Atheros
I can’t help but notice that when Google is looking for a maintainable wireless router, they’re going with Qualcomm Atheros. All the router chipset manufacturers sort of suck, as far as openness of device drivers is concerned, but Atheros seems to have sucked much less than the rest. My routers use older Atheros chipsets, because I know I can upgrade the kernel on them.
But I’m a bit concerned about the Qualcomm acquisition. Will Qualcomm maintain the openness policy? The IPQ8064 doesn’t actually include the radio, and most routers that have the IPQ8064 SoC attach it to closed-source Quantenna radios. Worse, it looks like the Qualcomm Atheros QCA9980 is not open. I hope Atheros is not another nice company killed by acquisition.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
