Linksys WRT 3200 ACM router?

That's the name of the CPU. What you're looking for is the Avastar 88W8964.

In general, with office usage and media consumption (youtube, netflix) - you'd be fine using it's wireless. It is rock solid and hasn't caused trouble as long as you don't go stray from the normal configuration and have thoroughly read and understood it's quirks.

The problem with the wireless functionality going forward, is that no one from the company will be maintaining it. Marvell's wireless business unit has been bought out by
NXP. Linksys and it's parent company, Belkin has been bought by Foxconn.

Linux wireless is a complex framework with the interaction of hostapd, mac80211, nl80211, cfg80211, the driver, then the firmware.

If the other parts keep getting updated, the driver and the firmware will eventually lose reliability due to the changing ABI in Linux.

Have a look at:

Are any issues in the list a feature you're expecting to work/use?

Namely:

  • DFS
  • IBSS
  • Mesh
  • Monitor Mode
  • WPA3
  • 802.11w
  • Operating IoT devices that use the esp8266
  • Connecting some android clients (that aren't Samsung or flagship devices)

There are issues with ping, but they can be ameliorated by disabling aggregation (AMSDU). The code is a bit shady in that if you're running a ping command, it bypasses aggregation.

The WRT AC series are a great router, not so much a wireless access point. I recommend you buy one used. Once cheaper AX APs come out (using ath11k), rip off the antennas from the 3200ACM and run wireless on a separate device with the money you saved from buying used.

2 Likes

My view is to just get the blue box. Ethernet will work amazingly. Wireless will most likely be acceptable. Just don't try running WPA3 (nothing supports it yet anyway. except maybe iPhones. But then again WPA3 is not a necessity.)

We are still talking about a WAN link maxing out at 6 MBit/s… You don't need mvebu for that (we're not talking about WAN speeds exceeding >>350 MBit/s), there's no need to contend with the limitations (unfixed bugs) of mwlwifi. ipq40xx/ ipq806x will do just fine (total overkill as well, but the OP is looking for a highend router - for whatever unclear reasons), even most of the better ath79/ lantiq vr9 or mt7621 devices would be fine as well.

There is no reason not to go with the Netgear r7800 or ZyXEL NBG6817 here (which are not plagued with wireless issues), aside from picking something much cheaper (ipq40xx, mt7621, ath79, lantiq vr9, …), unless the OP is expecting a massive improvement on the WAN speed soon (beyond 400-450 MBit/s).

It neither makes sense to wait for 'cheap' QCA/ ath11k based APs, to supplement mvebu as wired router - ipq807x can do routing at (more than-) 1 GBit/s linespeed just fine on its own (in software, without NSS/ NPU assistance). If that's your target, there wouldn't be any reason to keep the mvebu device, if you want ipq807x for the WLAN side already.

--
and no, the TEW-827DRU is not a solution. v1 would be ipq8064, but doesn't have OpenWrt support (external patches exist), but nowadays only the v2 with mt7621 remains on the market, which is not supported on OpenWrt either (no patches exist for this one).

2 Likes

Unlike the other solutions, mvebu has mostly upstreamed code (with the exception of wireless of course). I trust the kernel community to take better care of it.

ipq is still in development. I don't trust it to be completely stable. mt7621's ethernet driver is not stable at all. It dies around 7-8 days in my experience. The mainline ethernet driver does not have this issue but because of DSA, it's slower.

The WRT3200ACM is not completely perfect, but it has more stability than everything else. Probably because everything is already upstreamed.

3 Likes

The price between the WRT3200ACM and the R7800 is a wash $174 vs $167 listed on Amazon. Both of these routers i guess were considered "high-end" when they were initially released back in 2015-2016 ... now i would think they would be considered "mid-range". Something i have to consider - is construction here in Nicaragua is much different from the US - the majority of homes are built completely with cinder block - including internal walls .... drywall is just now starting to be utilized ... i plan on using it as much as possible with our new home but the exterior and load bearing walls will still be cinder block. There is the potential for higher download bandwidth - currently i am paying $92 per month for 6Mbs - i recently tried another company - Moviestar (owned by Dish) which had 15Mbs but the company was so screwed up - my service was turned off 4 times in the first month and a half because they didn't have their act together - it wasn't worth the hassle. Fiber optic is slowly creeping into the infrastructure but not available in my area at the moment.
In terms of the issues - the only one that stands out for me is potential issues with Android clients. But - the buyout of Linksys is concerning ... having previously worked in IT for 30+ years - i have experienced first hand - good software/hardware etc - that either went to sh!t because of changes or was left to die on the vine from lack of continued development after a change of company ownership. I have to make a decision here in the next day or so (going to order from Amazon and have them shipped to my hotel) at this point will likely go with a couple of Netgear 4XS R7800's.

