WIFI6E and Raspberry PI 5 – Monitor Mode

I have been noticing that different WIFI6 USB radio interfaces are unable to work on “monitor mode,”, however with the AX210 board is capable of “monitor mode” and support Bluetooth 5.2/5.3, and WIFI 6E, which means is a Tri-band card for 2.4GHz, 5GHz and 6GHz bands.

I tried multiple cards, that claim to be “monitor” mode capable but they do not support it, they can only work on “Managed Mode”

  • TPLINK TX21UH : AX1800 High Gain Wireless USB Adapter
  • TPLINK TX20U: Archer – AX1800 Dual Antennas High Gain Wireless USB Adapter
  • ASUS AX-55 NaNo : AX1800 Dual Band WiFi 6 USB 

Simply by running on Windows:

  • net wlan show wirelessCapabilities, the monitor support mode was “OFF”  in all cards, and by running. 
  • iw set wpl1s0 monitor on, returns an error. 

 

 

netsh wlan show wirelesscapabilities

Wireless System Capabilities
—————————-
Number of antennas connected to the 802.11 radio (value not available)
Max number of channels the device can operate on, simultaneously (value not available)
Co-existence Support : Unknown


Wireless Device Capabilities
—————————-

Interface name: Wi-Fi 2

WDI Version (Windows) : 0.1.1.12
WDI Version (IHV) : 0.1.1.12
WiFiCx Version (IHV) : WiFiCx Interface Not Supported
Firmware Version : rtwlanu
Station : Supported
Soft AP : Not supported
Network monitor mode : Not supported
Wi-Fi Direct Device : Supported
Wi-Fi Direct GO : Supported
Wi-Fi Direct Client : Supported
Protected Management Frames : Supported
DOT11k neighbor report : Supported
ANQP Service Information Discovery : Supported
Action Frame : Supported
Diversity Antenna : Not Supported
IBSS : Not Supported
Promiscuous Mode : Not Supported
P2P Device Discovery : Supported
P2P Service Name Discovery : Not Supported
P2P Service Info Discovery : Not Supported
P2P Background Discovery : Not Supported
P2P GO on 5 GHz : Not Supported
ASP 2.0 Service Name Discovery : Not Supported
ASP 2.0 Service Information Discovery : Not Supported
IP Docking Capable : Not Supported
FIPS : Supported
Instant Connect : Not Supported
Dx Standby NLO : Not Supported
Extended Channel Switch Announcement : Supported
Function Level Reset : Supported
Platform Level Reset : Supported
Bus Level Reset : Not Supported
MAC Randomization : Not Supported
Fast Transition : Supported
MU-MIMO : Not Supported
Miracast Sink : Supported
BSS Transition (802.11v) : Supported
IHV Extensibility Module Configured : Not Supported
SAE Authentication : Supported
SAE Hash-to-Element Authentication : Supported
WPA3 SUITE-B Authentication : Supported
WPA3 SUITE-B FIPS Mode : Not Supported
OWE Authentication : Supported
FTM as Initiator : Not Supported
MBO Support : Supported
Number of Tx Spatial Streams : 2
Number of Rx Spatial Streams : 2
Number of Concurrent Channels Supported : 1
P2P GO ports count : 1
P2P Clients Port Count : 1
P2P Max Mobile AP Clients : 8
Max ANQP Service Advertisements Supported : 0
Maximum Number of Secondary STAs supported : 0
Number of MultiLink Connections supported : 0
Co-existence Support : Wi-Fi performance is maintained


Interface name: Wi-Fi

WDI Version (Windows) : 0.1.1.12
WDI Version (IHV) : 0.1.1.12
WiFiCx Version (IHV) : WiFiCx Interface Not Supported
Firmware Version : rtwlane
Station : Supported
Soft AP : Not supported
Network monitor mode : Not supported
Wi-Fi Direct Device : Supported
Wi-Fi Direct GO : Supported
Wi-Fi Direct Client : Supported
Protected Management Frames : Supported
DOT11k neighbor report : Not Supported
ANQP Service Information Discovery : Not Supported
Action Frame : Not Supported
Diversity Antenna : Not Supported
IBSS : Not Supported
Promiscuous Mode : Not Supported
P2P Device Discovery : Supported
P2P Service Name Discovery : Not Supported
P2P Service Info Discovery : Not Supported
P2P Background Discovery : Not Supported
P2P GO on 5 GHz : Supported
ASP 2.0 Service Name Discovery : Not Supported
ASP 2.0 Service Information Discovery : Not Supported
IP Docking Capable : Not Supported
FIPS : Supported
Instant Connect : Supported
Dx Standby NLO : Supported
Extended Channel Switch Announcement : Not Supported
Function Level Reset : Supported
Platform Level Reset : Supported
Bus Level Reset : Not Supported
MAC Randomization : Supported
Fast Transition : Not Supported
MU-MIMO : Not Supported
Miracast Sink : Supported
BSS Transition (802.11v) : Not Supported
IHV Extensibility Module Configured : Not Supported
SAE Authentication : Supported
SAE Hash-to-Element Authentication : Supported
WPA3 SUITE-B Authentication : Not Supported
WPA3 SUITE-B FIPS Mode : Not Supported
OWE Authentication : Supported
FTM as Initiator : Not Supported
MBO Support : Not Supported
Number of Tx Spatial Streams : 1
Number of Rx Spatial Streams : 1
Number of Concurrent Channels Supported : 1
P2P GO ports count : 1
P2P Clients Port Count : 1
P2P Max Mobile AP Clients : 2
Max ANQP Service Advertisements Supported : 0
Maximum Number of Secondary STAs supported : 0
Number of MultiLink Connections supported : 0
Co-existence Support : Unknown

Network Cards Tested

The USB Cards I tested were:

TX20U-Realtek 8832AU 

TX21UH -Realtek RTL8126 

AX-55 Nano – Realtek RTL8852BU

Although, a Raspberry PI 5 comes with dual-band 802.11ac with Bluetooth 5.0,  the main idea is to use an AX210 Intel chipset instead with an NVme 2230 format, as shown here instead. The port is a E.key or A.key, adapter.

The Raspberry PI needs an adapter of PCIe interface to NVMe format  to load the card with “:OKN AX210 Brings wifi into 6GHz, Update your wifi to Tri-Band. Max Speed up to 574Mbps @2.4GHz + 2400Mbps @5GHz +2400Mbps @6GHz. 2.4GHz for the long range, 5GHz for the high speed, 6GHz for the higher speed, Interference free and Ultra-low Latency” 

The board is a PCIe with M.2Key HAT interface for RPI 5 (Raspberry Pi 5), where the AX210 board will sit in, and a small PCI interface connects the RPI 5 with the “GeekPi” board.


Version 1.0.0

See Part II

 

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