yr by Frank1940

On my new machine, WiFi 6.0 is significantly faster than my wired connection. There's another reason to support it.

On 2022/2/2 at AM2点48分, Jlarimore said:

在我的新机器上，WiFi 6.0 比我的有线连接快得多。支持它还有另一个理由。

agree,yes 1202 ~ 4804 mbps then 1000m

Anymore work been done on this?

I didn't read all the post, nevertheless I would like to get a a simple yes no, whether it is possible to have wifi network connection on Unraid server and use Unraid Connect.

 

(For LAN I use ethernet, WAN is accessible via Wifi only unfortunately.)

 

Thanks

Edited June 24, 20233 yr by Digital Shamans

Unraid has no WiFi drivers.