Which Router is best for OpenWrt in 2021?
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- čas přidán 3. 06. 2024
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(please use my affiliate links if you want to buy on Amazon.com)
DIR-2660 (EUROPE) : www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=U...
DIR-2640 (US) www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=U...
WRT 3200ACM : www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=U...
Archer C7 : www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=U...
Which Router has the best hardware for OpenWrt? Is there a "best Router" for all purposes ? I will test Wi-Fi performance with OpenWrt and Ethernet performance using flow offloading with OpenWrt with three different hardware models in order to figure out which router is best for OpenWrt:
00:00 Intro
00:50 Test criteria
02:03 Obtaining OpenWrt
03:40 Flashing OpenWrt
04:30 Check Site Statistics
05:00 Ethernet Performance
05:30 D-Link DIR-2660
07:00 Hardware NAT offloading
07:40 Software NAT offloading
08:15 Routing without NAT
08:45 Linksys WRT-3200 ACM
09:45 Offloading explained
10:25 Archer C7
11:15 Ethernet Performance Summary
13:00 Wi-fi Performance Tests
13:50 D-Link
15:00 Linksys
15:20 Best practices: Wifi on the Wrt-3200
17:50 Archer C7
18:50 Wi-Fi Test Summary and recommendations
21:30 Closing and Outlook
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Thank you for another great video! I very much enjoyed it, especially learning about hardware acceleration & htop monitoring!
Many thanks for your feedback;-)
Main problems with these routers - versions. Vendors often start with some nice chipsets, lots of RAM and storage. And over time, without external change, the internals change, the same model suddenly runs completely different HW with much more limited RAM, storage, etc. It happened to me multiple times that I purchased some device listed on OpenWRT as supported, just to find out that supported was Version 4 and I got Version 5 (not listed at the vendor site, of course) and my device is either not yet supported, or even worse, never will be.
So, be careful when checking the device, always also check version.
You are spot on. That's really a big challenge. And unfortunately it drives a lot of people away from OpenWrt because they think OpenWrt is to blame. That's also the main reason why I am so reluctant to do the same video for 2022 - Any time that I "recommend" a router, I have no control what the vendor will do next and potentially steer thousands of people to an unusable device ;-(
@@OneMarcFifty Your own isp
Very well done, Marc. Clear, sequential, easy-to-understand.
SO useful and such a easy to follow/navigate around format! Thank you, subscribed!
Many thanks Ivan, glad you liked it !!!
Excellent video, very interesting stuff! Thanks for taking the time to post it.
Many thanks Gurdeep. And thanks for watching.
Thanks !!!
You saved my day with the flow offloading setting !!
Awesome! I am happy that it was useful!
Great job with this video. Very thorough. Thank you!!
Many thanks!
Thanks, great video as always! I use a Mirouter 4A Giga that also uses the MediaTek mt7621 and except the 2.4GHz driver it's fantastic. The stability isn't perfect yet, which is why I have a cron job that restarts the router every week. I had some weird stuff happening after 40 days uptime so I thought it might as well reboot every so often to never run into stuff like that, but for just 35€ new it's a steel.
Also I think that MU-MIMO is unfortunately not supported in hostapd atm if I'm remembering correctly.
Many thanks for the feedback. I just checked on MU-MIMO and it should be implemented in theory, at least for ath10k and mt7615. I'll double check and test. Maybe hostapd needs some trigger to actually use it...
i have been using the wrt3200acm ever since it came out & i absolutely love it
thank you for the really clear explanations. I have paid for courses and not learned anywhere near as much as i learn from you
Many thanks for the friendly feedback !
Great comparison! Cannot wait for the next video.
Thank you very much!
Excellent video, I was just looking for some sort of performance test (old routers refurbished with Openwrt :P ) and didn't know about the iPerf tool. Thanks
Many thanks for the feedback! I have been thinking of maybe doing a Toolbox video on iperf3 and another one on htop. Very much like Webmin and Ventoy those are just little helpers I don’t want to miss ;-)
'Preciate the video. One of the things I got out of it was the software page showing the sysupgrade download. Just used it to update my c7
Awesome, many thanks for sharing!
Thanks a lot sir. Cleared my all doubts. Going for C7 as it suits best for me.
