> I've got an optiplex box running OpenBSD thats gonna get a PCI wireless card thrown in it when I get around to it.
Have you actually looked in to this path? 802.11ac support is basically brand new in OpenBSD and the drivers that support it don't support HostAP mode.
In general the state of WiFi support across the BSD multiverse is pretty poor. I've wanted to be able to use pfSense/OpnSense boxes as all-in-one devices for years but it's always been so bad that it's better to just use a dedicated Linux device as the WAP.
That card was old (and didn't support ac anyways), but I had it on hand so figured I'd try it. I've been too busy recently to properly research purchasing a new wireless card for this thing so far, though from what you've said I may wind up having to do something else. Maybe Alpine on this box, or a dedicated wireless AP.
I'm not saying it can't work, in fact up to 802.11n apparently works perfectly fine with the right hardware, but it's 2022 and 802.11ac is now "the past" with 802.11ax/WiFi6 as the current standard. As far as I'm aware none of the BSDs have any support for 802.11ax.
If you want to build a BSD box that can also do wireless and don't really care about performance there's nothing wrong with that, but if your goal is something that functionally compares to retail hardware you're going to want to stick to Linux.
Looking at it, I think I'm gonna use one of the numerous pi 3 b+'s I have sitting around as an AP and keep the OpenBSD box as a router.
As you've probably realized by now, I'm new to wireless networking. Do you know of any good resources off the top of your head to better learn? I've been DDG/Googling for stuff as I need it, but there's still a lot of unknown unknowns here for me.
> Looking at it, I think I'm gonna use one of the numerous pi 3 b+'s I have sitting around as an AP and keep the OpenBSD box as a router.
If you have the hardware around then yeah, that should at least give you a basic level of 802.11ac support. It's still going to be limited though because the USB-based ethernet can only do 300ish megabits per second.
I like Ubiquiti's UniFi line. They're easy to work with in stock form and their stock firmware is based on OpenWRT so it's easy to flash them to a fully open configuration if you want.
> Do you know of any good resources off the top of your head to better learn? I've been DDG/Googling for stuff as I need it, but there's still a lot of unknown unknowns here for me.
Unfortunately I do not, I've just built up knowledge organically over years of messing with WiFi.
Have you actually looked in to this path? 802.11ac support is basically brand new in OpenBSD and the drivers that support it don't support HostAP mode.
In general the state of WiFi support across the BSD multiverse is pretty poor. I've wanted to be able to use pfSense/OpnSense boxes as all-in-one devices for years but it's always been so bad that it's better to just use a dedicated Linux device as the WAP.