Belkin RT3200/Linksys E8450 WiFi AX discussion

For Developers
3841

But of you likes stay on Xiaomi firmware,you do not Need mesh,Just use repeter mode and you ll be fine.

3842

That's like saying "okay well your car is not working, so instead of fixing it why don't you hop on a bike for your 30 mile daily commute"

3843

a repeater dont work as a mesh, i would like to build a mesh.

With a Mesh your device pick up to the better mesh router in the moment and you can move in all the bulding, your device can switch from a mesh device to another mesh device and you will not noticed, example in a video call. If you use a repeater (not mesh) the video call will be interrupted when your device switch from the original router to the repeater and in the revert case too. so...

3844

i am considerating swith from xiaomi firmware to openwrt firmware in the Xioami AX6S but i am very newbie with openwrt and i need to learn many things to do what i want. Remote management the router, bandwith control to clients, etc.

I sell internet to my neighbors via cable, i have 2 fiber connections 1Gbps both of them, now i want build a multiwan router, with remote access for management and bandwith control.

Thanks to all of you for the directions until now.

for now i am testing with the Belkin RT3200 and last stable OpenWrt. but i am maybe en 5% progress overall.

3845

Less OpenWRT related and more Linksys/Belkin related. Are there any plans to keep producing this router model? In the UK and Europe this router seems hard to find at uninflated prices.

1 Like
3846

You can make a port forward from WAN to the router's port 80 and access Luci from outside your home. But instead of remembering your IP, you could use a DDNS provider. This is not recommended, though. Exposing your router to the internet is not a great idea, but you can implement a complex password to be safe.

For multiwan, there's MWAN3 package and you can convert one of the LAN ports as a second WAN. For bandwith control, there's QoS but that's CPU intensive, and I don't think the RT3200 or the AX6S could handle that traffic. For this use case, you're better with a Raspberry Pi or an X86 computer and then use the RT3200 as a dumb AP.

And yes, using the other router in repeater mode is not desirable. If you decide to flash the Xiaomi router with OpenWRT and can link both routers with a LAN cable, you can use either router as a dumb AP and enable 802.11r or Fast Transition (roaming) and have the benefits of a mesh without enabling all the mesh packages and linking the routers wirelessly.

In fact, this is a not well know aspect of a mesh network: you lose half of the bandwith of the radio you use to link both routers. It's better to link the routers via LAN cable. The ideal setup for a fast mesh network would be to use routers with tri-band radios and use one of the radios to serve as a backhaul for the network and the other 2 remaining for AP; but that would be really expensive.

Cheers!

3847

I bought mine for $50 here in Venezuela and there's plenty of availability. Don't know how is the availability elsewhere.

3848

The Linksys E8450 is still available on amazon.com USA. They ship to EU and care for customs. You just need a power supply adapter or buy your own matching power supply. That is what I did.

I still would like to add the exact power supply information to the OpenWrt wiki but I am unable to get a wiki account.

Alternatives that are more complicated to get:

  • Netgear WAX206: MT7622 with MT7915 like the E8450, but with 2.5 Gbps Realtek WAN port if you need it.
  • GL.iNet GL-MT6000: next generation Mediatek Filogic 830 MT7986 with 4x4 AX on 2.4 GHz. But: this device is very new, the power consumption is not known and there is no broad OpenWrt user base with experiences in real world usage.
3849

i bought mine in $42 in Maracaibo, Venezuela

3850

Vergación hermano! Yo vivo en Maracaibo también!

It's a joy to find a fellow countryman here!

3851

Moderator Edit - English translation (via Google Translate) added:

hehehehe.

a nice pleasure!!!

Let me explain, I have the Xiaomi Ax6s and a Belkin RT3200, I give internet to those in my building and those in the building next door, I would like to activate a second fiber with Airtek, to put half the clients with a router and half with the another router, but with openwrt I see that I can do that with a single router and have 2 fibers on the same router.

So I would like to have the options that I have with the Xiaomi. remote access, bandwidth limitation per mac address, etc. But I don't know how to put all that together on the Belkin with openwrt and I would like you to help me if it is within your reach.

original post (Spanish) below

jejejeje.

un gusto pana!!!

te explico, yo tengo el xiaomi ax6s y un belkin rt3200, yo le doy intetnet a los de mi edificio y a los del edificio de al lado, quisiera activar una segunda fibra con airtek, pa poner mitad de clientes con un router y mitad con el otro router, pero con openwrt veo que puedo hacer eso con un solo router y tener 2 fibras en el mismo router.

entonces quisiera tener si las opciones que tengo con el xiaomi. acceso remoto, limitacion de ancho de banda por direccion mac, etc. pero no se como armar todo eso en el belkin con openwrt y me gustaria que me ayudes si está a tu alcance.

3852

I like it when people find regional friends here. :+1:

But: please stick to English in the public forum so that others can easily read and take part in your conversation without translation tools. You are free to use whatever language you like in private messages.

3 Likes
3853

Update on this - this actually seems to be a regression in my client, and not the 23.05 firmware.

I confirmed by flashing back to 23.05-rc3 and I was getting the same poor speeds.

So something seems to have slipped through in the Linux Kernel that regressed my Intel AX211 speeds somehow. It's even in the LTS kernel, so I'm not sure what's going on there.

Regardless, I'm happy to report that 23.05 seems to be nice and stable on my RT3200, and my weird speeds are a different issue.

1 Like
3854

Thanks for the update. What is the result of your speed test on 80 MHz channels since the problem occurred on MT7915 out of spec experimental 160 MHz channels?

