Yes, fully agree to your statement above, under certain circumstances flashing OpenWRT can breath NEW life to a less feature (less bell & whistles) to a boring router (especially those firmware made by D-Link) waiting for the right time to chuck it into the bin.
Sorry, I am not qualified to give such a recommendation, as I have zero experience with qualcomm devices, hence I cannot say anything about their quality. I don't know if and how deep qualcomm employees are involved in OpenWrt development. I see lots of commits that add qualcomm devices and activity revolving around Qualcomm support. Looking at the toh, there are some devices with great hardware. If this good hardware translates into good performance, I don't know. I would suggest to either wait for somebody, who can answer this question based on more experience or you look up qualcomm devices and their support threads in this forum.
There is also lots of activity involving other device architecturs and manufacturers too. It's just that, if you want to have wifi 6, then you are basically limited to go with one of these two at the current time. This may be subject to change.
1 Like
Can you give examples of this configuration?
I did nothing really special. It's mostly vanilla OpenWrt. I simply followed this guide: https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wifi/relay_configuration.
- SSID's are separate.
- Encryption is wpa2 psk
- Topology: main router > wifi 5 (802.11ac) > dap-x1860 > wifi 6 (802.11ax) > clients
- Avoid interference by having neighbouring devices use different wifi channels.
relayd unfortunately cuts wifi throughput in half, so if you can, use wds or another solution instead, but this was impossible for me, as unfortunately our main router (not supported by OpenWrt and still on OEM) does not support wds and we are planning to use it until our village receives fiber cables or it breaks down.
every kind of repeter cut speed in half
Ah I misunderstood, I thought there was advice for extended the range of a single node 
yes, the device only reaches further distance as compared to the original OEM.
Not sure, but you might be right. WDS also seems to cut speed in half for wifi > repeater > wifi connections as described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_distribution_system
To my understanding, this is what I think it is true:
Case No.1
WDS master (AX main router) >>>>>>> <<<<<<< WDS AX Client
Case No. 2
WDS AX master (main router) ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| WDS AX Client(1)
|||||||||||||||||||
WDS AX Client (2)
Case No.1 = WDS AX Client gets Full Speed
Case No.2 = WDS AX Client 1 shares the full speed (1/2), so, WDS AX Client 2 also gets 1/2 speed
Case No.3
AX main router >>>>>>> <<<<<<< client bridge AX router + AX AP
Laptop 1 NIC connects to client bridge AX router via Ethernet cable = get FULL speed.
Laptop 2 AX client >>>>wifi<<<< connects to AX AP, gets 1/2 speed.
May I ask how you manage to get the following:
-
Display the IP v4 address and not IP v6 address
In my case I have both. Some devices are showing IP v4 addresses and some are showing IP v6 addresses. -
How to get VHT-NSS 2, this indicates Beamforming is turned ON according to @lleachii referring to his reply in this post: Redmi AX6S / Xiaomi AX3200 Beam Forming? - #5 by lleachii
Ensure your clients gets an IPv4 address via DHCP.
I don't understand your wording "get" - nonetheless:
- Set the AP to AX
- Have at least an N client
- Wait (the devices themselves determine if they need to use 2 spacial streams - not you)
If you're using this as your only indication of beamforming - then you misunderstand. I advise reviewing the included references.
I did not read the reference attached.
But I am confused. I have read it a third time. You are answering the OP question:Is there a way to tell if the beam forming is working?
and your answer was:
Well, I know it needs to be using at least 2 antennas, and the client must be at least 802.11ac.
This would be displayed by the RX or TX as a VHT-NSS value >= 2 on the OpenWrt display. AC clients will only show a TX value of 2, as they only RX beamformed signals.
i think we are getting a little bit distracted and move away from the main topic of this thread, which is (open source) wifi performance. Might be better to open a new topic and tagg me there.
To answer your question though:
-
VHT-NSS 2 is set automatically. I have not changed anything in my config to actively enable this setting.
I think there was a commit in autumn/winter 2022 that enabled beamforming by default via mt76 driver in master snapshots, if I remember correctly.Edit: there is the "beamformer" and "beamformee" settings. Any device that shapes its transmitted frames is called a beamformer, and a receiver of such frames is called a beamformee [1]. Beamformee was enabled by default in OpenWrt master snapshots for 802.11ax via commit [2].
-
Why is it only ipv4? - Good question
I don't know.
Link [1]: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/80211ac-a-survival/9781449357702/ch04.html
Link [2]: https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/commit/590eaaeed59a9eb6637a1480587fc410de182523
1 Like
I edited my reply. I never intended my post to be used as a reference to indicate "beamforming is on at all times".
Your post here seems to imply that was my intention. Citing my post just seems misplaced to me.
I'd folllow these instructions 
I'm aware (also free free to properly quote), there's also other links and references.
2 Likes
Yes, I am steering away from the main topic. I will end here. 
I asked because, my phone is Wifi6 capable, and I cannot see this: VNT-NSS display on my AX openWrt router, unless is not a 2x2 (2 antennas) device.
Yes, my bad. Old habit.
1 Like
As far as I am aware:
HT = High troughput = 802.11n (wifi 4)
VHT = Very High Throughput = 802.11ac (wifi 5)
HE = High Efficiency = 802.11ax (wifi 6)
3 Likes
OMG, mine is showing HE 
3 Likes
This topic was automatically closed 10 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.