Intel Wireless 7260 as an access point
Vincent Bernat
My home router acts as an access point with an Intel Dual-Band Wireless-AC 7260 wireless card. This card supports 802.11ac (on the 5 GHz band) and 802.11n (on both the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz band). While this seems a very decent card to use in managed mode, this is not really a great choice for an access point.
$ lspci -k -nn -d 8086:08b1 03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Wireless 7260 [8086:08b1] (rev 73) Subsystem: Intel Corporation Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 [8086:4070] Kernel driver in use: iwlwifi
TL;DR
Use an Atheros card instead.
Limitations#
First, the card is said “dual-band” but you can only uses one band at a time because there is only one radio. Almost all wireless cards have this limitation. If you want to use both the 2.4 GHz band and the less crowded 5 GHz band, two cards are usually needed.
5 GHz band#
There is no support to set an access point on the 5 GHz band. The
firmware doesn’t allow it. This can be checked with iw
:
$ iw reg get country CH: DFS-ETSI (2402 - 2482 @ 40), (N/A, 20), (N/A) (5170 - 5250 @ 80), (N/A, 20), (N/A) (5250 - 5330 @ 80), (N/A, 20), (0 ms), DFS (5490 - 5710 @ 80), (N/A, 27), (0 ms), DFS (57240 - 65880 @ 2160), (N/A, 40), (N/A), NO-OUTDOOR $ iw list Wiphy phy0 […] Band 2: Capabilities: 0x11e2 HT20/HT40 Static SM Power Save RX HT20 SGI RX HT40 SGI TX STBC RX STBC 1-stream Max AMSDU length: 3839 bytes DSSS/CCK HT40 Frequencies: * 5180 MHz [36] (20.0 dBm) (no IR) * 5200 MHz [40] (20.0 dBm) (no IR) * 5220 MHz [44] (20.0 dBm) (no IR) * 5240 MHz [48] (20.0 dBm) (no IR) * 5260 MHz [52] (20.0 dBm) (no IR, radar detection) DFS state: usable (for 192 sec) DFS CAC time: 60000 ms * 5280 MHz [56] (20.0 dBm) (no IR, radar detection) DFS state: usable (for 192 sec) DFS CAC time: 60000 ms […]
While the 5 GHz band is allowed by the CRDA, all frequencies are
marked with no IR
. Here is the explanation for this flag:
The
no-ir
flag exists to allow regulatory domain definitions to disallow a device from initiating radiation of any kind and that includes using beacons, so for example AP/IBSS/Mesh/GO interfaces would not be able to initiate communication on these channels unless the channel does not have this flag.
Multiple SSID#
This card can only advertise one SSID. Managing several of them is
useful to setup distinct wireless networks, like a public access
(routed to Tor), a guest access and a private access. iw
can
confirm this:
$ iw list […] valid interface combinations: * #{ managed } <= 1, #{ AP, P2P-client, P2P-GO } <= 1, #{ P2P-device } <= 1, total <= 3, #channels <= 1
Here is the output of an Atheros card able to manage 8 SSID:
$ iw list […] valid interface combinations: * #{ managed, WDS, P2P-client } <= 2048, #{ IBSS, AP, mesh point, P2P-GO } <= 8, total <= 2048, #channels <= 1
Configuration as an access point#
Except for these two limitations, the card works fine as an access
point. Here is the configuration that I use for hostapd
:
interface=wlan-guest driver=nl80211 # Radio ssid=XXXXXXXXX hw_mode=g channel=11 # 802.11n wmm_enabled=1 ieee80211n=1 ht_capab=[HT40-][SHORT-GI-20][SHORT-GI-40][DSSS_CCK-40][DSSS_CCK-40][DSSS_CCK-40] # WPA auth_algs=1 wpa=2 wpa_passphrase=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK wpa_pairwise=TKIP rsn_pairwise=CCMP
Because of the use of channel 11, only 802.11n HT40- rate can be enabled. Look at the Wikipedia page for 802.11n to check if you can use either HT40-, HT40+ or both.