802.11ax Routers

Careful, ipq8074 will be much harder to support than ipq8074a (QCA only seems to push wireless support in ath11k for the later).

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Running iperf3 on the RT-AX88U and iperf3 on my Android I get a download speed of:

[SUM] 0.00-30.01 sec 2.10 GBytes 602 Mbits/sec receiver

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I use Merlin's Firmware on my AX88U, but exactly the same, just miss the openwrt, saw that the AX89X used Qualcomm so thought I would give it a shot.

The Asus stock firmware for the AX89X is inferior to the AX88U, no wifi radar, less DNS choices. Not that surprised since it's almost like a side thought to their primarily broadcom offerings.

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Good call just saw

Looks like it could be IPQ8078 too based on

May need to open this bad boy, otherwise going back to Amazon...

Just ordered my Belkin RT3200 from Walmart US ($94 + $33 shipping fees to my country), will put OpenWrt on it as soon as I get it in my hands.

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First, if you use cake on the wireless routers you mention, they can't with connections higher than 350Mbps.

Asuswrt-Merlin:

  • NEW: Added Cake QoS for HND routers. Note that just like
    Traditional QoS, this is not compatible with hardware
    acceleration, and therefore might not be usable on
    connections faster than around 350 Mbps (may vary based
    on router models).

Second, only you can recommend to buy those wireless routers just because they have WiFi 6 over an enterprise-grade WiFi 6 access point solution, when for a similar or cheaper price you can buy something better and without trimmed hardware or problems and bugs that have the wireless routers that you recommend as a panacea.

You can read on the SmallNetBuilder Forums how people complain about router disconnects from the internet and WiFi, AiMesh not stable, etc.

For the price of an Asus RT-AX88U (between $261 and $300) you can buy any of these enterprise-grade WiFi 6 access point:

4x4 MU-MIMO and OFDMA:

2x2 MU-MIMO and OFDMA:

For the price of an Asus RT-AX58U or RT-AX3000 (between $160 and $170) you can buy any of these enterprise-grade WiFi 6 access point:

4x4 MU-MIMO and OFDMA:

2x2 MU-MIMO and OFDMA:

Only on Ubiquiti UniFi and TP Link Omada products do you have to download and install UniFi Network Application or Omada Software Controller to configure the access points or buy the dedicated hardware that both companies sell.

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Rather than be insulting, perhaps you should comprehend a simple post where I said there is no clear option for WiFi 6 in open source yet. Obviously a seperate AP is an option but if I wanted a seperate AP then I would just run a Raspberry Pi 4 and attach a USB gigabit adapter, gigabit switch and WiFi 6 AP then blow away all of these for the same cost.

I use a WRT32X every day and it works great, SQM cake up to ~700Mbits, USB 3.0 storage running Samba4 at 120 MB/s read/write which beats almost all other routers I've seen, but its weakness is mediocre (but perfectly usuable) wifi. I could just get an AP for that and be done if needed. Point is, there are pros/cons to each device and OpenWrt does not officially support WiFi 6 yet, it just works on a few devices on master snapshots to varying degrees of success.

Every device has some issue, but I have the RT-AX58U running Asuswrt-Merlin at a small office too and it works perfectly on with WiFi 6, no crashing or disconnects like you're babbling about. On that I enabled smart connect, airtime fairness, target wake time, OFDMA ul/dl, etc. and it has 15-20 devices on 500Mbit internet. The network is mostly WiFi based that's why I chose it, but I don't even see those WiFi features available in LuCI so I don't even look at OpenWrt for WiFi 6 yet because all the key features seem missing.

The problem with that is the weak SoC so SQM isn't avoided, just like the mediocre Belkin you're peddling here. At least the AX58U has USB 3.0 for samba, yours doesn't even have that. The point is there is no perfect WiFi 6 option on the horizon yet. Maybe the AX88U with it's stronger SoC and Asuswrt-Merlin will be fast enough for Cake, not sure, but that'll never support OpenWrt because of broadcom.

You can sit here and talk about buying a seperate AP, or buying a seperate NAS, or buying a whole seperate x86-64 PC and running pfSense, but bottom line is we are looking for all in one routers because they get the job done in most situations, and there is no perfect option with OpenWrt, just a series of trade offs.

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I've used USB 3.0 every single day for years, like I said I get 120 MB/s read-write from my WRT32X, (and only 50-60 MB/s read-write from the AX58U I tested). I use it for a 3TB file/movie server with Kodi. So there are definitely uses for it, since most high end routers have USB3 it's not a big issue. If they make a version of the RT3200 with it I'd consider one since it's the only that currently supports WiFi 6 in OpenWrt. Not the current model though, too low end of a device.

I wish OpenWrt would work with a vendor to make a wifi6 device that works well with every feature. Something based off the hardware in the RAX120 (QC) would seem ideal.

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Heard it's even better with fq_codel, true?

BTW, is soft and/or hard offload working?

Cheers.

Yep, I don't use the USB port of my routers but there are some people who needs an AIO router + AP + NAS device so it's a must for them the same way as SQM is a must for me.

When I want to play on my modded PS2 I just fire up a SMB server from my Linux laptop and attach an Ethernet cable to the console, much more convenient than messing up with the router.

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SparkLAN just announced a WiFi 6 AX M2 module with the claim that its Linux open source compatible.

My specs for an all-in-one router today would be the RT-AX88U except a fully open source'ed version. Sadly it doesn't exist. Sure I could cobble together components and build something like it. My profile is pretty much like @phinn . I use the USB port to run a Samsung T5 to backup data from my various computers and phone. I am not running a storage fabric and I do not serve files. Just tiny backups (contrasted against enterprise) of personal data in case a machine has an issue. I want the extra CPU/RAM so I can run more software than a networking stack. I have been waiting years for this dream machine. I have even looked at buying development kits and so on but even those are scarce or require business to business agreements to get your hands on one. Maybe I fall into a market niche and will never see this in my lifetime.

I use USB 3.0 (120 MB/s), SQM cake (500mbits), Samba4, Adblock, etc. and all of it works awesome on my WRT32X. The only thing lacking is mediocre wifi. It's decent but somewhat slow by better wifi 5 or new wifi 6 devices. Driver doesn't support new features like target wake time, airtime fairness, OFDMA, MU-MIMO, etc. Looking at this Ubiquiti US-6-Lite that @elan linked I'll actually consider it as a upgrade once some are actually in stock, it's $193 on Amazon, plus needs a $20 POE adapter, which is too much imo. It doesn't look like there will be a strong OpenWrt wifi 6 device in the near future so that's the way to go.

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Do you have the FCC ID / know which hardware is it based?

Bad reviews on Amazon but they doesn't mean a whole lot though. For $70 I'm sure it's under-powered.

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OpenWrt officially supports various WiFi 6 wireless routers and access points:

The truth, if you just want to improve your WiFi, the most recommended is to buy an enterprise-grade WiFi 6 access point from any company I mentioned above (Ubiquiti, TP-Link and Aruba Instant On) and save yourself the headaches.

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Dedicated enterprise grade APs are nice but I don't want to drill holes in my gypsum ceiling :sweat_smile:

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I'm curious what happened to the IPQ8074. Since current qualcomm routers are well regarded (namely the R7800), I would have thought their new WiFi 6 supported chipset would be big by now but still nothing.

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Ath11k is having serious memory leak issues as of now.

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Read up on Adding OpenWrt support for Xiaomi AX3600 for all the details, this device OpenWrt support for Xiaomi AX9000 probably meets your requirements… once it's supported.

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