Depends on the distance, if you have a short distance then current WiFi 6 with 160MHz channel width has the speed comparable to gigabit ethernet, I tested this today with my older laptop upgraded with Intel AX210, and a simple speedtest within the same room I get 1.1Gbps (my internet is > 1Gbps), my wife also using gaming laptop with WiFi 6 (she plays FPS which is also sensitive about latency) and this works well for more than a year.
And my router.....a roughly US$30 Netgear WAX206.
Mm. Yes I would argue that it's a compromise on cost, power consumption, techincal complexity. It's also environment/location dependent.
I'm not saying don't go for better wifi performance. Just that I'd go for routing performance and ease of maintenance first if we're talking >5 year deployment. You can always add more AP's, better switching later without needing to touch your router.
Ideal scenario yes.
You need a short distance and not too many other people talking at the same time on the same channel? What's the performance through walls? What happens if you have a brick / concrete house?
If you're talking a simplified envivronment of one laptop and one gaming console in the same room in a pristine RF environment with no local data transfer between them my tune will change haha.
Depends on environment if you're going to have a clean 160mhz channel available.
My experience is that you can have latency spikes if you have far away clients. It's still a shared medium.
The issue here is what sort of router you can get in budget that can do >1gbps wifi in ideal scenarios and also route >1gbit ethernet? Perhaps with SQM for example?
Location dependent. Also looked like it was out of stock new on amazon US? Didn't do a comprehensive look at other areas. With currency conversion a WAX206 is 90USD USD where I am new. If we're talking used all bets are off and you can pick up a lot for 80USD.
Hi @fakemanhk,
Can you please check if it is real 160 MHz or 80+80. I do not think the Mediatek SoC supports 160 Mhz. I have Belkin RT3200 using the same SoC and by looking at the channel survey in WiFiman https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ubnt.usurvey&hl=en it reports 80 Mhz, although OpenWrt reports 160.
I am interested as I see the device in the local market on a sale for 50 Eur.
Thanks
Kind regards
K
The RT3200 does support 160MHz. Maybe your android device doesn't support it and detects it as 80MHz. That happens to me with my Pixel 4a. But on my laptop with an AX210, the link speed is 2402Mbps @ 160 and 1800 @ 80.
The other thing that happens is that the device becomes 2x2 when set up at 160MHz or 4x4 at 80MHz. It doesn't bother me, because I don't have a 4x4 client to connect to.
Thanks, however I have Cudy Wr3000 and Xiaomi 3000T, and they are recognized as 160 Mhz by the phone, but not the Belkin.
What do you mean by "not real"? When I setup AP with 160MHz channel width and my PC showing 2402Mbps connection (speedtest ~1.3Gbps) I believe 160MHz is working since it's impossible to achieve this speed with just 80MHz channel.
I was referring to the survey of the Wifiman - the android app. 2402 Mbps you can achieve with 80 Mhz with the 4x4. There was a lot of discussions in the RT3200 topic about 160Mhz, they drop the support for some time, then it was back - you can check this commit https://github.com/openwrt/mt76/issues/748. I lost a track what is the end state and in combination with the survey it leads me to believe that it is 80 Mhz - although when I connect Cudy Wr3000 or Xiaomi 3000T with RT3200 Openwrt shows 160Mhz. On top of that if I connect Cudy or Xiaomi via WDS to RT3200 max I get is 1,9 Gbit ( sorry forgot the correctnumber as my RT3200 is not with me currently) but with WDS between Cudy and Xioami - I get 2,4. So my ask is can you check with this app what you get from the Netgear as a result - 80Mhz or 160 Mhz?
FWIW I'm running OpenWrt on some ~10-year-old hardware, albeit as dumb APs. E.g., my TP-Link Archer C7 v2 that was once my primary home router is now a dumb AP in my garage, though it could still work as my primary router if I was happy with ~300Mbps performance. The main key is getting something maybe 30% short of the top-of-the-line in specs in hardware+chip set and popular enough to continue to be supported.