Hi Nitin, glad it helped, many thanks!
Excellent work! Thank you Marc…
Many thanks Tony!
you explain things really well, good video
Thank you very much ;-)
Thanks for the great video series on openwrt. I love it. Going for a 1GB internet connection now, I verified your test results for my 4 tp-link archer. Great. I had to learn that it makes no sense to install iperf3 on a router. But a warning to all, the DIR-3060 I bought after this video IS NOT SUPPORTED by openwrt. Board design seems to differ a lot, and a trial to port got stuck somehow. Just a warning for all others watching. Next trail, will be an arm-based router board. Marc for your device, have you found a usable port?
Hi Andreas, I am using the DIR-2660 firmware on my DIR-3060 and it works great - just I can't use the 3rd radio, but 2 radios are fine for my use case.
Inglés
I have seen this video 4 times and learned some things, I did not even know what iperf3 was, but now I can use this great tool, thank you sir for your knowledge.
Many thanks - I am happy you liked it!!!
It is now 2024 and I have found a pretty decent router for OpenWRT, which is quite cheap and works stable, fast and power efficent.
The TP-Link Archer AX23. Damned easy to convert to OpenWRT. The only little restriction is the small amount of storage (16/128)
Can't wait to see you DIY router build.
It’s coming ;-)
Nice in-depth review, did not know hardware accelerators existed or made such a difference.
It depends so much on the hardware being used - the native / stock firmware very often makes use of those but with the free drivers we are very often limited....
@@OneMarcFifty Thanks. By the way, if you enable super thanks on your channel, I will send you a super thanks.
Perfect video! Thank you🙏🏻
Thank you ;-)
@@OneMarcFifty Do you know how to port forward (port 443) but only allow connection coming from a list of Cloudflare IP addresses, is this possible on OpenWRT?
Thanks for wonderful video I really enjoyed 😘😘😘😘😘😘😘
Thank you very much - I am happy that you liked it ;-)
This is what I need to start with OpenWrt :) Thank you.
Current using TP-link Archer C2 but it show its age now :)
Many thanks - glad it was useful ;-)
I love the videos. Could you do an updated video for 2022? Thanks Marc
Hey, thanks for the feedback - I might do one for 2023 ;-)
Jesus, I appreciate your hard work to put this comparation together.
Many thanks 😉
Thank you, as my Archer C7 went up in smoke, i got some interesting hints from here. Next will be a Linksys EA7300 with mediatek base.
Hi, many thanks for sharing. Let me know how things go.
thx u comrad u allowed me to understand why I had issue with my linksys wireless a true bro !!!
Many thanks for the feedback! I am glad it helped. I remember when I discovered the problem I was so disappointed and was about to throw the device out - glad I kept it ;-)
Marc, well done sir. 1 brief correction for you. The number of antennas you have one your router or AP governs the maximum speed you can go. So in the case where you have a router with 4 antenna, 2 might be used for 2.4G and 2 for 5G, so 2.4G can only go 300Mbps for 802.11N speeds and AC/AX will max out at just under 450Mbps. The next limiting issues are your devices connecting to the router/AP. If the router/AP has 4 antennas and you phone only has 2, you only get 2 streams of MIMO, hence the 300Mbps on your phone. Last but even more importantly, the farthest device (weakest signal) governs the max speed of the whole network. Since Wi-Fi has built in rate fallback functions to keep client devices connect, all devices connected to the router/AP suffer the same fall back. I recommend you turn off the lower speeds in N, turn off 802.11B completely and add a second wired AP (turn off dhcp service and set it’s address statically). I hope this helps and doesn’t confuse to many out there. Yes, wireless is my professional role.
Awesome feedback Dan, many thanks!
It's not quite like that. Some routers are 4x4 on 5GHz and 4x4 on 2.4GHz and have 4 physical antennas instead of 8.
Great video, I will try openwrt on my 3200acm!
Let me know how it goes! I've had a hard time in the beginning, but once I sticked to the best practices everything ran smoothly ( I have it running OpenWrt 19.07 for roughly 2 months now)
I bought a second hand WRT1900ACS V2 for €25. It handles gigabit speed with SQM Cake enabled, without software or hardware offloading enabled. Also a good recommendation. The wifi does not support DFS though, but I don't use it myself.
