Linksys wrt3200acm vs Netgear R7800

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

I have been running openWRT on my Inksys WRT3200ACM for a while now, and have been pretty happyu with it.

I recently upgraded to 21.02.1 and have been having some issues with the router, which from forum threads tells me it's an issue with the Marvell wireless chipset used. It's drive is closed source, complete crap, and the vendor has stopped supporting it. I know there is a reverse engineered open-source driver and I am guessing that's what openWRT uses.

I have a NetGear R7800 sitting on a shelf, unused. I was debating switching routers and putting the R7800 on the WRT3200ACM's place, since it's not a "driver dead end."

Does anyone have any experience with the R7800 vs WRT3200ACM? On paper the WRT3200ACM looks better.

The issue I'm having with the WRT3200ACM is just random dropouts, especially on the 5 Ghz network. My laptop will hang while accessing the Internet and either:

  1. I will disconnect from the WiFi and then 10-15 seconds later reconnet.
  2. My device stays connected to the WiFi, but tells me the WiFi network I am on has no Internet access and them 15-30 seconds later it suddenly has Internet access again.

Yes, I have changed channels, and scanned the WiFi networks in my area to see what channels other people are using, so I don't conflict.

I understand that I should just swap them out and see what happens. But I have a wife WFH and 2 kids taking classes from home and doing online homework at night, so a router swap is kind of a PITA.

And, if I do swap routers, since both routers would be on 21.02.1, can I backup the config and restore it on the R7800 or am I going to have to configure it by hand?

2

Use the WRT3200 as wired router, and the R7800 as AP ?

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3

What benefit do I get by doing that vs just swapping it out?

4

Depends on your use case, but if the WRT3200 is more powerful, it'll be capable of handling a faster internet connection than the R7800.

It also have a larger flash, but it's probably off less importance - 128 vs 256MB.

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5

Ah. Good point.

6

Looks like the Linksys is 1866 Mhz and the Netgear is 1700 Mhz.

I should do a speedtest on both and see which numbers come up better.

7

I have both WRT3200ACM and R7800.

  • WRT3200ACM has more raw CPU power, but has abandoned lousy wifi driver

  • R7800 has slightly less CPU power (does not do QoS on full gigabyte ISP connection), but has well supported wifi driver that actually works.

R7800 should be ok for you, assuming that your ISP traffic load/bandwidth is only some 200-300 Mbit/s.

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8

I have bidirectional gigabit Verizon FiOS.

On a wired connection, I'm getting about 780 Mbit/600 Mbit on the WRT3200ACM.

I guess it's time to do some testing. With 2 kids and a wife all doing stuff remotely, I am using SQM.

9

Then the idea of using WRT3200ACM for wired sounds good.
Use R7800 as a dumb AP.

10

I've got both and these days the wrt3200acm is collecting dust. Make some time to switch to the 7800, it's worth it.

If you have more than 32 devices connected you need to tweak a text file.

If you do need more throughput you can look at Ipq806x NSS threads. They're getting close to gigabit, but not from an official release.

11

47 devices. What's the text file tweak?

12

You can always put the low bandwidth devices, like IoTs, on the wrt3200, on a separate WLAN.

If you got any, that is ,)

13

You will need to create it beside the firmware.
https://www.candelatech.com/ath10k-10.4.php#config

Basically you just decrease the vdevs and increase the active connections.

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14

I swapped routers about 10 minutes ago. I'm running stock firmware on the router for now, just so I can get a baseline.

So far, Internet speed tests have all been consistently over 900 Mbits download and over 700 Mbit upload on wired, and my internted speeds on wireless AC are around 400-500 Mbit in 5Ghz AC connection.

I'm going to leave it this way for now and put openWRT on it over the weekend, when the family all sleeps in and doesn't need the Internet for home/school.

15

Good solution .... I have a similar setup running several Wireguard interfaces:

The WRT3200 wired doing routing/policy only, assisted by a couple of AP's (Asus RT-AC86U & AC68U).

Example: an iMac running wireless 5GHz has a speed of 650 Mbps Wireguard. Pretty good.