twinclouds Posted July 5, 2017 Posted July 5, 2017 I have tried a few different suggestions that I have seen online to implement wifi on Orange PC with a wifi dongle. However, none them can work reliably. OrangePi zero works but wifi speed is very slow (about 1-2Mbps). I recently tried using Raspberry Pi with wifi dongles. It is almost plug and play and very reliable. I hope there is a way to do the same on OPi. If anybody know one, please let me know. I will be happy to try it out and report back.
rodolfo Posted July 5, 2017 Posted July 5, 2017 Hi twinclouds, Try https://forum.armbian.com/index.php?/topic/1237-opi-one-wireless-success/ 1
Igor Posted July 5, 2017 Posted July 5, 2017 I did some tests with mainline kernel (sun8i DEV) the other day. Those four were properly recognised out of the box - wlan0 devices went up, but I did not test for performance. 0bda:8179 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8188EUS 802.11n Wireless Network Adapter 148f:7601 Ralink Technology, Corp. MT7601U Wireless Adapter 0bda:8176 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8188CUS 802.11n WLAN Adapter 148f:5370 Ralink Technology, Corp. RT5370 Wireless Adapter
martinayotte Posted July 5, 2017 Posted July 5, 2017 I have several OPiPC equipped with RTL8188 or MT7601, and they are working reliably since almost over one year.
twinclouds Posted July 5, 2017 Author Posted July 5, 2017 @rodolfo In your link, you are using two different subnet, i.e., ...2.x and ...3.x for eth0 and wlan0. What I want to do is to have both on the same subnet. They don't have to work at the same time but if I have the RJ45 connected, I want to use the ethernet. On the other hand, if the dongle plugged in but not the RJ45, I want it connected through wlan0. Will your setup work? @martinayotte For what I wanted to do as stated above, will your setup work? If it does, what is your setup procedure?
martinayotte Posted July 5, 2017 Posted July 5, 2017 12 minutes ago, twinclouds said: If it does, what is your setup procedure? My setup isn't something special : Mainline builds and still using old fashion /etc/network/interface.
twinclouds Posted July 5, 2017 Author Posted July 5, 2017 @martinayotte Do you have both wifi and ethernet on the same subnet or different subnets?
twinclouds Posted July 5, 2017 Author Posted July 5, 2017 I have setup my OPi one according to @rodolfo's instructions but with both eth0 and wlan0 on the same subnet. If I plug in both ethernet cable and wifi dongle in, I can connect through either one by ssh, but if I pull out the ethernet cable, I cannot connect through the wifi address any more. If I only plug in ethernet cable, I can connect through its ip address. However, if I only plug in the wifi dongle, I can see both addresses but ssh to either address has no connection. Is there anyway to fix that?
rodolfo Posted July 5, 2017 Posted July 5, 2017 @twinclouds Using the same subnet will most likely cause routing problems. You could use network-manager ( nmtui ) - check documentation - to setup your type of use case.
martinayotte Posted July 5, 2017 Posted July 5, 2017 The issues of having both on the same network and then disconnecting one of them are well know ... BTW, I don't see any use cases where both wlan0 and eth0 are on the same network would be needed, this is also true with any PCs.
twinclouds Posted July 5, 2017 Author Posted July 5, 2017 @rodolfo, @martinayottee: Thank you both for your reply. I don't really need both to connect at the same time but try to have the option open. For example, normally, I will use ethernet. However, I might want to connect through wifi when move to another area with no ethernet connection. I have tried network-manager but it does not work too well either. I can try once more. However, Raspberry Pi seems being able to do what I wanted. I hope Orange Pi PC can do the same thing too.
martinayotte Posted July 5, 2017 Posted July 5, 2017 This is not an Armbian issue, but a routing issue where packets are dispatched to one of 2 same routes rules and network system ususally send it to the first interface found, but if this one is been shutdowned, it won't goes out anymore. If it works on Raspberry, which I doubt (as I said, even with PCs this can occur), you can look at the "allow-hotplug" and other params to figure out why the disconnected route is still present in route rules.
twinclouds Posted July 6, 2017 Author Posted July 6, 2017 @martinayottee I tried network-manager. It appears working for some of the dongles and not the others. I will to do more testing. Raspberry Pi works but I am not sure how do they handle it and it looks strange. In the interfaces file, the iface states are manual, not static or hdcp. If one need to change them to static, it has to be done in /etc/dhcpcd.conf file rather than in interfaces file. Do you have any idea what are they doing?
martinayotte Posted July 6, 2017 Posted July 6, 2017 I did some tests on my RPi, although I didn't got issues reproduced except some latencies, what I see after unplugging eth0 and been connected to wlan0 is a bit strange, a route rule for default gateway is still there, which can explain latencies : root@raspberrypi:~# route Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface default 10.111.111.251 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0 default 10.111.111.251 0.0.0.0 UG 303 0 0 wlan0 10.111.111.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 303 0 0 wlan0
twinclouds Posted July 6, 2017 Author Posted July 6, 2017 Network-Manager seems working fine on OPi-PC with wifi dongle for my purpose. However, some of the dongles worked but the others did not, even if they use the same chipset (RTL8188CUs). Not sure why.
rodolfo Posted July 6, 2017 Posted July 6, 2017 El cheapo dongles are a mixed bag. You get what you pay for. Vendor info is largely missing or plain bull. Some work, some do not. Stick with the ones that work.
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