Thanks for sharing! 25 is a bargain ;-)
Very interesting video even for those like me who have been using Openwrt since Asus WL500gP. BTW I still have a C7 as a spare an a 100Mbps connection at home
Many thanks for the feedback! I still have my C7's in a box - I will probably use them to build an 802.11s mesh for one of the next Wi-Fi videos and then pull out the ath10K cards in order to build my own router on X86 ;-) czcams.com/channels/G5Ph9Mm6UEQLJJ-kGIC2AQ.html
You explained the subject pretty well !
Can you make videos on following topics :
1) Does getting dedicated Access point hardware necessary?
2) PFsense vs OpenWRT
Hi, ive been researching a bit and heres what ive found:
1) getting a dedicated hardware access point is not necessary for most people and just adds unnecessary complexity. Also most of the time they are more expensive than an old router thats put into AP mode
2) pfsense is most of the time ROUTER only and has no wifi capabilities, so an AP is required if you are going to flash something with pfsense. However, pfsense is being phased out with opnsense as there is some controversy with pfsense.
meanwhile, openwrt keeps the wifi capabilities of the router.
Hi, many thanks for your comments and feedback. Yes, 90% of the Wi-fi users presumably will never need a dedicated / separate Access point. Unless you have a) a larger area to cover or b) you are interested in DIY and want to learn how to build the stuff yourself or c) you realize that your device saturates on CPU etc. in which case separating router (OpenWrt, RouterOS, PFSense, OPNSense) and Access point (OpenWrt) makes total sense ;-)
Congratulations. Do a review of openwrt and mikrotik and also ubiquiti. Mainly about your installation 911,922, groove metal and others. Also mention using with nanosation ac m5, thank you very much.
Hi, Marc, I would love to see a video on the NaoPi R4S and R2S!
I might look into those once prices go down a bit more ;-(
Brilliant video!
Thank you very much.
For a budget router I can recommend the Xiaomi 4A Gigabit Edition. I've got mine for 15,99 € at Amazon Warehouse Deals. It only has two regular LAN ports, but the WAN port can be configured to be LAN. Flashing OpenWrt is pretty easy with OpenWRTInvasion.
Here is the thing: I was looking for a router/ap to buy in place of the Archer C7 which is pricey where I live, saw your suggestion, got a Xiaomi 4A Giga for half the price of the C7, flashed OpenWRT and... everything is great! Thank you! May the networking gods smile upon your packets.
Hi, many thanks for the feedback ! Xiaomi comes up quite often as a suggestion - I believe I'll have to have a look at them ;-)
Can I buy 2 or 3 of this to daisy chain? I am sorry I am a newbie on this.
@@adrian4jc You can create a mesh with OpenWrt
@@TheMave95 many thanks. I have a virgin media router and runs at 200mbps speed. If I successfully flushed it with openwrt, should I just plug this with my existing router and daisy chain this with 2 or 3 XIAOMI routers?
Great video! keep it up!
Many thanks ;-)
I asked the same question below on one of your old O.wrt videos would like to repeat here. I am sure if a competent it person such as yourself chooses O.Wrt over pfsense there is for sure a valid and solid reason. Kindly share it with us. Thanks again
Copy of the origina answer: "Well, you know - like so often in IT you use what you know - I know Linux and I know OpenWrt - just happened so 😉 I have just never felt the need for anything else. I am tempted to believe that it must be the same for someone who uses pfsense. I do have it on my list though 😉"
@@OneMarcFifty thank you for taking time and putting info here too. Any one who might wonder could find the answer here as well. Regards.
@@OneMarcFifty btw I use neither openwrt nor pfsense. I installed pfsense on docker but much scared to dive into.
A very interesting comparison. I learned many things from this video. Thank you!
Awesome, glad you could use it ;-)
Amazing video.
Thanks
Thank you very much ;-)
Awesome comparison thanks
Thank you very much;-)
@@OneMarcFifty May I ask why you are not publishing your Patreon or preferably crypto currency receive address? I and surely many others would like to contribute to your lab.
