Can a NAS connect to WiFi? I moved it to the living room for two weeks to test, but the USB network card didn't recognize it. The wireless bridge worked but had a fatal flaw

my N100 Feiniu has been skirting the weak current box for two years. Every time I want to plug in a USB drive or check the hard drive light, I have to squat in front of the box and work with my neck twisted. In summer, when the box temperature gets high, I get uneasy. I mentioned this in my about organizing weak current boxes in . Last month, on a whim, I decided to move it to the living room TV cabinet—spacious and cooling, plus it lets Jellyfin walk close to the TV, saving me from the 4K original drive running around (I wrote about the direct TV setup: without installing Jellyfin's three direct connection lines, ).

moving in, they realized they were stuck on one fundamental issue: during the renovation, only two network ports were left on the TV cabinet—one for the TV, one for the IPTV box, no third port for the NAS. You can't just openly cross the corridor, right? So I started thinking about "connecting NAS to WiFi." This matter lasted two weeks, and in the end, the machine was moved back to its original place. But I have actually run both paths and figured out both the accounts and the pitfalls.

clarify first: NAS "connecting to WiFi" is two different paths, not the same thing

many people search for "NAS connected to WiFi," it actually involves two completely different things.

method is direct USB wireless card connection: plug a WiFi card into the NAS's USB port, allowing the NAS to connect to home WiFi, just like a laptop.

Route 2 is the wireless bridge : place a router (the Mesh sub-router I use) next to the NAS, it connects to the main router via WiFi backhaul, then pulls a short Ethernet cable from its LAN port to the NAS. The NAS is wired throughout the entire process, and the "wireless" part is handled by the router.

the cost difference between the two routes is very different, and the pitfalls are completely different. There's also the third point: Electric Cat, which I discussed in my about remedial rentals in . Don't touch old wiring at home, so I won't go into detail this time. I tried Route One first, then switched to Route Two after being advised to quit.

USB network card: The Windows driverless setup doesn't work on NAS

I happened to have an AX1800 USB network card (RTL8832BU chip) I bought for my desktop computer, plug-and-play on Windows, I even wrote an article about choosing a network card at the time. Plugged directly into Feiniu's USB port—no response.

Feiniu App Center has a "Wireless Network Card" app. Install, open, and refresh the WiFi list, but it's empty. SSH goes in and knocks dmesg | tail -30 Check the kernel logs, and there is no record of card recognition at all. After researching, I finally understood: Linux's support for these USB WiFi chips is "fateful." The new kernel's rtw88 family includes 8822BU drivers, but the 8832BU's USB ID isn't necessarily on the support list. If not, you have to go to GitHub to get community drivers and source code compilation—and that's on the bright side. Synology is even more straightforward, official knowledge center clearly states DSM After version 6.1, the driver for WiFi and Bluetooth USB devices will no longer be updated, which is essentially the official policy of discouragement.

here's a self-check method to save you the trouble: enter SSH and first tap the lsusb to see if the device list shows Wireless LAN. Yes, it means the system recognized this card, which is a configuration issue; If you don't even make it onto the list, it's just that the driver hasn't kept up. Don't waste time—just change the SIM or the new route. My 8832BU was not even on the list; I struggled for half an hour before giving up.

was not satisfied, so I dug out a stash of my old MT7601 network card (2.4G single-frequency 150M type, bought for my old desktop over ten years ago). This part is driverless—plug it in and you'll recognize it—but 2.4G, folks, in actual tests, it's only about 25MB/s, and it takes thirteen minutes to copy a 20GB image. Plus, my home has more than a dozen smart devices on my 2.4G screen, and if it can stay at 20 during the evening peak, that's already a great deal.

Road One's conclusion: Whether works depends on whether your network card chip is on the system's supported list. It's purely a lottery . If you win, the speed will be halved again and again. Makeshift emergency measures, don't even think about being the main force.

