The RPi4 is available worldwide no? It's by far the best overall router at the moment in terms of speed, space, wide availability, network performance, and cost. But doesn't really do access point. So if you have a wifi enabled device already, dedicate it to an access point and get the RPi 4.
It costs around 100$ here. 25$ more expensive than the Acher C6
It's dramatically more capable particularly for SQM. It can SQM a full gigabit connection, the C6 has a single core, so it will fight over interrupts for packet processing and handling the WiFi and soforth. You will get dramatically better SQM performance from the Pi4. As an investment it will last easily 5 to 7 years routing anything you can throw at it in that time frame. The C6 not necessarily.
Adding power supply and a case is another 25$. What else would I need? Might be able to et i for the same price as the Archer but that will take a couple of months.
You will want a smart switch, or if you have an existing older router with a VLAN capable switch, use that as your smart switch and AP.
It depends on how you're buying it, whether it's in a bundle included or not, but you also need a micro-SD card, 16 or 32 gigs are PLENTY. That's $7 here in the US.
1 Like
Yep! That's the one I have.
I have an archer a9 which doesn't have openwrt support. I'd like to have openwrt features in my network. Is it good to go for an
Isp modem->raspberry Pi 4(openwrt)->archer a9(AP mode)
Will this setup let me use sqm/cake features on my entire network?
I'd like to utilise SQM for all the archer a9 wifi clients.
Does pi4 openwrt do swm for all the wifi connected devices in my archer a9(Access point mode)?
Is this possible?
So, in that set-up, SQM will nicely work to debloat your internet access, and that will also affect the wifi clients, AS long as your wifi rates are considerably higher than your WAN rate. Otherwise you might encounter wifi-bloat and that is not something that SQM on the router can fix. That said, even on the a9 SQM could not do much for you, to solve that issue, the AQM needs move into the wifi stack, like in the case of Linux's ath9k, ath1K and I believe mt76 wifi drivers. I have no idea what tp-link uses on their own OS version.
1 Like
How about the interference between the inbuilt wifi and the usb3 ethernet adapter?
What's the difference I will have between
-
Getting archer c7 after selling my archer a9, and installing openwrt on the c7
-
Using raspberry pi4 +tplink usb 3 ethernet adapter+ stock a9
How will be the firewall and sqm cake in these scenarios?
Moving sqm to wifi stack, does this mean I'd have to go for an archer c7?
My internet is 150Mbps/75Mbps and I'd like to upgrade to a faster plan
No idea, but the RPI4B's wifi is really weak and I would at best use it as a maintenance connection to the RPI, I would not even consider using that in AP mode. But as I have no RPI myself, I am not speaking out of experience, so take what I say with a grain of salt...
That should allow you, if yooun install a snapshot of OpenWrt master to enable airtime fairness which includes some FQ AQM in the wifi stack and should result in decent wifi latency even with strutting loads. But the c7 is too weak for your WAN link, so I hope this is always in addition to use the RPI as primary SQM router?
If ou manage to configure the a9 as pure AP (so no firewall and no NAT) your wifi performance will be limited by what the stock a9 firmware gives you. I have no experience, so try if it is sufficient your are set, otherwise the c7 route seems like a decent alternative.
SQM will not care much, only if you want to use per-internal-IP isolation (which is a good idea) then running the secondary a9 in full router mode is going to treat all wifi users like one internal IP address, so probably not optimal.
Well, you are technically not moving SQM to the wifi stack, it is just about integration of a similar latency conscious AQM into the wifi stack. But yes, you will need an OpenWrt supported router with either an ath10K or ath9K radio.
This is already too much for a c7, so just using a c7 is not an option, let alone after the upgrade. The raspberry 4B however seems to be good up to 1 gigabit (when it gets limited by its gigabit ethernet interface).
1 Like
How good will a c7 v5 run on openwrt with and without sqm?(in terms of speeds)
Thank you
Just guessing but I think with SQM it tops out around 200-300Mbps when using software flow offloading...
I think the RPi4 + your existing A9 as an AP would be your best bet by far
I've had a couple Archer C7's in the past running OpenWrt. Also had a Trendnet 824 (same SoC as C7) running dd-wrt at one time. SQM topped out somewhere near ~135 Mbps on these devices.
SQM on my Edgerouter X (880 MHz dual core MT7621) tops out just under 200 Mbps.
According to the techdata, the archer c7 v5 has a QCA9563 running at 750 MHz.
There is a benchmark result for a QCA9563 at 775 Mhz.
1 Like
"Gaming" router? What does classify a router as "gaming"?
I'm also interested in this question, but probably the capability of handling SQM at a given speed, also the ability to install MUDFISH would push the router into the 'gaming territory'
@dana44 When you were talking about having random ping spikes with ath10k that you never noticed with the mt76, here you were referring to the processing power of the platform and how far it's capable of handling SQM, right?
How good is an Archer A9 compared to C7 when both are on stock firmwares?
And does beamforming on the archer a9 a gimmick or does it really make a difference?
AQM needs move into the wifi stack, like in the case of Linux's ath9k, ath1K and I believe mt76 wifi drivers
Yes, mt76 got it before ath10k nearly a year ago https://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_5.5#Networking-1
I'm very much looking forward to a release of OpenWrt 20.x stable enough to test with.
When I said odd ping spikes I mean for no reason I can see some stations just randomly get a high ping. When I tried to do a multiplayer game the ping was usually low, as one would expect from experiences playing alone. SQM was enabled, but it shouldn't have mattered as the connection was otherwise idle. However the ping would sometimes jump from 50ms to hundreds, for just one station. Very odd, isn't it?
Now that I think more about it I suspect it is due to multiple stations active. Last night we tried to download a patch for a game and one station basically was kicked off and couldn't even get the initial 250MB patch! The transfer rate fell to a few KB/sec or maybe zero. I just tried now, with basically every other device idle, and had a decent ~40mbit transfer rate.
After a few tries we just gave up on that game last night and played a round of Overwatch 100% fine instead.
I find the ath10k device is fine nearly all the time, but every so often it seems to have exceptionally poor wifi.
2 Likes
This topic was automatically closed 10 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.