Yes you may - of course. Going larger from a commercial point of view is effectively on my list, but I want to do it right, i.e. with proper planning. That would include affiliate links, where people can purchase the hardware at no additional cost but I would earn a small commission, also patreon and mailing lists are on the plan. Just need to figure out a couple of things such as taxes and data protection plus of course there should be added value to viewers who contribute. I would say it should all come live before the end of the year, but without any impact on the quality of content and visuals. I just had to figure out a couple of mainly technical things first. While the channel is running as it is that still gives me time to experiment with a lot of other things (SEO and the like)
Excellent video indeed. Thx
Thank you very much ;-)
great work. thank you
Thank you very much!
Can you do a follow up for 2022/2023? Appreciate all your videos!
Hi Luke, this request has come up a couple of times. I am a bit uncertain about a follow up. The hardware shortage and limited availability of Wifi6 options makes this a real challenge.
Btw, good idea for testing speed instead of iperf3 (a bit more visual) is to run open speed test on some docker-capable machine in your network.
Great comment Robert, many thanks - I did not know that I could self-host open speed test (until I dug a bit deeper following your comment ;-) )
Danke. Schönes Video.
Danke - gerne ;-)
Very thanks !!!
Hi David, you're welcome;-)
Really excellent video! I am looking for a router for my soon to be built new house and replace my old but reliable D-Link DIR-655 which I just discovered is not compatible with DD-WRT and maybe the other open source router OSes as well. Rooting routers is a new process for me so I've much research to do and, at the moment, only a cell phone to do it with. I don't know if the 655 can take Open-WRT or not, do you? If it can I plan to use it as a test platform to teach myself how to root routers and get the most out of whatever becomes my next one. Thank you for this very informative video!
I couldn‘t find the DIR-655 in the OpenWrt table of hardware. So I am afraid that it‘s not supported
Great and detail review
Many thanks !
Thank's for Great video. What do you think about Netgear x4s r7800?
Looks great ;-)
Marc gr8 video. I am still watching videos. It means there is value. The a3 paper works....do you place the ad paper into a storyboard(powerpoint) before shooting ?
Hi Erdem, no - I just start writing ;-)
Hi Marc, your channel is fantastic thanks. Any chance of a DSA on OpenWRT for dummies video? :-)
Definitely. Many thanks for the hint. I just recently thought “man, all your VLan videos won’t work any more” when they changed the interface. I’ll make a note of that
@@OneMarcFifty Waiting DSA video on OpenWRT for dummies :) cheers
thanks for the great video sir! May I please know how were you able to power your routers with PoE? was it by injector? thanks again!
Hi Archie, I used to power them with 48V injectors in the past. I have now switched to a PoE Switch and I am using Trendnet TPE-104GS and TP-Link TL-PoE10R as splitters.
this is a very good video. professional
Thank you very much !
Great Video
Many thanks!
Hi Marc, thank you for your work and for this video! Which vdsl modem would you recommend to go with the linksys wrt3200 (I'm in Germany, if that makes a difference)?
Thanks a lot!
I personally use the dsl modem which my provider (Telekom...) gave me - I consider my network to start after the ISP's modem/router.
Thank you.
Hi Sven - you're welcome and thank you for watching ;-)
You’re the man
Thanks mate!
damn right
I think the title should read: "Which WiFi Router is best for OpenWrt in 2021?" since your suggestion appear to be concentrated around WiFi routers. I personally like the Luxul ABR-4500. Nevertheless, your video is very informative. Thank you!
Good point, many thanks.
I wouldn't have one device doing all those things because if it breaks then the whole thing collapses. Lets say a raspberry pi4 could be your server and router, with a managed switch and an access point for the wifi, using vlans to separate your domains. You can use the managed switch to route your internet modem into the pi4 and all vlan interface on the pi4. Access point will use the vlans with unmanaged interfaces for each network, bridged with the wireless interfaces. All dhcp will be on the pi4 and you can run pihole for your whole network. Plug a couple of large usb3 drives into the pi for backups and media serving. (One armed router).
Hi, many thanks for your feedback - yes, you can scale up/down as much as you want - in a nutshell that's the great thing with Open Source and standards - you can design nearly every infrastructure you like at nearly no additional cost ;-)
Please make a video about Netgear R7800!
