Sharing PCIe Wi-Fi Adapter with WSL2

[TYehan]

Feature Request: Sharing PCIe Wi-Fi Adapter with WSL2

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Yes. Currently, WSL2 relies on Hyper-V virtual switches, which only support USB network adapters. This prevents users from directly sharing a PCIe Wi-Fi adapter with WSL2, limiting flexibility and potentially hindering performance compared to USB alternatives.

Describe the solution you'd like

We propose enabling the ability to share a PCIe Wi-Fi adapter directly with the WSL2 virtual machine. This would grant users access to the adapter's features within WSL2 and potentially improve network performance.

Describe alternatives you've considered

The current workaround involves configuring the Hyper-V virtual switch to utilize an external USB Wi-Fi adapter. However, this method requires manual configuration and might need to be repeated frequently.

Additional context

• Sharing PCIe Wi-Fi adapters would benefit users by:
  • Offering access to features potentially unavailable on USB adapters (e.g., Wi-Fi 6).
  • Providing potentially improved performance compared to USB adapters.
  • Simplifying the setup process compared to using external USB adapters.
• We encourage exploring two possible solutions:
  • Kernel-level passthrough of PCIe Wi-Fi adapters to the WSL2 virtual machine.
  • User-space tunneling solutions to bridge the network connection between Windows and WSL2.
• This feature request aims to bring attention to this limitation and explore potential solutions for future development.

[github-actions]

Logs are required for review from WSL team

If this a feature request, please reply with '/feature'. If this is a question, reply with '/question'.
Otherwise please attach logs by following the instructions below, your issue will not be reviewed unless they are added. These logs will help us understand what is going on in your machine.

How to collect WSL logs

Download and execute collect-wsl-logs.ps1 in an administrative powershell prompt:

Invoke-WebRequest -UseBasicParsing "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/WSL/master/diagnostics/collect-wsl-logs.ps1" -OutFile collect-wsl-logs.ps1
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force
.\collect-wsl-logs.ps1

The scipt will output the path of the log file once done.

Once completed please upload the output files to this Github issue.

Click here for more info on logging
If you choose to email these logs instead of attaching to the bug, please send them to wsl-gh-logs@microsoft.com with the number of the github issue in the subject, and in the message a link to your comment in the github issue and reply with '/emailed-logs'.

View similar issues

Please view the issues below to see if they solve your problem, and if the issue describes your problem please consider closing this one and thumbs upping the other issue to help us prioritize it!

Open similar issues:

• Support Bridged Ethernet and as a Kernel loadable module (#6902), similarity score: 0.74
• PCI Passthrough/Discrete Device Assignment for WSL2. (#5492), similarity score: 0.72
• Choose which physical Nic to be used with the WSL. (#4799), similarity score: 0.71
• Feature req: Separate network subsystem per-distribution (#10154), similarity score: 0.71

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[TYehan]

/feature

[github-actions]

Diagnostic information

Found '/feature', adding tag 'feature'

[bootonly]

/feature