External WiFi USB dongle vs internal WiFi chipset...LE 9.x

1st Official Post

    I have noticed over time some folks talking about using a WiFi USB dongle to connect, in place of internal WiFi.

    So I booted up my X96mini S905W 1/8G box with SSV6051P internal WiFi chipset that is giving me trouble with the tether/hotspot feature, but connects OK in station mode.

    As aside, my SAMMIX R95S 2/16G box with S905W and RTL8735bs (Wifi N + BT 4.0) chipset works fine in both WiFi station and tether/hotspot (with public Internet access) modes toggled. (I checked specs with the Device Info HW Android app, not the CPU-Z or AIDA64 apps that give incomplete information ! On Amazon this box is claimed to be an S905X, but actually boots from a gxl_p281_2g device tree, as stated by Device Info HW.)

    Then attached a generic RTL USB dongle with antenna into a USB port on the TV box, and checked under LE Config> Network. Saw no difference from the original internal WiFi connection. I then rebooted, and still observed the same internal WiFi connection as usual to my home router.

    Question: How is the external WiFi dongle configured? Via SSH commands I assume?

    Any command set?

    Is there a way to use both WiFi chipsets, one for WiFi access and the other for tether/hotspot mode?

    • Official Post

    If the external USB device was detected the connections tab in LE settings will show "duplicate" wireless networks (as there are two interfaces seeing each network) but each network is tagged with the interface that saw it, i.e. wlan0 or wlan1. The fun part is that with slow loading SSV6051P drivers and normally slow loading USB drivers .. which device is wlan0 and wlan1 is a bit of a gamble; it's determined by module load order in the kernel which is not fixed. Assuming the USB device is detected, the best thing to do is "echo blacklist ssv6051p > /storage/.config/modprobe.d/ssv6051p.conf" and reboot to prevent the driver loading .. which leaves only one interface.

    Connman enables tethering by technology not by interface. It probably prefers tethering on wlan0 but honestly I've never tested that.

    1. Really interesting...this gives me an idea to re-try fixing the X96mini ssv6051p driver for WiFi tether by reinstalling via

    $ modprobe ssv6051p :)

    2. Asked elsewhere, can we change SSID password for the WiFi tether/hotspot?

    3. Do you know if Connman supports LTE ( early versions didn't)?

    If yes, is there a way to update to that new version?

    Quote from chewitt

    SSID/passphrase can be set in LE settings. No idea about connman supporting LTE but it's a moot point as LE doesn't build support for anything but wifi and ethernet.

    1. I actually tried to reset, but both revert in LE Config 👺👺

    Are there any ssh commands you recall?

    2. Hmm...I didn't realize that LE will need special LTE setup. Thought that networking is independent.