Hi, it seams that a lot of people are using the Nighthawk R7800 with OpenWrt - and - seriously - it's a great device - Ath10K wifi etc... The reason that I chose those devices to compare was to make people aware of possibilities on how to measure throughput and CPU usage and also show the hardware offloading possibilities for MEdiatek ;-)
Hello ! Thank you for the great video ! I compared the specs of Archer C7 and fritzbox 4020 (which I already have), and they are similar except for Wi-Fi. I use access points (unifi) for Wi-Fi, so the quality of Wi-Fi of the router itself is not very important. Would you say that they would perform the same in other respects ? I plan to order VDSL 100 or perhaps 50 from telekom. (perhaps 50 is more stable?)
I suppose there are other routers with similar spec. I wonder what makes Archer C7 stick out among them.
Hi - I can't really comment on the Fritzboxes as I have never owned one ;-( I think what makes the Archer C7 so popular is the compatibility with Linux plus the interesting price point.
@@OneMarcFifty Thank you for your reply ! However I don't really understand it;; If C7 gets OpenWRT, it will be managed by Luci or SSH, so I don't understand what you meant by "compatibility with linux".... And with "price point", did you mean a good cost-performance ? (preiswert) ?
A Very informative and well-composed video. Opens up a lot of valuable information about routers and their inner functionality. So if we take an average router on the market, say Asus, does it mean that they always use a generic CPU and do no background hardware offloading at all, unless this is mentioned somewhere in the GUI as an option? Is there then any benefit of using a router as a box solution vs a software router on a generic CPU and mainboard?
Hi Anton, if there is Offloading or not depends on the Software/Firmware used and the provided hardware capabilities, so hard to say. Open Source like OpenWrt does not really have a choice here quite often because the calls to the Firmware are not always (or even rarely) documented. Whether you run this on embedded hardware or X86 as such depends on the use case. Advantage of the embedded Wi-fi systems is that you get Wi-fi for (relatively) cheap. W/r to Softrouter - depends if you use it on tin (X86) which is just another architecture to use or if you virtualize it (in which case Wi-fi would be difficult to achieve)
I came here as I need to replace my Archer V600 with an OpenWRT or DDWRT router. Leaving the Archer to handle the VDSL only.
I see you are recommending a TP-Link. However the reason I am replacing the Archer is that it's wifi is unstable, it's fine for a few weeks, then randomly it drops a handful of device, usually those that can't migrate to other APs due to signal. Reboot the archer, it all works again.
I could not see that happening on the C7. If I remember well the V600 did only have 2.4GHz right ? Alternatively you might want to look for a cheap Mediatek alernative like the Xiaomi Mirouter 4A Gigabit
@@OneMarcFifty Thanks. I was mistaken it's a V900 I'm replacing. I think it suffers from memory corruption with high device count. I bought a WRT3200acm and a Draytech VDSL dedicated modem.
At the same time I updated my switches to managed and have been following your other videos for OpenWRT to set up a Guest VLAN properly for wired access (work laptop).
Your video on VirtualBox was helpful and allowed me to set it up in a lab and play around. That was after locking myself out of the router a few times playing with VLANs :)
I am surprised one of your criteria wasn't at least 3 radios for backhaul in a mesh. You may have good reasons for that as I am not as familiar with OpenWRT as many are. I was thinking 4 radios would be best in a mesh but I don't see that in the wifi routers I have looked at recently. If you were doing city scale wifi, then it seems more reasonable to me.
Hi Marc! Thank you for your time, I always enjoy your videos. 👌👌👌
I've been looking for a kinda powerful router with AX WiFi, at home we have 1Gbps speed and also using it to access remotely for some mini-lab/server personal usage.
So, I want the best speeds as I can get from my connection. At home we have 6/6E enabled devices so we want to take advantage of this too.
I also want to run WireGuard on the own router, but high bandwidth connection + WireGuard may be a resource hog for "home routers"...
If this was your case, would you rather make your own kinda powerful gateway/router like a NanoPi R4S (w/ 2x1Gbps ports) with OpenWRT and install dedicated APs or go for an "all in one" router capable of running WireGuard flawlessly and use WiFi 6 even if it costs more?
Thanks!
Actually I have just recently switched to a home made router with a PC Engines APU4D4 board (X86 hardware) - only problem is that I can't find mPCie hardware for Wi-fi 6 that does support Wi-fi6 in Access Point mode (the AX200's don't)...
