WiFi rather than Ethernet only for unRAID


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Just a thought, but Wifi-only users might want to consider getting a "real" router (I used a Mikrotik hAC router before) and have it link to the local Wifi and 'NAT' off the rest of the ethernet and Wifi clients. So your servers, desktops, laptops can connect to your LAN/Wifi and still have access to the residential Wifi (albeit double NAT'd) and be relatively secure from everybody else on the residential Wifi.

 

I had to stop this as my solution as I was trying to run a connection through a solid foot of concrete flooring which would horribly attenuate the signal. But I would not hesitate to try this if I was in a similar situation.

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  • 1 month later...
12 minutes ago, trurl said:

Lots of alternative solutions are already discussed in this thread.

Maybe for some but for my specific needs there is no alternative solution.

 

Ido think it goes without saying, it's nearly 2019 and it would seem that adding native wifi would have been done already, seems as if it would of been easy enough. I say seems as maybe it's not, this is outside of my IT realm.

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I tried a handful of different Ethernet to WiFi adapters and could not get any to work for what I wanted to accomplished.

 

I didn't really want it posted publicly but I wanted to run my Crashplan docker container to upload via Comcast's guest network so it would not count against my data cap. I came close getting it to work. I was able to get a Windows VM with Crashplan to connect just fine to Crashplan but my Crashplan docker container couldn't connect to Crashplan.

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  • 1 year later...
10 minutes ago, jayunraid said:

To this point, I am trying to install on a laptop that does not have an Ethernet port. Any suggestions on Wifi option or a particular USB to Ethernet option that works?

Laptop isn't really a good platform for Unraid anyway. What do you plan to do with Unraid?

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On 8/30/2020 at 7:10 PM, trurl said:

Laptop isn't really a good platform for Unraid anyway. What do you plan to do with Unraid?

I have an i7 6 core machine with 16GB of RAM and two external USB.30 2TB HDDs. Are you saying that I should not utilize that hardware? I want to run a media server on my LAN and want to utilize unraid's ability to give me a robust storage space with my extra drives to do so. Also, upon digging into the forums deeply after posting in this thread, I found that people have found this adapter works solving my problem. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07MK6DJ6M/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_image_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Apparently any AX8817 chipset ethernet adapter works in Unraid.  I have ordered one and will report back on its effectiveness.

UPDATE: As promised. I have confirmed that the USB adapter works just fine on a USB 3

Edited by jayunraid
UPDATE As promised
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1 minute ago, jayunraid said:

two external USB.30 2TB HDDs.

USB is bad about dropping and reestablishing connections on a whim, which doesn't bother some things, but Unraid relies on constant reliable communication with parity protected array devices, and if it can't write to a disk on demand, it disables it. If you don't care about the parity protection part of Unraid, they may work ok.

 

TLDR; Don't run an Unraid array with USB disks in the parity protected portion.

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On 1/22/2021 at 7:45 PM, Cleas said:

please add WiFi feature to unRaid, I don't really need it support all different Wifi adaptor however, small number adaptor is support is good enough.

I haven't tried, so I may be way off base, but wouldn't it be possible, and far more flexible, to pass through the WiFi adapter to a VM in Unraid (like we do for GPUs, USB controllers, etc.), and then have the VM run, say, OpenWRT or whatever else, to handle Wifi?

Edited by brainbone
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  • 1 month later...
On 2/5/2021 at 10:12 PM, brainbone said:

I haven't tried, so I may be way off base, but wouldn't it be possible, and far more flexible, to pass through the WiFi adapter to a VM in Unraid (like we do for GPUs, USB controllers, etc.), and then have the VM run, say, OpenWRT or whatever else, to handle Wifi?

It's 2021. An OS that doesn't have native support for WIFI is ridiculous. 

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  • 5 months later...

Supporting WiFi in Linux is too difficult. You need hardware specific drivers which are simply not available and for the few that are, they are either proprietary binary blobs, or require custom compliation or custom kernel, and then there's separate software to configure the operation of the card. Add to that the way the Unraid OS is packaged, it's essentially impossible to add Wireless support in Unraid.  A hardware adapter for wired to wireless is the only viable option for Unraid.

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  • 4 months later...

On my new motherboard wifi 6 is faster than the onboard network card. So, I want it because it's the fastest way in and out of my machine. It's an ITX board where I'm using the 1 pcie slot for storage. (8x nvme drives) I can't be wasting it on network cards.

Edited by Jlarimore
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For the moment, my living situation is that I am in a rental and it isn't known yet when I will be back into my house, hopefully just a few more months. I have my server in the garage in the rental. I am using UniFi and I have an AP in the living room and have another AP in the garage plugged directly into my server and setup as a bridge. It works but would prefer using wifi directly from the server.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Well this turned me off of unRaid. I live in an RV and travel in it. There is no option for having a cable since the network equipment is in some cabinet high above the drivers seat.

 

I have a laptop that rivals a lot of server class machines, and I want to actually use it. At the same time I want to setup containers to run backup software, plex, etc.. so that my whole family can benefit from it. I also want to switch 'seamlessly' between linux for personal and windows for work.

 

Since wifi is not an option, ill have to pass. Would love to see it supported.

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