BT HH5 & Archer c7?

[Techville]

Hi,

I am moving to a 500Mb FTTP (currently on a 80Mb line) and need to change my setup, just wondering if I can do it with existing hardware.

I have a Archer C7v2, with stock firmware which serves me well. I also have a spare BT HomeHub 5A, which I haven't got round to flashing yet.

I have read about issues with the C7v2 and OpenWRT (wifi performance etc). My question is could I use the HH5 as the main router and C7v2 as dumb wireless AP BUT keeping the C7 on stock firmware ?

I think I have read that the HH5 could handle upto 500Mb (radios/wireless would be disabled)

Thanks

[mjs]

If you want to get anywhere near that sort of performance from the BT Hub 5A under Openwrt, you'll need to use the snapshot which uses the faster DSA driver plus a few patches.

See this thread, particularly recent posts by olek210

How can we make the lantiq xrx200 devices faster

Some IPv6 Routing benchmark (LAN<->WAN) on the BT HH5A with enabled software offloading: Test 1W 8W Increase WAN->LAN 330 Mb/s 490 Mb/s +48 % LAN->WAN 338 Mb/s 590 Mb/s +75 % Burst length PR.

How can we make the lantiq xrx200 devices faster

Using all the patches I was able to achieve 725 Mb / s upload and around 600 Mb / s download speed.

[mercygroundabyss]

Cheat. Grab a dedicated wifi point. Something like ubiquiti AC-Lite or similar. I use it in place of my HH5 because its awful at getting through concrete walls. Also takes load off your router so it only handles traffic rather than wifi too.

[slh]

So you have 500Mbps-1Gbps fiber and need a router READ THIS FIRST

It's such a frequently asked question over the last few years that we really need a post we can point people to. So your cable company rolled out 500Mbps or 1Gbps download speeds, or you have 1Gbps symmetric fiber (GPON/EPON) from ATT or Centurylink or Orange or whoever. You realize your old all in one router from 2009 is not up to the task of handling this, but hey by now stuff should be cheap and available that will handle your new fiber connection right? So you want advice about a router for…

applies.

The BTHub5 will only do about ~85 MBit/s without flow-offloading and around ~115 MBit/s with software flow-offloading, yes, DSA improves this slightly, but it remains in the same ballpark.

The Archer c7 is good for up to 170-200 MBit/s without flow-offloading, software flow-offloading can extend this, but it's still underpowered for this new job. Yes, the proprietary OEM firmware can make use of more hacky speedup tricks, placing this at the gate between the internet and your LAN would be a bold move though...

Both devices will still work, even though they are not fast enough to cope with your WAN speed, so it's not as if you'd be left without usable internet until you've upgraded your equipment.

[Techville]

Thanks for the info

According to the posts below, the HH5 can handle the througput of a 900Mb connection, with SQM it tops out at a 600Mb connection

Or have I confused Mb with Mb/s. Wouldnt a 500MB line give an approx 60-65Mb/s ? If so, the HH5 should be fine for a 500Mb fibre?

r/openwrt - UK Vodafone gigafast openwrt modem router suggestions please, I...

[mjs]

Openwrt for the BT hub 5A up to and including the current 21.x stable release has a rather slow ethernet driver.

I haven't tested its performance myself (I've only used it with a 40Mbps connection), but I've read that with the original openwrt ethernet driver, the BT hub 5a can barely cope with a 80 Mbps (Megabits per second) VDSL connection. I believe I read in a iperf test it can manage just over 100Mbps.

As I mentioned above, the development branch uses a new, faster driver which is included in current snapshots, and apparently can achieve up to 330 Mbps, and that's only with the router not doing anything else.

To get better performance, you'd currently need to build it yourself with additional patches including the improved DMA pull request. See the authors posts, which I provided links to above.

[Techville]

Hi,

Thanks for the info.

My new connection will be 500mb down &60 up and apparently the ISP router is not the best.

If I continue to use the Archer C7 as a wireless AP (for now) - Is a Pi 4 the best option to handle the router part. That and a simple switch, should easily be able to handle the traffic, with SQM and even upto 1G Fibre?