@@OneMarcFifty Oh! I may go for 2 UniFi APs running over a PoE switch. But the "router" device I think I'll use some kind of NanoPi R4S or so on. Also APU4D4 looks interesting... Thanks!
@@OneMarcFifty Oh! I may go for 2 UniFi APs running over a PoE switch. But the "router" device I think I'll use some kind of NanoPi R4S or so on. Also APU4D4 looks interesting... Thanks!
Hi Marc. Great material. How do you think of comparison of Archer C7 (v2 or v5) vs Asus RT-N66U (running Merlin LTS or FreshTomato)? The uses I consider are either AP only (5ghz for phone/laptops/TV + 2.4ghz for IoTs), or AP + WAN-LAN routing, with same use. I also wonder if the fairly newer Xiaomi 4A (50% of their price in the used market) is in the similar league as the other two. Internet connection is 100MBits, but likely to upgrade to 300MBits or 600MBits soon.
Hi, currently I will be looking at Wifi 6 routers such as the Xiaomi AX3200, AX3600, Redmi AX6000 and the netgear WAX206. Follow up to come shortly. In the meanwhile see the status on my github repo here: github.com/onemarcfifty/mu-mimo-test#test-progress
Thanks for the wonderful information, Marc. I didn’t realize you have archer c7/ac1750. I have one as well. Do you have any vids covering vlan setup using this router?
Actually if you check the OpenWrt playlist - all VLAN videos are made on the Archer C7. But things have changed a lot in Version 21. VLAN functionality is not on the switch any more, but rather on the Interface.
@@OneMarcFifty thanks again, Marc!, I will search…
Great review!. Searching this type of info after fighting with my TP-Link TL-WDR3600 + extroot (succesfully solved!). Unfortunately linksys are around 200usd in my country :(
Maybe have a look at the Belkin Rt3200?
Marc, would you still recommend the D-link DIR-3060 in 2022? Could you please please do a video on this router? Many thanks.
Hey Radu, yes - I mean, it's a great device. The only thing that startles me a bit is that there is no MU-MIMO support in the mt76 OpenWrt drivers, even though the proprietary drivers have MU-MIMO support.
Thanks very much. You mentioned in the video that you will leave the commands to get WRT3200ACM WIFI working in the description. I think you forgot to include it. Would be kind enough to let me know what those commands where. I am currently having issues with WIFI on this router, everything else is working. I know you also mentioned to go back to older version. Just that I have done enough setup of other things that I just cannot undo them all at the moment. I have another WIFI router that is currently doing my WIFI.
Ooops - my bad - in a nutshell, on the command line you can do (XX being your country code):
uci set wireless.radio0.country='XX'
uci set wireless.radio1.country='XX'
uci set wireless.radio2.disabled='1'
uci commit
Alternatively set the country on each Wifi in the "advanced tab" and disable the radio2
Belkin RT3200 can be had for cheap and works great with openwrt..
Hi Paul - yes, I bought one last week ;-) Will make a video on Wifi 6 with OpenWrt soon ;-)
hello there! super interesting. If you know where can I look for, please let me know. Where can I find some "standard" version of the mediatek openwrt compatible, for a router that is not on the supported list of the openwrt site, but has the same hardware specs as one on the list?
Probably easiest if you download the full Table of Hardware (ToH) dump from Openwrt openwrt.org/_media/toh_dump_tab_separated.zip and filter on CPU/Wifi using Excel or Open/Libreoffice
I am interrested in listening to your choice of routers in November 2022....are there any new models, which you recommend ?
Hi, that's something I am thinking about for a long time. There are a lot of things to factor in. Wifi6, GBit Speed and the like. The Belkin RT3200 is a good choice but building your own with X86 is definitely a good option as well.
@@OneMarcFifty Thanks...I also considered the Belkin 3200, but its expensive and not easy to get at the moment...
I flashed a Xiaomi 4A gigabit edition with OpenWRT using your instruction video, but all of the Mediatek 7603E 2,4Ghz Wifi chips are not working stable. 5Ghz is fine, NAT-speed also fast enough for my 500Mbit/sec WAN.
