check the fan action... decent looking hw... wonder if fans will be more prevalent on these... the new norm?
NSS firmware version from the last Netgear Image:
NSS.HK.H.CS-40-R
H revision should be qsdk 8... Nice work netgear always use some extra old version for your products 
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just wondering, any chance a 802.11ax router will be officially supported by the time next official openwrt release? (20.xx)?
sounds like AX3600 is the cloest but still much to be done.
No. (or maybe a really slight chance)
The next release is supposed to branch rather soon, and no device is close enough, I think.
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That is very, very unlikely.
For a device to be supported, it needs to be fully functional (at least to a reasonable extent) in master, before the next release branch gets branched off master. At this point that isn't the case, while we're already nine month into 2020.
What is there, is very basic ipq807x target support, but without any actual devices being supported at this point. Looking at the staging branches that are working on these topics, a lot is needed beyond mere target support (hostapd, backports, ath11k, netifd, etc.). While anything is possible, it's very, very unlikely that everything will fit together within 6-, 8- or 12 weeks (I'm not very comfortable making predictions beyond this, as it matters a lot how much time can be thrown at an issue; keep in mind that invasive work like this also needs some time to mature in master, to get tested by real users on real hardware), by which time 2020 would be mostly gone.
mt7621a+mt7915e (well, devices are announced, but afaik not actually shipping, yet) has a slightly better chance at getting supported, given that the SOC is already wide-spread and supported, leaving 'just' the driver to add (this isn't quite true, as mt76 for mt7915e also depends on the hostapd changes for 802.11ax in general to be merged, so still rather invasive) - although that might not actually reach 802.11ax performance in the beginning. From a practical point of view you would want to use the faster, ARMv8 based-, mt7622a SOC instead of (2*880 MHz mips-) mt7621a, which is rather marginal for a 802.11ax router (it's no coincidence that the first announced devices appear to be APs, not routers).
--
This aside, if you follow the development mailing lists and IRC discussions, it's obvious that these invasive changes are not supposed to be merged before openwrt-2020.xy branches off, just because 2020-xy.0 is supposed to be released (well, at least branched off) in 2020 and not held hostage to the faint hope to squeeze ipq807x device support or mt762x+mt7915e into 2020.xy.z. These changes do entail a rather large regression potential and need their fair share of testing time before getting released --> in 2021.xy.0. It is rather safe to assume that ipq807x target support as a whole will be removed from the openwrt-2020.xy branch, once it exists, leaving it for master and the future openwrt-2021.xy only. There still is a lot left to do.
OpenWrt virtual meeting (August 2020) meeting notes:
"* ieee802.11ax will not be stable for the release, will be merged after
the release into master"
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It is a Broadcom based device (CPU/ETH/Radios) so chances are slim it could be supported by OpenWRT, but hopefully Netgear/Qualcomm would follow soon
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What is the safest best for a device to be well supported if you have to buy a wifi6 router now?
I bet on the MI AX3600 as it is cheap, has an open bootloader and is widely used, so a big base of users will cry for support.
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Just arrived at this topic, and am kinda lost. It seems there are tons of ax devices available (in the US) already.
searching for "AX1500" on newegg show ax results for d-link and tp-link (from $79~$250)
They also call themselves wifi6.
Are those things the same that is being discussed here? Or am I missing something?
OpenWrt developer working in it said he'd push ath11k support (so 802.11ax) only after 20.xx had been branched.
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Yes. The naming convention for wifi was simplified for the consumer some time ago, and 802.11ax = wifi 6.
While there are a lot of devices that support ax, they need to have a supportable chipset to even have a fighting chance at getting support. Most devices I've found are using Broadcom of some description which basically rules them out entirely.
Then someone needs to go to the effort of supporting the device.
Buying a device today and hoping for support will either be a long wait or an infinite one.
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Do you have any advice about a router with armv8, wifi 6 which is supported or it will be support by openWRT?
I believe none of the Wifi 6 devices is 100% supported by OpenWRT (i.e. support for 10Gbit network, NSS offloading, etc)
I can't say for all types of devices, but for Qualcomm-based devices, it looks like there are two future candidates with high chances to be supported in not far away future:
- https://openwrt.org/inbox/toh/xiaomi/xiaomi_ax3600
- https://openwrt.org/inbox/toh/netgear/netgear_rax120_nighthawk_ax12
The level of support and possible timelines depends on external projects progress (i.e. ath11k driver)
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Well ipq807x will be supported for sure
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So do you recommend to buy the xiaomi ax 3600? Then in the future to migrate to openWRT?
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To be honest, if i see how many features don’t even work on stock firmware, I’d wait another year for things to mature
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what is not working on stock firmware that should?
have a read here: https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-features/33222-does-ofdma-really-work-part-1?start=1
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