5GHz WiFi To Improve Under Linux With Latest WPA_Supplicant

[phoronix]

Phoronix: 5GHz WiFi To Improve Under Linux With Latest WPA_Supplicant

If you've noticed your 802.11 WiFi adapters on Linux tending to more often connect to 2.4GHz networks than 5GHz, you're not alone, but improvements for 5GHz WiFi on Linux are forthcoming...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-WiFi-5GHz-WPA-Sup

[d2kx]

Meanwhile Ubuntu still uses the outdated wpa_supplicant 2.1.

[magika]

Meanwhile Ubuntu still uses the outdated wpa_supplicant 2.1.

Ask your distro to upgrade it? Cmon, its not Windows or OSX.

[kmand]

It would be nice if 11AC drivers got added to the main line.

[Serge]

How does wpa_supplicant act in AP selection? I thought its role did not extend beyond providing authentication. Is my understanding of wpa_supplicant wrong?

[FuturePilot]

This doesn't make sense. There is no kind of "smart" selection of AP bands. It picks whichever it sees first.

[JumperPunk]

How does wpa_supplicant act in AP selection? I thought its role did not extend beyond providing authentication. Is my understanding of wpa_supplicant wrong?

You have to select a bssid before you can authenticate. I'm pretty sure wpa_supplicant handles scanning the different channels and selecting the best AP.

This doesn't make sense. There is no kind of "smart" selection of AP bands. It picks whichever it sees first.

False. What it 'sees first' is what what channel it scans first. This would mean that the client would always connect on 2.4 GHz (assuming the driver starts with the lowest channel). Furthermore, this would be disastrous in the enterprise environment, as there is no correlation between what channel is scanned fist and what channel the nearest/best AP is broadcasting on. The Linux drivers/wpa_supplicant are not perfect, but they usually select something that at least resembles reasonable.