Linksys E8450 best for gigabit dumb AP?

I have a WAX202 running OpenWRT 22.03.3, connected over gigabit ethernet to my Protectli VP2410 router, which provides gigabit routing for my FTTH Internet. I'm able to saturate the connection over ethernet. iperf3 throughout my wired network reaches the usual 940 Mbit/s. Every device on the network can reach those speeds without issue.

The only bottleneck is the WAX202, so I'd like to upgrade to something faster. I've done some searching and reading on the forums (particularly in this stickied thread) and it looks like the Linksys E8450 may be the best choice for OpenWRT right now for saturating my gigabit network over wifi. Are there other options? I also briefly looked at the Banana Pi BPI-R3, though I'm not sure of its performance. I was considering the Banana Pi BPI-W3 but it appears you need both Windows and a soldering iron to install an OS on that board, and I have neither.

I specifically and solely want a dumb AP. As I said above, I've made the investments throughout the rest of my network (router, switches, cables, clients) which the above thread outlines for gigabit, and the Protectli can still saturate my connection while doing NAT. The only bottleneck is my wifi. I'm happy to invest in expensive hardware to maximize my speeds. In terms of availability, I'm in the US, but am comfortable ordering from e.g. AliExpress or something else. I only have two real requirements: speed and quiet. I'd prefer something fanless, but something mostly silent like my NUC is fine, too. x86 is fine, I just want faster wifi. I'm not afraid of building OpenWRT from source, or applying custom patches, or even installing a generic Linux distro and configuring from the ground up; I just want faster wifi and I'm willing to spend the money and do the work for it.

WAX206
WRX36

are probably the ones easiest to find, depending on where you live.

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It looks like I can order them all online; I'm not even going to bother checking local stores since we don't have much in the way of electronics stores in the big city where I live (thanks, Amazon...). One point I do note that differentiates these two is that the WAX206 doesn't support ax on 2.4 GHz. I don't think this will be an issue, but something to consider. Any reason to avoid the Linksys? I'm also not concerned with distance or walls. I'm in a comparatively small apartment and am able to set up an access point in each room.

Not really, the ones I mentioned have 2.5GbE uplink ports though.

With most clients being 2x2, and 80 MHz effectively the practical limit, you are unlikely to see ~940 MBit/s over the air in practice, pretty much regardless of the hardware. Under ideal circumstances, around 700-800 MBit/s are more likely with 2x2/ HE80, less in a crowded environment or with many connected clients.

While the suggested devices are certainly good options, it's questionable if they will make enough of a difference to be worth it (for a pure AP, in router capacity this might be evaluated differently).

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I just now looked at the specs for my client devices and, indeed, they are only 2x2 and 80 MHz :frowning: I had (of course, wrongly) assumed that they were more capable. Thank you for pointing out that my clients are the limiting factor here! Something else to consider. I am looking at some upgrades in the very near term, though, so I'm happy to do some future-proofing.

The more capable AP is still a benefit in that you can have multiple clients at high speeds simultaneously.