No, it's not.
The Belkin feels really hard to find. Where do/did you get your rt 3200? I can only find a „UK“ edition on belkin.com for 129€.
ebay also lists it, but again from UK only.
Probably the UK causes some Wifi side effects, when used in other regions, so I do not want to order a UK version for non-UK usage. Could be that it is simply not yet available in other countries.
While I'm not familiar with the regdom related quirks of the mt76 driver, a UK device should be fine for the whole ETSI region (so continental Europe and Australia as well), it will come with a BS 1363 (Type G) power plug rated at 230 VAC though.
The rt3200 (and its twin, the Linksys E8450) is a very interesting device - something I'd definitively suggest an enthusiast to look at, but for your use-case of deploying them commercially, it might still be a little early to recommend this one right now (support for it is still rather young, some things are still in a bit of flux, wifi6 rates still need -trivial- patching). Great device, I'd love to buy one myself - but given Brexit, shipping- and customs costs I've let it pass for now (its introductory price was 79.99 GBP (including 20% VAT), it's now selling for 99.99 GBP shipping/ customs and German VAT add another 19% on top - so roughly 25 EUR importing fees, no, thanks). I'm not saying that this device wouldn't be worth ~145 EUR (compared to the ~93 EUR it shipped for originally in the UK), but with the knowledge how much of it would be wasted in bureaucracy and double taxation, I'll pass.
2 Likes
Going back to my original question - how supportable should something like this https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002198987728.html be by OpenWRT and mt76? It is advertised to be MTK7621 + MTK7905 based and it seems to be similar to X5000R, but is cheaper and has a USB port and imo is more interesting.
1 Like
That should be relatively easy - with the only caveat of an unclear support state of mt7905e (I don't see '7905' anywhere in the current mt76 driver, however that might internally be treated as mt7915e with less streams - I don't know).
Getting an mt7621a SOC supported is generally straight forward, contrary to mt7622b there is neither secure boot to consider (not an issue with the Linksys E8450/ Belkin rt3200, but with some other mt7622b+mt7915e routers), other than that you 'just' depend on mt76 driver/ firmware support. Given the CPU performance of the mt7621a SOC and the needs one usually expects from a wifi6 device, I personally wouldn't really feel comfortable with that combination though.
Disclaimer: in the end you won't know about the details, until such a device has landed on the desk of an OpenWrt developer or regular contributor (or your own), nor before at least tentative patches have been made available. Beforehand it's a bet with a rather positive outlook, but still a reasonable chance of total failure.
1 Like
I have a DIR-3060. i had it running as an access point in my home network top-level managed by openwrt. the DIR-3060 wifi performance was very fast and very strong. of course i want it to run openwrt also....
I just opened up the case on the DIR-3060 .
so far -
serial access is at 57600/N/8/1, not 115200 baud.
Uboot cant be interrupted until a firmware image decrypts and loads.. this could be a major tripping point.
I'll be posting bootlogs over the weekend.
OK -
i have started a thred with information about this device here: Dir3060 support
Hello. It looks like https://es.aliexpress.com/item/1005001615385602.html can be had for about 80 euros including shipping and it has MT7622 and MT7915A and has 16mb storage + 256mb ram. How supportable would it be? I haven't heard of tplink locking bootloaders/firmware, but might it have secure boot or something?
1 Like
To the best of my (limited) knowledge, the TL-XDR3230 has secure boot activated - throwing a spanner in the works.
1 Like
Hello. It looks like RT3200 is selling for 75£ on Amazon UK, which comes out to 100 euros with the taxes and shipping to Europe. Is this better or still too much?
3 Likes
Performance seems poor so far for this new router. I got my WRT32X years ago and it can do 940 Mbit without SQM and 750 Mbit with SQM cake and A+ bufferbloat/quality ratings. It also has USB 3.0 for samba4 storage 100-120 MB/s.
is this with stock firmware or mt76?
i've been thinking about adding one of these suckers to the fold, but i'm torn.
i could go for the RAX40 (lantiq) and REALLY make a moat, or add a 7921/7915/whatever using the most recent GPL mt_wifi and kick mt76 in the jum jums a few more times.
there is no comparison between the stock driver and mt76 for ralink stuff. this is not a deliberate slight against mt76. it's just an observation corroborated by many.
Installed Openwrt on X5000R, UI only shows ac/g/n no ax. How can I check if ax mode is enable and running?
Luci does not support ax. You can only configure it via the command line.
2 Likes
Thanks for the info. How do I check via the command line to see the ax mode is running?
I think iwinfo has been patched. You can try that.
Or a wifi analyser app on any client
iwinfo gives this on my X5000R:
wlan0 ESSID: "xxxxxx"
Access Point: 5C:92:5E:9B:FF:50
Mode: Master Channel: 11 (2.462 GHz)
Center Channel 1: 11 2: unknown
Tx-Power: 20 dBm Link Quality: 42/70
Signal: -68 dBm Noise: unknown
Bit Rate: 47.9 MBit/s
Encryption: WPA2 PSK (CCMP)
Type: nl80211 HW Mode(s): 802.11bgn
Hardware: 14C3:7915 14C3:7915 [MediaTek MT7915E]
TX power offset: none
Frequency offset: none
Supports VAPs: yes PHY name: phy0
wlan1 ESSID: "xxxxxx"
Access Point: 00:0C:43:4A:21:4E
Mode: Master Channel: 36 (5.180 GHz)
Center Channel 1: 42 2: unknown
Tx-Power: 20 dBm Link Quality: 43/70
Signal: -67 dBm Noise: unknown
Bit Rate: 563.3 MBit/s
Encryption: WPA2 PSK (CCMP)
Type: nl80211 HW Mode(s): 802.11nac
Hardware: 14C3:7915 14C3:7915 [MediaTek MT7915E]
TX power offset: none
Frequency offset: none
Supports VAPs: yes PHY name: phy1
Does this mean the ax mode is not enabled?
Either it's not enabled, or iwinfo doesn't understand it.
Can you post your wireless config?
Remove any keys or passwords first.
Hmm... How to dump wireless configuration via command line? Not sure if I understand what you meant.
cat /etc/config/wireless
If you haven't touched the wireless config manually it's definitely not in AX mode.
config wifi-device 'radio0'
option type 'mac80211'
option path '1e140000.pcie/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:02:00.0'
option htmode 'HT20'
option cell_density '0'
config wifi-iface 'default_radio0'
option device 'radio0'
option network 'lan'
option mode 'ap'
option ssid 'xxx'
option encryption 'psk2'
option key 'xxxx12345'
config wifi-device 'radio1'
option type 'mac80211'
option hwmode '11a'
option path '1e140000.pcie/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:02:00.0+1'
option htmode 'VHT80'
option cell_density '0'
config wifi-iface 'default_radio1'
option device 'radio1'
option network 'lan'
option mode 'ap'
option ssid 'xxx'
option encryption 'psk2'
option key 'xxxxx12345'
type or paste code here
How should I enable AX mode?