3855

@daniel has not yet updated his pre-built UBI installer etc. for 23.05.0, but as an intermediate solution, before Daniel updates his release:

You can clone Daniel's UBI installer github repo and change the build_installer.sh script to use 23.05.0 and build by yourself. The script builds both the ubi initramfs recovery installer image, the recovery image and the (probably unnecessary) normal sysupgrade image.

As far as I can see, the only changes needed are the branch name and the PGP key (the unattended PGP key from from https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/security/signatures instead of the old 22.03 key):

perus@ub2310:/Openwrt/owrt-ubi-installer$ git diff
diff --git a/build_installer.sh b/build_installer.sh
index a28fa2b..e22c9e1 100755
--- a/build_installer.sh
+++ b/build_installer.sh
@@ -5,7 +5,7 @@ set -o pipefail
 
 DESTDIR="$PWD"
 
-OPENWRT_PGP="0xCD54E82DADB3684D"
+OPENWRT_PGP="0xCD84BCED626471F1"
 KEYSERVER="keyserver.ubuntu.com"
 INSTALLERDIR="$( cd "$( dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" >/dev/null 2>&1 && pwd )"
 OPENWRT_DIR="${INSTALLERDIR}/openwrt-ib"
@@ -250,7 +250,7 @@ bundle_initrd() {
 }
 
 linksys_e8450_installer() {
-       OPENWRT_RELEASE="22.03.5"
+       OPENWRT_RELEASE="23.05.0"
        OPENWRT_TARGET="https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/${OPENWRT_RELEASE}/targets/mediatek/mt7622"
        OPENWRT_IB="openwrt-imagebuilder-${OPENWRT_RELEASE}-mediatek-mt7622.Linux-x86_64.tar.xz"
        OPENWRT_INITRD="openwrt-${OPENWRT_RELEASE}-mediatek-mt7622-linksys_e8450-ubi-initramfs-recovery.itb"

I tested it, built the images and (just for testing purposes) updated the OpenWrt recovery image on my RT3200 (with the ubi manipulation process described in Belkin RT3200/Linksys E8450 WiFi AX discussion - #1318 by daniel), and used that recovery instance to flash my normal main/master snapshot image. Quite ok. (I did not touch the u-boot bootloader.)

Now my recovery instance has 23.05.0:

277095846-1184af6d-d985-40bb-8a40-8e7e7e4e7cc1
277095846-1184af6d-d985-40bb-8a40-8e7e7e4e7cc11296×708 50.3 KB

Ps.
(There is no real reason to upgrade your recovery instance, as it is only used in emergencies to flash a new OpenWrt sysupgrade image. I updated it just for testing purposes.)

3 Likes
3856

I agree for most expected scenarios: regular updates via sysupgrade, nothing goes wrong, stable sysupgrade process. In this case the initial recovery instance is never used or needed again.

But: I think sysupgrades between major versions are mostly done only between one major version to the successor major version: like 22.03 to 23.05. There will only be a small to zero number of users sysupgrading from let's say 22.03 to 28.xx.

If the recovery instance is needed some years later it should be safe to upgrade between each major version to the successor major version. But upgrades directly from a release several years ago jumping over intermediate versions is not tested and not guaranteed.

For now years old EOL sysupgrade images are still available on https://downloads.openwrt.org but this is not guaranteed in the future.

I will keep one sysupgrade image of each major version for my E8450 by myself. With this I am independent of the OpenWrt EOL sysupgrade image archive and the recovery instance can stay on 22.03.

A better solution would be if we could easily update the recovery instance once for each major version.

In practice for the expected lifetime of let's say five years no recovery instances updates should be needed. But when I see that some models like the TP-Link Archer C7 v2 are supported since 14.07 and have no projected device EOL I am not sure if it is the best decision to stay on 22.03 for the recovery instance forever.

1 Like
3857

Since upgrading to 23.05 neither my AX6s nor my RT3200 activate 5GHz radio anymore (it works with my Archer 2600 so I presume its chipset specific, all are just dumb APs). Am I missing something?

FWIW, Kernel log on the AX6s:

[    6.369337] kmodloader: loading kernel modules from /etc/modules.d/*
[    6.378617] Loading modules backported from Linux version v6.1.24-0-g0102425ac76b
[    6.386137] Backport generated by backports.git v5.15.92-1-44-gd6ea70fafd36
[    6.446402] ieee80211 phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'minstrel_ht'
[    6.464254] mt7915e 0000:01:00.0: assign IRQ: got 139
[    6.469370] mt7915e 0000:01:00.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
[    6.475497] mt7915e 0000:01:00.0: enabling bus mastering
[    6.481389] mt7622-wmac 18000000.wmac: HW/SW Version: 0x8a108a10, Build Time: 20190801210006a
[    6.481389] 
[    6.574873] mt7622-wmac 18000000.wmac: N9 Firmware Version: _reserved_, Build Time: 20220630094834
[    6.610923] mtk-pcie 1a143000.pcie: msi#0 address_hi 0x0 address_lo 0x44d1d0c0
[    6.618910] urngd: v1.0.2 started.
[    6.632709] mt7915e 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for mediatek/mt7915_rom_patch.bin failed with error -2
[    6.642668] mt7915e 0000:01:00.0: Falling back to sysfs fallback for: mediatek/mt7915_rom_patch.bin
[    6.929410] mt7915e: probe of 0000:01:00.0 failed with error -12
3858

You're probably missing the kmod-mt7915-firmware package. How did you do the upgrades, via ASU or auc? Try installing above kmod and reboot.

2 Likes
3859

I had updated using luci attended sysupgrade and yes, the kmod was missing. Installing it indeed fixed it. Thanks a lot!

1 Like
3860

Incase you missed it and/or haven’t built your own already. @daniel has released his updated recovery/installer images.

4 Likes