GL.iNet GL-MT6000 would be a good bet as they're an OpenWrt-first shop and my old c2016 GL-AR150 still functions and is running OpenWrt 23.05.5. The Dynalink DL-WRX36 mentioned elsewhere in this thread is probably okay, too, though they don't have the GL.iNet track record. You could also go x86 and get a mini-PC -- that will be supported as close to forever as anything.
I decided to separate the router and Wi-Fi access points, so I went with FreindlyElec R5s + Unifi access point(s). You can get (the officially supported R4s) if you don't need 2.5G ports and fast Wireguard (R4s does ~15MBps over WG, R5s does ~45MBps over WG).
I am curious.....do you have any Android device that has 4T4R???
I don't have RT3200, but Netgear WAX206, it shows I am using 160MHz and that's what I am referring to.
R4S has faster CPU than R5S, there was a YouTuber tested both and R4S showing WG speed ~800Mbps while R5S only 610Mbps, and so as SQM performance R4S is better. So the only thing missing in R4S is 2.5GbE, but I would say if you want 2.5GbE just go for R6S, there is also snapshot started not too long time ago.
They say:
”If the model is popular and we are not short of chips, it will not be discontinued”
forum.gl-inet.com/t/eol-support-policy-for-gl-inet-products/29659/5
Popularity is indeed important factor to guess if model will be supported for long. I think I'll choose this Flint 2 model. It's 135$ instead of 80$, but still cheap enough.
GL.iNET folks don't seem to contribute to OpenWRT. Please correct me, if I'm wrong. It doesn't make any difference what are their EOL plans for their proprietary firmware.
Linksys EA8300 works well here but will bust your budget.
Old and seriously overpriced.
Add $13 and get 3 WRX36s.
AX3000T is MT7981B cpu:
https://openwrt.org/inbox/toh/xiaomi/ax3000t
AX3000T switch chip is the MT7531AE.
Below this is the MT7621 chipset, I will ignore the MT7622 in the Netgear WAX206, Belkin RT3200 and Linksys equivalent as none of these have 2.4Ghz ax wifi.
The MT7621 has 802.11ax on both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz, examples being the Zyxel WSM20, Belkin RT1800 and Linksys equivalent.
Minimum you need for future proof is 128 NAND and 256 RAM, but that is only if you stay with Mediatek, if you choose Qualcomm then you need at least 1GB RAM.
Thanks, I didn't know this. Can you please elaborate?
Only thing I found was a bug in 2023 regarding memory usage on github?
Probably not the answer you've been looking for, but other than trying to future proof your decision for the next ten years, it does make more sense to get a decent -but likely cheaper- option now that will cover you well for the next 18-36 months (and to reconsider then, if necessary). If the last decade is anything to go by, requirements change over those time spans, a lot. In 2014, almost no one would have dreamed about wan speeds in excess of 1 GBit/s (16-25 MBit/s were pretty much the top end for consumers), wireless speeds in excess of 700 MBit/s (~70-120 MBit/s, more likely to stay at the lower end of that range) or ethernet speeds beyond 1 GBit/s (outside of an data centre), wireguard wasn't on the horizon (OpenVPN or IPsec were, but at significantly different performance expectations). No one was doing video conferences or home office/ schooling and IPv6 had not yet reached wider consumer deployment.
Neither of these mean that you should ignore your intended goal (case in point, my 2012 vintage tl-wdr4300 is still supported, although the end of the road is in sight (8 MB flash is getting (too-) tight), but it has surpassed its useful service life roughly half a decade ago (because of ftth, wifi5 and the desire for more RAM, so gain access to larger DNS based (ad-)blocklists) - it is however still working and supported). Just don't overthink it, filogic 830/ 820 and ipq807x are decently supported targets - look for a popular device without known issues, aim a tad higher in terms of system specs (flash/ RAM) than the average for the target and your chances aren't bad. This isn't a warranty into all eternity, but a good chance for success - and it's better to retain a chunk of your planned budget for the next router in x-years, than to overspend now.
Corner cases(4/32, driver removed from kernel etc) aside, once a device support is added it's pretty much supported till the end of world.