Two-Channel Wireless Bridge: Mesh sub-router outgoing the network cable, speed measured by the actual speed ledger

Here's how I built

Router 2: I moved the Redmi AX3000 sub-router from my home Mesh network (bought back in the day, see the in the Mesh networking article) from the bedroom to the TV cabinet. It connects wirelessly to the main router in the study, and the LAN port connects a half-meter network cable to the NAS. From the NAS perspective, you're basically a wired device—no need to add anything.

the return trip: there is a load-bearing wall separating the living room to the study, and the sub-router shows the return signal at -58dBm, which is within the healthy range. Then came the actual test record, placing the numbers from the cable era side by side:

What does

45 to 60 MB/s mean? When the TV is placed on a 4K original drive on the NAS, the average bitrate of 90MB per second drops to 11 MB/s, and the peak 150 MB is only 19 MB/s— more than enough . And here's a bargain: both the TV and NAS are plugged into the LAN port of the sub-router, and the data between them is forwarded directly by the sub-router's switching chip, so doesn't take up any wireless backhaul . I tried several high bitrate segments, and none of them lag.

want this path to run steadily, two things must be done well. First, the sub-router positioning: the backhaul signal can be seen in the sub-router backend, so try to keep it within -60dBm. If it drops below -70dBm, the return speed collapses, and the 45 to 60 rpm shown in the speed table cannot be maintained. Second, the main router's 5G channel don't use automatic ; manually pin one into one—this one was traded for by an accident, which I'll explain below.

when will the return trip get tense? When NAS deals with the "outside world." qBittorrent download goes back (my download machine setup is in this post: NAS as a downloader ), and the study computer copying NAS files also goes back (same way). The two incidents collided and fought over each other, causing the copy speed to drop from 55 to just over 30. Running alone is fine, but when two are on together, it's crowded—this is the fate of sharing air, the same logic as when I was struggling with whether to go to 10 Mbps ( calculated in that 10-megabit ).

true fatal weakness isn't slowness, but instant interruption

speed drive, I actually accept it; 60 MB/s is quite decent for family use. What made me decide to move back was that night three weeks ago.

WiFi no matter how stable this thing is, there are moments when it goes off: automatic channel optimization, roaming fine-tuning, and the rare momentary interference can all cause a brief downtime of one or two seconds. Watching videos on your phone feels nothing, and the video lag automatically reconnects instantly. But on NAS, it's all about long connections, :

night, the main router's automatic channel optimization jumped the 5G channel from 149 to 36 (I wrote about the channel before: how to choose a Xiaomi router channel, ), and the return trip was interrupted instantly. Then three incidents occurred one after another: the study was copying 80GB of footage, Windows immediately popped up a red box saying "Network name no longer available," so half of it was copied and redone; QB's seed farming tasks were all disconnected and reconnected; The most painful part was rsync off-site backup failed at 3:40 a.m. — silence failure. If my phone hadn't alarmed me and woken me up, I wouldn't have noticed it three days later (backup link in this post: two NAS off-site backup , the alarm was triggered when phone triggered the alarm).

the cable era, none of this exists. Network cables are just dirt—if they don't disconnect, they just don't disconnect, and there's no 'metaphysics.' In two weeks, I've experienced this kind of instantaneous disconnection twice. The frequency isn't high, but every time it happens, it's a real loss. For a machine that stores family photos and does serious work, I can't stand that.

three groups of people were assigned accordingly, so I moved the machine back

don't just dismiss it outright. For some people, the wireless bridge route is the right solution:

my finishing touches: move the machine back to its original place in the study, plug the network cable back into the switch, move the sub-router back to the bedroom, everything is back to normal. If you really want a NAS to take care of the TV cabinet, the proper way is to run a exposed cable from the weak current box through the wall corner cable duct. It's a matter of just over ten yuan, more impressive than any wireless solution. By the way, the rules for the exposed cable setup and the crystal head strategy are both in the of the about network cable crystal heads, so I won't repeat them.

these two weeks weren't wasted; at least I figured out one thing: NAS is the device that needs the most network cable at home, bar none. WiFi is meant for things you carry and go around; the NAS has been sitting for seven or eight years, all for stability.