GL.Inet MT750 experience/feedback please?

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
#1

I need to order an inexpensive router for an overseas relative and I don't have the time to research the local market, so I was thinking about ordering from Asia.

They need 1 WAN, 3 LAN ports, 802.11n/ac and OpenWrt/LEDE support. I've previously had a positive experience with GL.Inet portable routers so was thinking about MT750. Has anyone had experience with that box? Any stability (WiFi and overall) issues with LEDE? I'd need to add some packages from LEDE repo, so it won't be used with "stock" firmware.

Any other recommendations for something that can be ordered/shipped out of Asia?

#2

Oh, the reason I'm posting this, is that ToH, as great and helpful as it is, doesn't have regional availability field (for obvious reasons).

#3

I would caution about MT76 based 802.11AC devices for now- older kernels with Ralink SDK are still faster and more stable than the OSS driver- I've been fighting a non-GLinet device for over a month now. I can't find a single binary released by @alzhao, so I can't be sure how functional it is. It appears to be based on Designated Driver still- or 15.05.1- http://www.gl-inet.com/firmware/mt750/v1/

@alzhao be the person to ask about the 802.11AC support. When I was looking at the MT-300M, I was notified that the 802.11AC support was preliminary, but not ready for production. :slight_smile:

I have a GL-MT300A, and I adore it for it's simplicity and portability, but it does not have 802.11ac, nor 4 lan ports.

If you don't mind a kernel built against the Ralink SDK, there are many devices based on the ZBT-1326 which claim to be OpenWRT- and they are- but built against the binary blob, meaning that if you install a real OpenWRT/LEDE build on it, the router becomes quite unusable.

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#4

Thank you for your reply. In the past I've used GL-inet supplied 15.05-based Image Builder to create custom images for MT300N and WiFi experience in those images was great. With LEDE 17.01 out, 15.05-based image is a hard sell.

@sholwe -- any suggestions for a suitable substitution?

#5

You can actually build your own LEDE 17.01 from the new GL-Inet base that isn't yet in the mainstream- https://github.com/domino-team/lede-1701

I'd get something Atheros (ath10k) based- but I'm too cheap to pay for one. :slight_smile:

The ZyXEL NBG6616 looks like it'd be a good fit for your needs.

#6

Thanks. Sadly I couldn't find that Zyxel model on aliexpress.

#7

If you check that routers' hardware on WikiDevi, you should be able to identify similar devices which are available via AliExpress, and cross reference 17.01.1's supported hardware table. There are many clones in China, but be aware that MT76 is still fairly unstable for general purposes.