Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) Support on Nano?

I’ve been interested to start upgrading my network to Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) and got the thought to look into using an INTEL® Wi-Fi 6 AX201 or AX200 module on a Jetson Nano dev kit or associated carrier board. I did some digging and found on the thread about getting an Intel 9260 https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/1050449/jetson-nano/intel-9260-wifi-on-jetson-nano-jetbot/7 to work and found that outside of the 8265NGW on the supported components list, there is a great deal of pain to get any other modules to function properly without a great deal of finagling with legacy drivers or firmware. I’m not an expert in either Linux or Python, but I’m getting a stronger grasp on hardware and trying to maximize the potentials of what I can get to work together.

That being said, has there been any effort on anyone here in the forums or on NVIDIA’s side to try and integrate WiFi 6 into any of the Jetson lineup so far? It seems like a serious jump in wireless capabilities with both speed and bandwidth of data across multiple concurrent devices simultaneously, and machine learning could very well benefit from such a capability.

I understand that the AX201 module uses the M.2: CNVio2 standard that Intel has been very sketchy on releasing hardly any details on outside of hardware developers it seems, so the logical idea to me is that the AX200 module or maybe its KILLER counterpart using a standard M.2: PCIe interface would at the very least be physically compatible. Although from the thread I listed above it seems like a fail-to-boot and kernal nightmare. Just thought I’d put this out there and test the waters. Even if I get a hard “no it won’t support because (x,y,z)” I’d be happy, but you can’t push the edges without getting others to think that you can.

Hi burzynsa,
I cannot share much help here but can only tell what is supported/no support on tegra based platform with NV’s point of view.

When you talked about “only 8265NGW is on the supported item list”. It actually indicates this card is verified by nvidia QA and we guarantee this card should be at least working.

Also, we guarantee that every devices should be at least detected by the lower level drivers(e.g. usb/pcie…). However, when it comes to the functionality from other drivers, then we may not help much since it is from other vendors like Broadcom/Intel/Reltek…

If you want to know what hardware capability does Tegra have, you could refer to Technical reference manual (TRM) on our download center. For nano, it is actually same as TX1 chip so please refer to TX1 TRM.

You may notice that there is no “802.11” keywords inside this document. Because nv is not a ethernet/wifi vendor, normally there would be no such list inside the document.

Other forum users may be able to kindly share their experience for such topic.

Generally, my experience has been that Intel has the best cards for Linux. Other cards often lack features (eg, 5ghz support) or perform poorly. I haven’t had good experiences with Killer cards, specifically, on any OS. Several laptops I’ve dealt with had Killer chipsets and they were among the first things to be removed in favor of Intel.

Did some googling and it seems AX201 needs a 10th gen Intel CPU. AX200 might work, but there are no guarantees. Intel has some firmware for the iwlwifi module available here:

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005511/network-and-i-o/wireless-networking.html

So it may just work if you copy the .ucode file into /lib/firmware and install the card as usual, but unless you’re willing to drop $30 on the card just to test, or have one available, I’d wait until Nvidia provides offical support and a list of supported cards.

Okkk … so I dropped almost $30 on an Intel AX201. My main interest/focus lies in the Bluetooth 5.1 part. Using Nano for an all IOT protocol (presence awareness) hub, namely Bluetooth >=5.1 (+ LE), Z-wave, Zigbee, Thread, RFXCOM.

Status: Not working at all

It is NOT working with the latest JetPack 4.4 Developer Preview and with compiled driver/firmware inspired on by You too can have a sub-$200 .11ax client – Hypergeek Wi-Fi → scroll to section Wifi driver.

I have used various different git branches: from 45 to master. To no avail. Side-note: I’m totally new to this kind of stuff.
Both git sites do mention AX201 bluetooth/wifi. I think a newer kernel >= v5.5 is a prerequisite. Total newbie in regards to compiling my own kernel unfortunately…


Copy/paste from above link with my latest cli:

Wi-Fi Drivers

Now that you’ve logged in you will probably note that there’s no sign that the Nano sees the AX200/AX201. What you’ll want to do is to build the master release of the iwlwifi driver that you can find here. Here are the commands:

git clone --single-branch --branch master https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/iwlwifi/backport-iwlwifi.git
cd backport-iwlwifi/
make defconfig-iwlwifi-public
sed -i 's/CPTCFG_IWLMVM_VENDOR_CMDS=y/# CPTCFG_IWLMVM_VENDOR_CMDS is not set/' .config
make -j4
sudo make install

Now that the iwlwifi driver is up to date and installed, it’s a good idea to install the latest firmware for the AX200/AX201.

git clone https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/iwlwifi/linux-firmware.git --branch master --single-branch
cd linux-firmware/
sudo cp iwlwifi-cc-a0-50.ucode /lib/firmware 

Once both the driver and the firmware are installed then reboot the Nano and you should be up and running.


Hello,
Please let know if the intel AX200/AX201 are working on the Jetson Nano. I am planning in buying two jetson´s to create a link between them with this wifi chip so I am interested to know if the iwconfig commands are working so I can set them both in ad-hoc mode.
Thank you

AX200 should work well with Jetson Nano, see Using AX200NGW with jetson nano

@kayccc how about AX210?

The the supported driver version of AX210 is 5.10+, so can’t support now.

what is we upgraded jetson with

do-release-upgrade

so that it will be 20.04 ?
still won’t work?
@kayccc

That’s kernel requirement, see Linux* Support for Intel® Wireless Adapters

so as 20.04 OS on Jetson has

Welcome to Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.9.201-tegra aarch64)

there is no way to get it to 5.10 kernel, right? but for specific narrow cases e.g. if trying armbian etc

Yes

Not sure if can work, but out of our knowledge now.

Recently, I tested AX210 with Jetson Nano with Bluetooth and WiFi 6e. Although unofficial support release version of linux, I can completely run WiFi.
I can connect 5GHz WiFi, but couldn’t test 6GHz because of not having WiFi 6e AP.

Where do I write the whole story about this ?

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@DragonPark
Could you extend what are the steps to install the driver for AX210, please?