I know this thread sounds like overkill for my requirements but there just isn't that many options here and i only get back to the US about once a year.

If the house is still under construction, make sure to put as much CAT6 wire into the walls as you can justify. During construction, or major overhauls, doing so is (relatively) cheap - and having every room (even floors, better more that one wire) connected helps adding additional APs later. Especially the fast 5 GHz band is strongly affected by walls, multiple weak (cheap) APs distributed over the house tend to provide much better results than trying to reach everything from a single location (and you can get 2-3 ipq4018 devices for the price of a single ipq806x or mvebu one).

We're about to break ground in a couple weeks - actually waiting on the first draft of the electrical plans - definitely including CAT6. Any recommendations on APs? Any minimum AC requirement on the AP?

Checking what i have on hand - have a TP-LINK TL-WR743ND - which is listed as "discontinued" on the Openwrt device list - i have a TP-Link TL-WR940N v. 6.1 which appears to be support on the Openwrt list - and i have the TP-LINK TL1043ND - currently running Openwrt as my vpn solution. Guessing the TP-Links should be sufficient?

1 Like

These days you usually want concurrent dual-band. ipq40xx (>=256 MB RAM are a hard requirement here, that explicitly precludes the ASUS RT-AC58U/ RT-ACRH13, basically all other supported ones should be fine) or mt7621 based devices come to mind.

My story is buying the 3200 for my gf as I once had the original wrt1900acs and it was fine. Then she got hit by https://github.com/kaloz/mwlwifi/issues/278 so I traded her for my Netgear 6220 as it just worked. Then another friend had a broken router after the dog chewed it , so I offered the 3200 and bought myself a c7 to be different. I ended up getting the 3200 back again because of the same wifi issue my gf had! It's now sitting under my c7, unused.

Yes, there is a work around for the 3200 issues. But now it looks like it can never support WPA3? I don't know why anybody would consider buying an abandoned product when there are supported choices out there.

Frankly if I were you I'd get an adequate mt76 device like the Netgear 6220. It's good enough. In a year you'll want to upgrade to an ath11k device to get 802.11ac, like the Netgear rax120, regardless of picking the perfect 802.11ac device.

Consider splitting the routing and access point functionality. If I had no hardware and were planning a new install for less than 100Mbps, I would look at a Raspberry Pi 4, a Tp-Link TL-SG108PE with PoE, and a couple TP-Link EAP access points. You could put OpenWrt on the Pi but leave the access points with the stock firmware which will have the best support for the wifi.

For substantially less than 500Mbps you can simply use two VLANs for the WAN and LAN. For anything over 350Mbps you'd probably move to an x86 router solution, or maybe add a USB 3.0 NIC.

After long consideration - going with the Netgear R7800's at $165 each on Amazon. At that price - feels like a pretty good value for the $$ and comparable or better than anything else in the same price range. Appreciate all of the comments/feedback - will definitely be running OpenWrt on all devices going forward.

2 Likes

@jeff I just did a quick test of loading a game and looking at its in game ping. With my c7 it was a constant 54. With the wrt3200acm it was often in the high 50s, but would sometimes climb into the triple digits! I saw your recent CPU performance post. Any chance you're working on a follow up for consistent good pings on wifi? I'm sure a lot of others also would love to have accurate measurements of quality of wifi for when they're looking into a new purchase.

Use SQM! My pings are max 27ms in my WRT32X which is just a WRT3200 same hardware just different partition scheme.

Also check channels your using make sure they aren't congested.

IIRC SQM was enabled on both. Are you worried about channel congestion from other devices or neighbours? Either way it was an apples to apples comparison.

So if SQM is enabled and set correctly then that rules out that.

You say between the C7 and the WRT3200ACM was apples to apples, even with the same firmware aka OpenWRT they are completely different when it concerns Wireless Drivers etc.

I assume that the latency issue is on Wireless?

Have you tried placing

echo 2 > /proc/irq/50/smp_affinity
echo 2 > /proc/irq/49/smp_affinity

Into the Local Startup section of the WebGUI's System -> Startup area ?

As for concerns i have about interference from other AP's due to channel it is vaild heck it can even be someone running an AP scanning tool such as Wifi Tool or WinFi as these do increase latency when scanning. It can be anything.

So firstly check your AP Channels making sure its not in a congested channel range as Channel 6 and 11 are the most commonly used channels and using AUTO settings for wireless channel will not always save the day.

If its not a channel congestion issue then try the Local Startup trick and see if that helps.

If that doesn't work then i suggest opening your own topic requesting help with a copy of your /etc/config/wireless file with SSID and PSK keys removed as well as the MAC address.

I have it and it works great, it also features a good dual boot.

Probably a bit overpowered, meaning several features are not supported by wifi devices, even iPhone and such.

Still, it's really good

This topic was automatically closed 10 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.