Archer c7 vs Linksys EA6350v3 vs Mikrotik hap ac2

The comparison is for using it as the main router of the house, load balancing 2 ISPs (max. 300Mb/s), handling 4 laptops and 4 cellphones over wifi, and VLAN support because I have other APs for IOT.
Mikrotik and Linksys has the same CPU right? a better than c7
c7 wifi seems better than the other 2, but have only 1 core...

any advice is welcome...
thanks!

from this three , i'd take linksys but ipq40xx work weird and i would search for something based on ipq8064/ 8065 or not yet supported xiaomi ax3600. i have ezviz w3 but wifi not work good for me, work mostly stable. now i have also a broadcom based mesh with three units and this work far better than any ipq / mediatek devices i've had in last three years. i have also linksys ea7500 v1 and this one work solid and don't have problems with wifi , 500megs no problem ( my mesh ends with nearly 600 over phone with 2x2 streams).

Thanks, I can't find ea7500 in my country and ea8500 is way out of my budget...
also, there is an optimized build for ea6350v3 Optimized build for Linksys EA6350v3 (civic)
hope it works ok...

there is some asrock g10 router but had not have it yet for play with, also have ipq8064 cpu and sometime it can be bought cheap, there is openwrt for it

If you can get the ASRock G10 cheap, it should be a nice device, but it's not officially supported by OpenWrt, yet (yes, there is an open pull request to add support for it, but it hasn't been merged so far).

--
admittedly, this is splitting hairs to some extent - and I would certainly buy one myself, for the right price, but there are no downloadable images for it right now.

I've been using an EA6350v3 for awhile now. It currently has two major flaws, but I would still choose it from the options you listed. It has much better 5GHz wifi than the Archer C7 (which I previously used), the processor is superior (quad core) and it has plenty of flash and memory (128/256).

The first flaw is that 2.4GHz wifi performance with stable 19.07 or latest master is simply terrible until you replace the calibration file. This can be fixed by replacing the calibration file with the "pwr.bin" calibration file available from the optimized build and rebooting. I've done it enough times upgrading firmware that I save the commands to cut and paste them, so here you go!

# From network computer (x.x.x.x is router IP adddress, e.g., 10.10.20.1):
scp pwr.bin  root@x.x.x.x:/lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA4019/hw1.0

# log into the router and change out the file
ssh root@x.x.x.x
cd /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA4019/hw1.0
mv board-2.bin board-2.old
mv pwr.bin board-2.bin

Or you can use NoTengoBattery's optimized build.

The second flaw is endemic to all ipq40xx devices. A recent VLAN double tagging patch seems to fix nothing anyone actually uses, but breaks vlan tagging on the physical ports. There is now discussion and a patch proposed on the developer mail list to fix this, so, fingers-crossed, this problem should go away shortly in both master and the next 19.07 release.

Or you can use NoTengoBattery's optimized build.

Edit:
For clarity, VLAN support currently works over wifi. I have my EA6350v3 set up as an AP providing home LAN, Guest and IOT VLANs over wifi to the house. The flaw that affects the physical ports does not seem to affect managing VLANs over wifi, so this should not be a problem for your use. There is a trick though - do not use luci to edit the VLAN set up and do not touch or change the default LAN eth0 and WAN eth1 assignments. Put your vlan's on eth0.20, eth0.30, etc.

Another edit:
I use the calibration file from a back version: openwrt-1.11.oc.tar.gz

The pwr calibration file is located in the archive here: /files/etc/calibration/pwr/board-linksys_ea6350v3.bin

Which, I have renamed from board-linksys_ea6350v3.bin to pwr.bin some time ago to save typing when I copy it to my router.

2 Likes

I have terrible 2.4Ghz at range on 19.07.3 (I'm not using 19.07.4 due to the broken VLAN support - manually defining them as you suggest above on 0.x etc. works fine on 19.07.3).

I'm a bit confused as to where exactly to find "pwr.bin"? I downloaded the source tarball for notengobattery's latest custom build. Under /files/etc/calibration/EA6350v3/ there are a bunch of folders (AH, AU, EU, FCC, hw_1 and IC) each containing 2G and 5G folders with one or more *.bin files. There is one called "DK04_2G_neg_pwr.bin" in /hw_1/2G - is this the right one to use?

I grab the calibration file from a back version: openwrt-1.11.oc.tar.gz

The pwr calibration file I use is located in the archive here: /files/etc/calibration/pwr/board-linksys_ea6350v3.bin

My apologies for the confusion. I renamed board-linksys_ea6350v3.bin to pwr.bin some time ago to save typing when I copy it to my router. I forgot I had done that.

After version 1.11, it looks like the calibration files were split between 2.4 and 5 GHz for experimentation, whereas the file in the 1.11 back version archive described above covers both 2.4 and 5 GHz. It has always worked well for me (I last used it with snapshot as of a week ago), so I never spent time trying to figure out how to use the separate 2.4 and 5 GHZ files in later archive versions.

@GreenSystemAdmin You can find the blobs here. NoTengoBattery also has a spreadsheet comparing performance online.