[BPI-R3/BPI-R4] Looking for M.2 WiFi card with mesh and 6GHz band support (WiFi 7)

Banana Pi Router design BPI-R3/R3 Mini(MT7986)
1

Hi,

Can anyone sugest an M.2 WiFi card with support for ‘mesh point’, 6GHz bands, which might work with the BPI-R3/R4?

I have a couple of BPI-R3s and would like to repurpose them as wireless APs throughout my house. Ideally I will connect these to my R4s on the 6 GHz band. Unfortunately there is no frequency overlap between the BPI-R4 6 GHz freq bands and the ones supported by the R3. I also want to keep the 2 GHz and 5 GHz bands available for STA clients.

I have a Quectel/Qualcomm NCM685 (WCN7850) and an Intel AX210 which work fine as either AP or STA but neither seems to support mesh point configuration. The WCN7850 should have “partial” mesh support (whatever that means) but I do seem to figure out how to enable that (there are patches which seem to add mesh support to the kernel, but ‘iw phy’ does not detect this capability)

Any WiFI card suggestions or help with configuring the WCN7850 (or the AX210) appreciated.

2

I have 2 Banana Pi RP4 BE-14 with and their iw list shows that there is mesh point support on the 6ghz band but i’ve yet to see it working.

I can only get AP/Client to start in JP country code.

We could work together on this…

3

The RP4 BE-14 is working fine for me on Archlinux Arm with @frank-w kernel and “official” firmware (which was linked somewhere on the forum a while ago) on GB and US country codes (these I tested but I suspect others would work too).

What I am looking for though is a “half” BE-14, particularly the 6GHz half, or equivalent, to use with the M.2 slot in my BPI-R3.

4

Can you share more information on this? I’m interested. You were able to form a 6ghz mesh? What was the performance like?

5

I have not tested a 6GHz mesh yet as I have been unable to find a 6GHz M.2 card with mesh support for my BPI-R3. What I meant to say is that the BE14 is working fine for all frequencies in AP mode.