Tested a Cudy WR1300 with the same Mediatek configuration , same unstable, and slow 2,4Ghz network, especially, when transfering Data from my NAS, it´s pure luck, when the data transfer runs until the end, without interrupting or bringing error messages...my problem ist definitvely the Mediatek in combination with Open WRT.
It´s also a concern regarding the power consuption. There, the Xiaomi, with under 3 Watts (5Ghz off), is one of the best I tested so far.
I would be happy having a low power consuming router with OpenWRT, goes over 500Mbit/sec NAT-speed and has a stable 2,4Ghz Wifi faster than 5MByte/sec..
All other things like Wifi6 are not essential for me using mostly cabled Ethernet....those things would be a bonus for me 🙂
I´m afraid building a X86 system and have a high power consumption, only because there are less and less routers on the market running OpenWRT AND beeing fast AND do not consume too much energy....having not any good alternatives I am running my old Archer C7 Ver5.0 with original or my Archer C7 Ver.2.0 with Open WRT at the moment to have my family peace.
Btw. thanks a lot for your videos. I have learned a lot out of them.
I run a DIR-882, great speeds and reliability with the RC2. I'll skip RC3 and wait for the full release.
Awesome thanks for sharing
I bought a Eero Mesh to solve my bufferbloat issues on the network. Seems to have done the job thanks to SQM.
Thanks John - and you are running OpenWrt with SQM on it ?
@@OneMarcFifty Nah, just using the default firmware that came with it. I can activate SQM through the beta labs.
Great... Will use my Archer C7 v5 in combination with my Unifi AP for fast roaming via OpenWRT then
Let me know how this goes - it's not sure that different products use the same technology here. If you can however enable 802.11r and type in a mobility domain on the Ubiquity then it might work.
@@OneMarcFifty what's a mobility domain? :) sorry - I'm a noob... I can certainly enable 802.11r on my ubiqity
@@maximusg88 It#s a setting on the Wifi parameters to indicate that different SSIDs belong to the same fast roaming domain - there is a video on this here : czcams.com/video/kMgs2XFClaM/video.html
@@OneMarcFifty awesome - thanks :) Will check that out!
An old PC (x86) and a couple cheap access points works great for me, especially with VPN service.
Yes - that's definitely a great way to go at the moment given the difficult situation on the hardware market. Older x86 hardware (broken Laptop, Thin client or the like) definitely beat everything else in terms of CPU.
@OneMarcFifty The real question is will you consult on the best device and will you supply / specify a supplier for it? My budget is three figures for two devices.
15:54 What extra antenna has to do with Wi-Fi mesh?
What us multi-channel?
In a Wi-fi Mesh you would need to have all Mesh nodes on the same channel. With a third radio you could have the mesh on one common channel on the first radio and run AP mode on different channels on the second radio, hence increase the bandwidth, i.e. use multiple channels.
I didn't realise the Slingshot Channel was into OpenWRT 🤗
I had to search for that on CZcams;-) I get it - really funny rofl ;-)
Hello. very good video I know. I bought a pi r2 banana with mt7621 CPU and 2GB memory. Ethernet connections are 1Gb. however wifi is not very good with openwrt. works reasonable with ubuntu. I'm trying to make a CCTV system with ip cameras. still getting beaten ... really enjoyed your video using openwrt and usb camera. Make one with ip camera please!
Will do - it’s on the list ;-)
Next topic please. SQM for wan, lan and wifi
Hi, Quality of Serivce is on my list - especially with everyone working from home these days I think it's a big issue.
Cudy AC2100. $40 on Amazon. Works great. Very fast router for the money.
Looks good - I might have a look at that one ;-)
Very poor range, limited by low quality cpu
Wish you would've kept this up. It's hard to find a more current router that is being sold to use opnwrt on.
I use the Linksys E8450, currently it only supports snapshot releases, but its working perfectly with sysupgrade and everything from what I can tell. The only issue I am having with it is 160MHz does not work.
Can the Linksys not do it or is it maybe your clients not being able to connect to 160 MHz? I’ve had issues with my iPhone connecting to 160 MHz in the past…
@@OneMarcFifty I can select 160, LUCI says its working, but no device in my home can see it. I live in a very rural area, so there are no other access points. It wont even show up on any SDR I have setup. Not even my desktop with an intel AX card sees. Stock firmware has it locked at a max of 80Mhz so I assume the card on the router is incapable of it or something. Very odd.
