Anybody out here currently using OpenWrt on Netgear X6 R8000? If so, can you please share your experience on whether you find OpenWrt on it to be stable especially WiFi - both on 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz? Also, does it support roaming through 802.11r as well as 802.11k/v for you? Finally does it support 80Mhz bandwidth in 5Ghz non-DFS as well as DFS channels?
The reason I ask is that many posts on these forums talk about WiFi instability of OpenWrt on Netgear R8000. However, most of these posts appear to be quite old. So it is not clear, what the current state of affairs is.
BTW, this router is quite unique in that it is Broadcom based, but still has full OpenWrt support including WiFi! In that respect, it is quite interesting, especially if we can get feedback from actual users having this router in day-to-day use, including WiFi.
Although I don't have personal experiences with this device in particular or brmcfmac in general, there are better (faster) and more cooperative (more common == better support) SOCs and devices these days, e.g. r7800, nbg6817, turris omnia or e8450/ rt3200.
I ran an R8000 for a while on the 18.06.x and 19.07.x releases. All radios worked most of the time. During Covid, with my wife and I working from home and my son doing school from home we would have weird hangs maybe once every other week. These would require a router reboot. This was inconvenient when my wife was on a zoom call or my son was using zoom for a class. It's too bad because the router is pretty good and the wireless range was great. I've since replaced it with an x86/64 solution with separate AP but the R8000 is sitting on the shelf as a backup should my current hardware ever have issues.
@AtariDHD, could you share your wi-fi config? I've decided to try out OpenWRT on an R8000 after a long break, but I'm getting trouble making the wi-fi work reliably again.
The device page tells me to choose channel 149 for radio0 and 48 for radio2, but even after doing so and rebooting, radio0 claims to be using Channel 36, and I only see one 5Ghz Wi-Fi network with my name in the WiFi Analyzer app on my phone.
For the reference, I used channels 48 and 100 while on stock firmware.
For what it's worth, I've noticed changes to the wireless settings can take a few moments to appear in the OpenWRT Luci web admin page. Make sure to give it a few seconds. Although you should certainly see any changes after rebooting the router entirely like you have.
There have been times when my configuration changes didn't seem to take or the radios didn't seem to come up normally after making changes. Make sure to Save & Apply the pending changes on the Wireless config page after editing anything for a radio(s) or access point(s). After Saving & Applying, I got in the habit of restarting the radios individually.
As for seeing multiple 5GHz networks; if the access point for each 5GHz radio is using the same name, you should only see one network. The router has the ability to seamlessly hand off stations between the radios. As for seeing an entry for each radio/channel on the analyzer app, I'm not sure ... maybe it will only show one when they share a name. The analyzer app might be using the same higher level wireless API from the OS that is exposed to the phone's wifi settings (combining APs with the same name, but separate channels into one entry and maybe reporting the first channel). For kicks, give each access point for 5GHz a different name and see if they show up separately.
I'm out of town currently. When I get back, I'll share my wireless configuration. I think I went with the channels recommended on the OpenWRT R8000 wiki page. I kept everything else set to defaults except the wireless security settings.
Like I said, even after a reboot the channels reported didn't match the channels configured.
Also, the app shows both my 5Ghz networks when I'm on stock firmware (to which I again reverted, at least for now).
Perhaps you have the same problem, but just didn't notice?
I'm looking forward to what you can share. Thanks!
Thanks for the screenshots! It's actually the exact same app I was using for diagnostics.
Ah, so you're using channel 36 instead of 48 for radio2 (the device page instructs to use 48). Maybe that's why it works for you, and didn't work for me. Sadly, I've sold off my unit already, so I won't be able to test if this config would work for me, unless I purchase another one.
You're welcome. Maybe the information will help someone out one day.
"It's actually the exact same app I was using for diagnostics."
Ha. Yeh, it did the trick.
"I've sold off my unit already"
A very reasonable thing to do. This router is getting a little old in the tooth. Which router did you end up going with?
I'm actually undecided yet. The one I'm currently using is an even older and cheaper TP-Link Archer C7 v2 (I bought it in bricked state for 7 Euro or so), but I'm not sure if I'm satisfied with how it performs with OpenWRT.
Another candidate is GL.iNet AX1800, which I've borrowed from a friend and am considering to buy from him. It comes with a modified version of OpenWRT out of the box, but it's not officially supported by upstream OpenWRT yet, so I'm not sure if I want to risk ending up with another unsupported device in the end.
Wow! Small world. I'm using the GL-AXT1800 currently as I travel. I love it. I've traveled a lot with it and it's been great. I love their simplified UI overlay, but still keeping access to Luci. They open source their software and, from my experience so far, have kept up with merging updates from OpenWRT.
When the time comes to replace the Netgear for home, I may try their home router, the latest Flint 2, or maybe use one of their routers with a cell radio like GL-XE3000. I'm sure the Flint routers support tethering a phone. I like the idea of plugging in a cell when home internet goes down and not having to reconfigure the network.
