Archer C5 flashed to Archer C7

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

I've got an Archer C5 v1 running OpenWRT 19.07 beautifully. There's part of me that loves and cherishes it, and then there's a greedy devil that wants more.

I've been told that it's possible to put firmware on the C5 that "makes it a C7." But the C7 (at least v4/v5) has Gigabit ethernet ports. Is it really just a question of flashing the firmware to get this "upgrade"? The skeptic in me says that there is no free lunch.

Any advice or opinions on the matter would be welcome.

2

Then let the devil do the research ;- ) afaik all have gigabit ethernet

3

It sounds like the stock firmware was limited to 2 spatial streams? From the looks of it though, the C5 v1 will happily run the 3 streams that it's capable of in OpenWrt without any further configuration.

VHT RX MCS set:
                        1 streams: MCS 0-9
                        2 streams: MCS 0-9
                        3 streams: MCS 0-9
                        4 streams: not supported
                        5 streams: not supported
                        6 streams: not supported
                        7 streams: not supported
                        8 streams: not supported
                VHT RX highest supported: 0 Mbps
                VHT TX MCS set:
                        1 streams: MCS 0-9
                        2 streams: MCS 0-9
                        3 streams: MCS 0-9
                        4 streams: not supported
                        5 streams: not supported
                        6 streams: not supported
                        7 streams: not supported
                        8 streams: not supported

Or at least this one does.

4

Thanks for the replies. It seems that "upgrading" to a C7 wouldn't change much (the output I get from iw list mirrors what @namidairo posted, and the ports shown in swconfig dev switch0 show indicate gigabit link speeds.

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