@@FeralFoxDX i’ve had the same with my iphone and the D-Link so I assumed my iphone can just not handle it. But I would need to test with another router as Wifi client in order to verify.
@@OneMarcFifty I see you have purchased the Belkin branded model in some of your newer videos. I forgot to mention until now that I was able to successfully enable 160MHz by changing the country code...I believe the driver prevents it from transmitting unless it's set for a country it is allowed to use that bandwidth in.
Hi there. I've ordered the TP-Link Archer C7 V5, but it arrive as V4. Should I return it or keep it? I don't really care about the 2 usb ports. I see in another OP video about the DIY mesh setup where the archer C7 V5 supports a feature that is needed for the mesh setup. Does the V4 supports it as well? Read online that there is no difference between the V4 and V5 other than the 2 usb ports on the V4. The difference is in the firmware itself was what I read.
Looking at the hardware specs - they seem to be identical so I think you can give it a go
Great video, can you benchmark Archer AC2600? It is a dual core 1400MHz, 512MB RAM
Hi Khayam, many thanks for the feedback ;-) Unfortunately I do not have a C260 at hand ;-(
how do you upgrade MediaTek MT7621AT to OpenWrt 21.0X, maybe you could do a video on upgrading - the dos & don'ts.
Hi, many thanks for the feedback - I'll need to do something on 21.x Upgrade - defo. The one thing people are struggling most seems to be the changed VLAN / DSA thing ;-)
@@OneMarcFifty I got it upgraded after some posts on the openwrt forum, lots to learn about openwrt, keep it up!
@OneMarcFifty Is your Dlink 2660 A1 or A2 version. I was planning to go for this router, but did not go for it as I saw people struggling to install openwrt on a2 version of this router, which presumably I would also get If I ordered online
It's an A1 - not sure what you get when you order - but thanks for pointing this out !
Will you do this for 2023?
Amazing
Thank you !
It would be awesome if openwrt would make firmware for a in-wall ap for a fast roaming network, there are lots of them on ali for cheap and the in-wall thing it sounds even better
Hi, many thanks for the suggestion - it might already be supported - which hardware would you be looking at specifically?
@@OneMarcFifty perhaps for Comfast CF-E550AC, it's on MT7628DA+MT7613B chipset, i've searchd about it but i found nothing, perhaps you can take a look,
thank you
Personaly I use Netgear R7800 - Nighthawk
Many thanks for the feedback John - very popular QCA9984 wifi device for OpenWrt ;-)
Hello Marc! Thanks for your work. I have TP-link wdr4300 with OpenWRT and old all in one Epson RX600, so print server works fine on OpenWRT, but I can't set up network scanner, tried to set up sane server and ect, but something goes wrong. Could you please explain or make video for everyone? Many thanks.
Wow - I haven't used SANE for at least 20 years ;-) Sorry my knowledge here is more than rusty ;-)
@@OneMarcFifty Thanks
Hi Marc, I am new to Openwrt and wifi routers. Been using my ISP provided hardware. I do alot of video streaming on wifi - TV/Entertainment/CZcams. I am looking for wifi stability and speed. I was focused on the Linksys wrt32x ac3200, which is how I discovered your channel/video on CZcams. Based on your review and some comments on Openwrt forum - wifi can be unstable due to driver issues. Oh, I will be using VPN on the router. I believe this particular model has VPN support with its stock firmware. Have you used this VPN option with stock firmware? Is wifi better/stable by not flashing to Openwrt?
Hi, first off I can’t really confirm that the Wifi (5 GHz) is unstable. I had issues with the 2.4 GHz but since I upgraded to 22rc6 they seem to have gone away. I can’t really comment on stock firmware. I never use stock.
Very nice
Thank you!
Any chance you will use x86 mini pc for router? The price for all in 1 router can get a great spec 2nd hand mini pc. Anyway a new subscriber here :)
Hi, that is absolutely on my roadmap. I have bought an APU4d mainboard from PCEngines which has an AMD processor and 4 Switch Ports - You are right that if you are looking for router functionality (i.e. no Wi-Fi) a small PC is actually the better solution - but an episode on this should follow in January / February latest