Why tertiary radio?

[weephatz]

Hi,

Just signed up and started reading about the nano. Payday in a few days, trying to decide which option to go for.

I think I read one of the nano options comes with a tertiary radio.

I was wondering what sort of uses that would have?

To my mind you can have 1 radio acting as PineAP, one as a client to an internet facing AP (to forward the PineAP clients to).

So what would people typically use the 3rd radio for? The only thing that comes to mind for me is maybe for management access; so you could wirelessly access the pineapple without putting your footprint on the target network.

[Sebkinne]

Hi weephatz,

The WiFi Pineapple NANO has two physical radios. These two are divided into three virtual interfaces:

• wlan0 is used as the Open AP required to draw in clients
• wlan0-1 is used as the WPA2 management AP
• wlan1 is normally used with PineAP in monitor mode. This adds much additional functionality to the PineAP suite. It is also required for many modules to function correctly.

If you wish to supply internet to the WiFi Pineapple NANO or TETRA over WiFi, but want to keep all the functionality in tact, you will require a third radio.

[weephatz]

OK, apologies if I'm misunderstanding here, but the hakshop says:

NANO Tactical Elite: NANO Tactical, plus RaLink RT5370 (Tertiary WiFi Radio) & 90 degree in-case 500 mW antenna upgrade.

So is that not a third physical radio?

I get that you can split one physical interface/radio into multiple logical units/vlans, but that is done in software, so could be (and I assume is) done on the nano basic model.

So what advantage does the addition of the Ralink bring?

[Foxtrot]

8 minutes ago, weephatz said:

OK, apologies if I'm misunderstanding here, but the hakshop says:

NANO Tactical Elite: NANO Tactical, plus RaLink RT5370 (Tertiary WiFi Radio) & 90 degree in-case 500 mW antenna upgrade.

So is that not a third physical radio?

I get that you can split one physical interface/radio into multiple logical units/vlans, but that is done in software, so could be (and I assume is) done on the nano basic model.

So what advantage does the addition of the Ralink bring?

The RT5370 comes with the Tactical Elite bundle and is useful for making Client-mode connections to other Access Points (for internet access, say).

[Sebkinne]

8 minutes ago, weephatz said:

OK, apologies if I'm misunderstanding here, but the hakshop says:

NANO Tactical Elite: NANO Tactical, plus RaLink RT5370 (Tertiary WiFi Radio) & 90 degree in-case 500 mW antenna upgrade.

So is that not a third physical radio?

I get that you can split one physical interface/radio into multiple logical units/vlans, but that is done in software, so could be (and I assume is) done on the nano basic model.

So what advantage does the addition of the Ralink bring?

The advantage the RaLink adds to the NANO is detailed in my previous post.

It is not possible to use phy1 to create a new virtual interface (as this radio will mostly be in monitor mode), and phy0 is the AP radio. It will also not do clientmode correctly on a new virtual interface.

Long story short: If you want WiFi Clientmode to work with the full feature set of the WiFi Pineapple, you need a third radio.

[weephatz]

OK, sorry I think I get it now

So without that 3rd radio, you have one acting as monitor and the other as your AP. So without the 3rd you can only forward traffic to the internet via cable.

Apologies, I hadn't really thought through the functionality of each radio.

Much appreciated :)