Belkin RT3200/Linksys E8450 WiFi AX discussion

@daniel Do you expect impact on rt3200 with your recent Mediatek commits? I saw they are mostly for more recent chips...

@umayer The new code is used also on MT7622 and also for MT7531. However, on the RT3200 it doesn't make any difference, the SerDes on both sides of that link between MT7622 and MT7531 is setup in exactly the same way. And I have of course tested this on my E8450 device and confirm that it works just as well as before.

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Dear sir, is it possible for you to write a more detailed mesh walkthrough for the web-based interface? I can't seem to handle command lines here. I am thinking of buying another E8450 to be the child node, but I guess the walkthrough at Linksys Official Support - Adding a child node to the Linksys Dual-Band EasyMesh WiFi Router is not applicable to openWRT'd parent node? Do I have to openwrt the child node first? Thanks.

I have completed some of my, amateur, measurements. They are mostly the same as others reported in this thread.

Device spent 0,124 kWh during 24 hours, leading to an average of 5,16 Watts per hour. When device is in active use, it is hovering around 5.5 Watts.

My setup is simple: one wan cable, 6+ WiFi clients (AC/AX mix, 100mW transmit power), no SQM nor anything interesting.

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Has there been any resolution to this? I'm also experiencing an unnecessary limit of 27dBm on channel 149.

None I'm aware of. The limitation is not present on a Reyee Rg-E5 (essentially same hardware as RT3200) I recently flashed, so it is not a generic MT7622/7915 limitation. Seems to be specific to my RT3200.

Hi, sorry, I stopped using my E8450s in mesh mode quite a while ago. The problem is that they only have a single 5GHz radio, and that limits the bandwidth available. I was able to get 1 Gbit to the wired ports of the mesh child device, but wireless speeds for everything else dropped to 300 Mbit.
I ended up grabbing a 3rd E8450 on sale so I could cover my entire house.
The Linksys docs are definitely not applicable. A quick search doesn't show any web-based tutorials, and it looks like things have changed a bit, so I'm afraid you're stuck with https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wifi/mesh/80211s
https://simianer.de/blog/home-wifi-setup-with-802.11s-meshing-and-802.11r-roaming has some good tips, too.

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Could be that this limitation is part of the device calibration data, and may have been applied due to hardware limitations of external amplifier ICs, the antennas, or due to regulatory problems...

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le reseau maillé est simple

the mesh network is simply

use simply mesh11sd i have used while a long work wuthouth problem

Possible, but I think it unlikely Belkin/Linksys would roll a product so handicapped out to the US market. It would be interesting to know what the tx power limits are with OEM firmware.

This discussion might explain things as well: https://github.com/openwrt/mt76/issues/633

The gist of it seems to be that Mediatek let out a lot of production with the wrong tx power information written to the chips, and that OEM were informed about it and corrected it in the OEM firmware, but OpenWrt has not.

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In mesh mode?

Using WDS I see circa 650-750Mbit/s between RT3200 nodes. Super stable. Fairly recent commits incorporated in 22.03 significantly improved upload performance (before there were lots of retransmits reported).

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Yes, I was using 802.11s mesh mode. It may have been uploads that were slow. Good to hear that there have been changes. I may try it again.

I am using the latest stable release on two RT3200s. Both are dumb wifi APs, with a 802.11s mesh between them to provide wifi upstairs. Is there any advantage/improved performance to using snapshots instead? Thanks for the help!

The only advantage that I can think of in your scenario is when you want to enable WED (hardware offloading) on your DUMB AP. This requires the 'bridger' package. I can't find the bridger package on the stable release version repository, but it is available on the snapshot repository.

The stable branch has issues with 802.11ax being slower than 802.11ac, especially on upload and especially as distance and barriers from client to AP increase. Snapshot has a newer mt76 driver that helps with this.

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Hey Daniel,

Still having the same issues months later, haven't been able to use the router and am considering just tossing it and saving up for a new one, but decided to take one more crack at it before doing that.

Any chance I could grab those ready-made binaries with the kernel debug symbols if you have the time at some point? Not sure what else I can do to chase this issue down, but if you, or anyone else has ideas I'd love to hear them. Sadly my IT background just isn't in this arena and I feel clueless.

Thank you for all the help, either way!

OpenWRT stable release 22.03.4 has been released for the router.

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The release may be tagged but it’s not a good idea to install until the official release announcement

See:

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Any exciting changes for the RT3200 crew?

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Aren't you on the master tree?
The 22.03 tree has been split from master more than a year ago.