WiFi rather than Ethernet only for unRAID


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I've googled "unraid wireless" a few times and the results show there to be at least one thread from every year in the past few years from someone requesting the feature or wondering how to do 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. With wireless AC speeds approaching the normal read/write speeds of a traditional HDD, I don't see a good argument to not support it other than the difficulty of implementation which I would not know of. Even just requiring a physical connection for initial setup is fine I think.

 

I feel like there could be a lot of potential unRAID users that may turn away from using it because they won't be able to run an Ethernet cable to their machine. Like pwm said in this thread (the most recent thread I could find asking about the feature):

The important thing is that different users have different usage 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...

 

Pardon the lengthy post... I'm new here, let me know if I need to say something differently.

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https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1726328

 

Cheap ($30 USD) router / ap / bridge that will provide better performance than many wireless pc cards.

 

Adding wireless support to unraid is not trivial, and configuring wireless at the command line is a pain in the butt.

 

Since there are off the shelf wireless to wired bridges available, the very few niche cases where wireless is desired is much better served by recommending a bridge solution than trying to support the thousands of different wireless cards in unraid.

 

 

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On 1/9/2018 at 3:30 AM, jonathanm said:

https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1726328

 

Cheap ($30 USD) router / ap / bridge that will provide better performance than many wireless pc cards.

 

Adding wireless support to unraid is not trivial, and configuring wireless at the command line is a pain in the butt.

 

Since there are off the shelf wireless to wired bridges available, the very few niche cases where wireless is desired is much better served by recommending a bridge solution than trying to support the thousands of different wireless cards in unraid.

 

 

++

This is best solved at the network level, not the (UNRaid) OS/server level.

If the router jonathanm suggests isn't a fit aesthetically or size-wise, I'd suggest the TP-Link RE210 AC750 Wi-Fi Range Extender; it has wireless bridge capability where you can use its gigabit Ethernet port to connect a  wired device (your UNRAID server)  to your main router via WiFi. Since it supports dual-band, performance should be good;
It's the only tiny-size WiFi access device I know of that supports a gigabit connection and 5GHz.
While I haven't used it myself, I have its cousin, the TL-WR902AC nano travel router, which is a fully-featured router with amazing WiFi performance despite being barely larger than a matchbox (less suitable for your purpose since its Ethernet ports are 10/100).
The RE210 is a bit expensive in the US at the moment, but can be bought from Amazon Germany for ~US$35 delivered to the US.

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yet the router/bridge/AP solution requires a transformer that will suck unnecessary power to run the unit. Whereas an internal wifi-card will only use the power required for the card(s). I know it is not much, but for a 24/7-365 setup it will accumulate to noticeable amounts.

 

That said, my setup (once all my parts arrives [read once I have the coin to buy them]) will be a managed poe switch to switch two WAN to one socket (I have two public IP) and a unify AP, to reduce power consumption.

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On 1/11/2018 at 4:16 PM, Alphahelix said:

yet the router/bridge/AP solution requires a transformer that will suck unnecessary power to run the unit. Whereas an internal wifi-card will only use the power required for the card(s). I know it is not much, but for a 24/7-365 setup it will accumulate to noticeable amounts.

 

A person can't have everything. Wireless solutions are never as good as wired ones, either in performance or consistency; the major problem isn't throughput, it's latency.
As for energy consumption, the nano router I have, the TL-WR902AC, actually has a USB power supply. While it comes with an AC adapter, it can be powered via any USB port as well, e.g., one on the wired device it's attached to. If a 100mbps connection to the server is enough, that will work fine (and if there's  a single PC that connects to the UnRAID server, as in the OP's case, that might well be enough).

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  • 2 weeks later...
23 minutes ago, nuhll said:

Here in germany np, you just need to close it after u move out... 

 

How u fix the hanging parts in the kitchen if u are nto allowed to drill?! Or in bathroom?

Depends on your landlord and your rental contract. I knew of people both here and in Germany who rented and had rental contracts explicitly forbidding any drilling whatsoever. In the dorms I lived at while studying in the US, it was even forbidden to use the tiny picture nails -- we were supplied with special sticky tack and adhesive hooks, like this.


Also, depending on the wall material, it's not necessarily trivial to fill holes so they're completely invisible afterwards. Over here, you'd basically need to repaint a wall after filling.

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I would like to also bump this. WiFi now is fast enough especially with the tri band wireless AC. And it's very stable for home use. I thought most versions of linux come with WiFi support. I realize that unraid is a heavily modified version and I haven't created my own version of linux ever. I am willing to donate $20 to whoever adds support for wifi instead of buying a wireless bridge although that is currently what I am doing but I am looking to upgrade my hardware and I would prefer a internal wireless card. I am sure many other people would be willing to donate money instead of purchasing additional wireless ethernet bridges.

 

By the way I've had unraid since 2008 and I love all the features and how it's evolved. The only thing it is missing is WiFi support.

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  • 9 months later...

I live my whole live in many rented houses. You just need to buy a <20usd cable and run it from router to server, you dont need any "internet hardware", wtf. And just btw you can take it with you when you leave. 

 

I also googled a bit, its even allowed to drill a hole between 2 rooms to for cables, atleast in germany.

 

But anyway, dont see a reason to not add wifi support. (but if i were u i would do anything possible to not use wifi for computers)

Edited by nuhll
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7 hours ago, nuhll said:

You just need to buy a <20usd cable and run it from router to server, you dont need any "internet hardware", wtf.

Again not a option as the router is mounted on the ceiling with 1 poe cable and that would be tacky as it would have to go through a couple of fire doors. I could but not a option

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Well, that´s what i would call "bad luck". Or in other words: "no arms, no cookies".

As already stated above, it doesn´t make sense to build such a functionality into a server itself just for the >1% of users who try running a server infrastructure in a place not suitable.

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2 hours ago, hocky said:

Well, that´s what i would call "bad luck". Or in other words: "no arms, no cookies".

As already stated above, it doesn´t make sense to build such a functionality into a server itself just for the >1% of users who try running a server infrastructure in a place not suitable.

It still could be a large number of people who would use this function, I would, and I'd guess most unRAID users are home users. One thought is something like this could help get around soft data caps say for CrashPlan as you could technically jump on say Comcast's guest Network which doesn't count against your data cap.

Edited by LimeB
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I have said it before and say it once again. Wireless support is a nightmare. I don't think Limetech has the resources to address all questions and issues which come with wireless connectivity. Not to mention the heavy dependency on Linux to support all the different wifi adapters that exist.

 

Most realistically is to look for alternative solutions, like external adapters or powerline adapters.

 

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8 minutes ago, BRiT said:

MOCA adapters are also very flexible and may provide higher throughput than powerline adapters. The only requirement is to have COAX cables to use.

The beauty of MOCA is the COAX is shared. Instead of needing a dedicated run, you can piggy back on COAX that is currently serving other equipment. The only requirement I know if is that you can't have multiple MOCA on the same system, so if the local provider already has MOCA in place for their set top boxes, you are out of luck unless you can tie into their endpoints.

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