That is exactly what I'm thinking. We tested both the WRT1900 and the WRT 1200. The majority of users will be on 2.4Ghz.
When I'm the only user on 2.4Ghz, I can achieve speeds of 2.8-3.2 MBps. When testing 5 Ghz at the same time on an other device, that device can download with around 20Mbps.
But my main focus is on 2.4Ghz. When I connect a second client on 2.4Ghz, the speeds drops to around 2MBps. With a third client, it drops further, etc.
When we field tested it with 80-90 clients, it took around 15 minutes to download a 25 MB file. 60% 2.4Ghz users, 40% 5Ghz users.
Also I ran out of IPs, but that's just a minor issue, wrong DHCP setup ;(
This brings me to the following conclusion
If the 2.4Ghz band has a cap of 54Mbps/2 = 27 Mbps AND I have to share the bandwith with all the clients, that means that I need an AP for every 5-10 people to achieve reasonable download speeds, right?
Therefore I tested a setup with one central WRT1200 as file server, and several cheaper APs connected to the LAN ports. This works, but the download is not very stable. It pauses....goes...pauses...goes...
The load of the WRT1200 is 2.05, 1.98, 1.89, but when I execute 'top' all processes use 0% CPU. I'm wondering what causes the CPU load... but that's for the next time.
Add to your math that all those clients fighting to get to the APV will produce thouthands of wifi "collissions", meaning transmitting one over the other... That introduces a delay in the retry... So your real life scenario is even worse. You need more APs
Time for a heads up: I discarded the Linksys WRT1200 and the WRT1900 because the WiFi is very unstable with many users. I am now testing with the TP-Link C2600 and so far this has been a really good choice. It's really stable and works very well.
I'm also testing with the above mentioned MediaTEK chips (bought a dev board) but the lack of drivers is going to be a problem. This will take some time to get it working. So that will be the cheapest choice, but the most time consuming....
I too am curious. I'm likely getting the WRT3200ACM or WRT32X as my next router because its USB 3.0 / NAS storage performance so strong (100MB/s read/write is common on reviews) along with great performance elsewhere too. Also people indicate WiFi is much better now with the new drivers.
@phinn , why in the world would you like to have such a throughput in your USB3 connection to your router? Only thing I can think of is if you're going to use the router as your NAS device, is that it?
Yeah its (WRT) got great storage performance and decent WiFi, but 5Ghz performance the R7800 is still usually the best in most reviews I’ve seen and HT160 works well with it at least in stock. The QCA9984 is probably the best consumer WiFi chip in my opinion at the moment. I suppose the WRT makes sense if you don’t have a NAS and are going to use a wired PC and use the router itself as a NAS.
No I don't have a NAS and see no need to get one when I can connect a 3TB USB 3.0 hard drive to a WRT3200ACM or WRT32X and get nearly 100MB/s read/write. Most low/mid range NAS boxes can't even do that.
Yes I know R7800 is a great router too with excellent wifi. Honestly wifi is the lowest thing on my list as they all seem "good enough" with wifi. Top end LAN-LAN, LAN-WAN over wired, and fast shaping is more important and both routers seem to do very well there.
Along with fast USB 3.0 support, OpenWrt is important. I think it's nearly a toss up between the two.
Wifi on the WRT3200ACM(s) works great for me at least with various devices using the 5Ghz network, haven't played around much with 2.4Ghz to be honest. eSATA also works just fine. Running master/trunk (custom builds however just minor changes), can't say how well the release branches perform.
Very interesting. I have all 5GHz capable devices anyway. Don't think that's what @anomeome was eluding to though because that's not specific to wrtpac.
USB3.1 (not 3.0) is actually faster than (e)SATA on paper however due to how USB works you'll most likely never see such speeds anywhere near the specs on paper. eSATA in general is more or less your standard AHCI controller with an external port, sometimes also providing power for the device (usually 5v only). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESATAp
The WRT3200ACM provides 5v so you can drive a 2.5" HDD directly with the appropriate cable.
In short, it's faster, uses less CPU and in most cases much more reliable as many USB to SATA controllers are dodgy at best. ASMedia is probably the controller brand you want to go for if you're looking for an adapter. Just make sure you get ASM1153* or newer as there still are a lot of old USB controllers around (that applies for all brands). From what I've seen newer VIA Labs controllers should be pretty nice too.
The problem is nothing seems to actually use eSATA anymore. Been looking for a simple 2.5" external drive in the 3TB range for the WRT3200ACM, but they are all USB 3.0. I don't mind buying a separate enclosure and drive but there are no reviews for eSATA around, it seems like a dead standard. My USB 3.0 external drive always worked well on my R7000 DD-WRT at around 25MB/s read/write. I was hoping to move that over to the WRT because reviews show it's a beast at around 100MB/s rw. There should be nothing wrong with USB 3.x at least according to reviews.
In most cases you'll need a 3rd party enclosure, SSDs doesn't expose the PCB so you can use those without any external casing if you want to be a bit cheap
