[GCC 7.2 BUILD] Optimized TP-Link Archer C7 V2 AC1750 LEDE Firmware

i fixed it, after making my frequency setting changes, rather than pressing restart i just unplugged the router and it booted normally!!

have you seen any real world improvement after overclocking to 1000 mhz in comparison to the old value?

you know ever since i added a few things to my build, i was getting better performance as it was, but now that i have the overclock engaged im getting another 10-20% better on download. i was only getting 115 mbps download tops to start with on this router, now since my firmware and the breed overclocking my download is 135 mbps.

Yes, about a 30% in performance.

What's your max download? 135Mbps max is terrible for this router. It should be capable of 800Mbps-1Gbps with no need to overclock if you look at a review like this:
https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/32498-tp-link-archer-c7-v2-reviewed

You can view some benchmarks here:

Tested from my overclocked AP, connected via SSH to my AP Archer C7 v2:

192.168.1.2 (My AP Archer C7 v2 OC - Wifi + Ethernet)
192.168.1.1 (LEDE x86/x64 Router - only Ethernet)

root@AP:~# netperf -H 192.168.1.1 -l 60
MIGRATED TCP STREAM TEST from 0.0.0.0 (0.0) port 0 AF_INET to 192.168.1.1 (192) port 0 AF_INET : demo
Recv   Send    Send
Socket Socket  Message  Elapsed
Size   Size    Size     Time     Throughput
bytes  bytes   bytes    secs.    10^6bits/sec

 87380  16384  16384    60.00     215.55

Now upside down (Tested from my LEDE x86 Router, connected via SSH to LEDE Router):

root@LEDE:~# netperf -H 192.168.1.2 -l 60
MIGRATED TCP STREAM TEST from 0.0.0.0 (0.0.0.0) port 0 AF_INET to 192.168.1.2 (192.168) port 0 AF_INET : demo
Recv   Send    Send
Socket Socket  Message  Elapsed
Size   Size    Size     Time     Throughput
bytes  bytes   bytes    secs.    10^6bits/sec

 87380  16384  16384    60.02     444.21

Before Overclocking Archer C7, the results were about a 30% less.

Thanks,

I think most people are talking here of NAT speed: one device on the LAN side, and the other on the WAN side, you can follow this steps to measure NAT speed (fast classifier related):
https://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/benchmark.nat

When I was using my Archer C7 as router (now is working as AP) I could get 300 Mbps. via WAN/LAN (Fast Path enabled, tested via wired LAN).

That’s my bandwidth speed

Idk how many times we’ve gone over this, @phinn just can’t read

Thanks I can read. But if your internet connection didn't change and it went up by 20Mbits from that change I figured it still wasn't full saturating. Was just trying to show this router is capable of 800ish. My internet is capped at 150Mbits but regularly hit 165ish down. It just makes no sense that an overclock would give more bandwidth to me for something this low, it's not like we're pushing 500+ here.

Those benchmarks on smallnetbuilder all use the stock firmware, and hence hardware NAT is enabled. Hardware NAT is unsupported by Openwrt/Lede and hence without fastpath 200-300mbit is all you'll be able to reliably get from the Archer C7. Fastpath could push that higher, but it won't be close to gigabit speeds since fastpath is still a software solution.

Thanks for the explanation, that's really discouraging that we take such a massive performance hit going to OpenWrt. I thought FastPath solved that problem and was fully implemented everywhere at this point. Might just go back to stock firmware now.

Fastpath was never upstreamed and has only been added to some custom builds by community members. So it is hardly implemented everywhere.

Flow offloading is a similar approach that has been upstreamed and is included in all recent master builds, regardless of architecture. While not as fast as HW NAT, it is much faster and comparable to fastpath speed wise.

Flow offloading also supports HW NAT, which currently only offloads IPv4 connections on mt7621 chips when enabled and should perform at maximum performance. It should support IPv6 soon and will also support other architectures as people add support, but this is a slow progress because each implementation is chip specific and there are many many different chips being utilized across all routers.

Stock hardware NAT will never be included in Openwrt/Lede, because the code is not opensourced.

Okay understood. FastPath/SFE has been included in DD-WRT for sometime and I just (falsely) assumed it has been in OpenWrt/LEDE too. Sounds like with Flow Offloading coming then, hopefully in OpenWrt 2018, will be a big improvement. They did call it a "major release" on the main page. Looking forward to upgrading my Wrt3200ACM with it too.

The software implementation is already in the snapshots / master branch and should perform similarly to fastpath. It can be used today. No need to wait for anything :slight_smile:

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I think this has been discussed before in this same thread, flow offloading is available on LEDE Kernel 4.14 and Archer C7 v2 is 4.9 based.

Good point. I completely forgot about that. Then flow offload is indeed not available for the Archer C7.

Hi. After use this firmware during a long time, I discover some trouble. I make some iperf3 test between this firmware and Vanilla and I found some differences. Router is configured as NAT with PPoE

Router b00t firmware --> IMAC LAN
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec   318 MBytes   267 Mbits/sec                  sender
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec   317 MBytes   266 Mbits/sec                  receiver

Router b00t firmware --> IMAC WIFI 5Ghz
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec   103 MBytes  86.8 Mbits/sec                  sender
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec   103 MBytes  86.3 Mbits/sec                  receiver

Router b00t firmware --> IMAC WIFI 2Ghz
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec  68.7 MBytes  57.6 Mbits/sec                  sender
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec  68.1 MBytes  57.1 Mbits/sec                  receiver

Router VANILLA LEDE --> IMAC LAN
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec   364 MBytes   305 Mbits/sec                  sender
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec   363 MBytes   305 Mbits/sec                  receiver

Router VANILLA LEDE --> IMAC WIFI 5Ghz
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bandwidth
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec   219 MBytes   183 Mbits/sec                  sender
[  4]   0.00-10.00  sec   219 MBytes   183 Mbits/sec                  receiver

Why so difference?