Mini repeater recommendation needed, wall outlet form factor

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

There is a thread for favorite cheap and fav enthusiast device, but kind of no one for fav compact WiFi repeaters.

For IoT device usage in my basement, I would need a simple compact WiFi repeater with OpenWRT support, as distance is to far to my main router.

I would be looking for something with a similar casing form like the Apple Airport Express first generation or a power outlet AVM Fritz repeater wall box. Basically something where power supply and router casing is the same single compact plastic box, just plugged into the wall power outlet and thats it.

Idealy with 1 LAN connection (so I can change it from WiFi repeater mode to access point in the future). Latency and throughput does not really matter. WiFi n is a must, WiFi AC would be nice to have. Idealy with more than 8 MB Flash and idealy at least 128MB RAM.

Does anyone have a device recommendation or a keyword idea to look for in the device database?

1 Like
2

What about these, if you already hint at that vendor?

at this point I would strongly favour ipq40xx based ones, so e.g. the last two in that list.

Disclaimer: I don't have personal experience with either of those; do check their device pages in the wiki -before buying anything- for the gory details.

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3

While not quite the form factor you're looking for, the ipq4019 based tri-radio (especially if your location is still in range for 5 GHz uplink reception) 'mesh satellites' might also be worth looking at, e.g. the ASUS MAP-AC2200, which is fully supported, or some of its competitors which are in various states of (pending-) support.

4

Netgear EX6150 v2 (note only v2) is IPQ4018 based. I have a pair of them that I use for various purposes, can't vouch for them as repeaters since that's about the only thing I don't use them for, but excellent AP/one-armed router, works perfectly out of the box with OpenWRT, has plenty of ram and CPU for running additional apps. Plenty of them on ebay.

5

I'm using a TP-Link RE650 v1 with 21.02.0-rc1 and relayd. It has 1 LAN connection, 16 MB Flash and 128 MB RAM.

My setup is very simple: HomeRouter(not OpenWRT) -- 5Ghz -- RE650 (OpenWRT) -- 2.4Ghz -- Laptop

6

Thanks for AVM tip, I am now trying out a couple of AVM Fritz 1200s to replace my aging TL-W860REs.

Even with a custom, stripped-down, bare minimum image, W860RE isn't able to fit 21.02 releases with Luci + SSL anymore, wolfssl kills it.

7

Hello xealing,

I just bought an RE650 V1 as a replacemant for my aging WR710.
I would like to do the same setup as you with 5 GHz uplink to a Fritzbox (Stock-FW) and 2,4 GHz to the Clients. I probably have to use relayd again, I guess.
Could you give me some hints?

Thanks, Martin

8

read https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wifi/relay_configuration

9

Thanks frollic, that has been my setup with the WR710 for years now.
Using the 5 GHz uplink can probably be done in a similar way.
I just wanted to know, if xealing has some additional hardwarespecific hints.

10

See also https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_mains-powered
This should cover the type of devices you are searching for.

@chrissi29 Please open a new topic for your question regarding configuration.
This topic is only for hardware recommendations.

11

Any news in the last year regarding the wall outlet WLAN repeaters that OpenWRT supports? My TP-Link RE450 has slowly become obsolete.

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The https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_mains-powered is unfortunately not very comprehensive, because not only wall outlet wifi-repeater are listed.

12

D-Link DAP-X1860 A1 ?

ideally you want a triple radio device, but those won't be wall warts

2 Likes
13

The Cudy RE3000 has been added to supported devices recently
See https://openwrt.org/toh/hwdata/cudy/cudy_re3000_v1
and https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/pull/14781