Around 60 Eur.
My main goal its to repeat a wireless peap signal,but the router must have external antennas because signal its weak without but I am hopping with some nice dbi he will catch even the 5ghz to extend, also a brand without different versions in each model to avoid problems and of course explore what OpenWrt have to offer at his maximum or almost because im very curious about it.
If you're not within the intended general user coverage area of the AP, I would suggest a CPE (Mikrotik, Unifi etc) as those have a built-in gain antenna.
EAP authentication is separate from the radio system you just need enough memory for the full wpad install which is basically any model with the recommended memory sizes of at least 8/64.
I catch 2.4GHz (20% signal with my laptop) inside 1 division at home and both bands in the street, the source its somewhere inside a building in front at few meters from me.
Whats CPE?
Full wpad have peap?
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CPE stands for Customer Premises Equipment. It is used in situations where an internet service provider uses relatively long-range WiFi to serve customers from another building or tower. Typically they are mounted on the outside of a building but can also be used indoors to beam through a window or worst case through a wall.
For example: (no endorsement)
Most of these can run OpenWrt.
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As I use three R6220s at my home I can support the statement that it is very stable (as of 18.06.2).
Advantages of the R6220: cheap (depends on the country you are coming from), a lot of memory (128MB NAND/128MB RAM), dual core CPU, 2.4/5 GHz bands working reliable (if you don't run into the erase block issue), GBit Ethernet ports, AP/VLAN support, 4 SSIDs per band, Mesh support - and very important: a great tool (nmrpflash) to unbrick the device in case anything goes wrong
You will find a lot of current devices supported by OpenWrt but several cheap ones have network issues with one of the bands.
Disadvantages: The only significant one that I am aware of is the erase block issue. In case that you run into this issue you have different options:
- Wait for the patch to be tested and approved to fix the problem
- Use an image provided by one of the users
- Compile your own image using the work around patch with different memory addresses (called A and B versions) that I uploaded to GitHub (you can review the source code changes which are straight forward)
- Flash back the original firmware using nmrpflash and if you are in the European Union use the 14 days return policy to return the device with full refund.
Please keep in mind this is a low cost router (I bought it for 40 EUR) - don't compare it to an AVM Fritzbox for 200 EUR.
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New URL: https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wifi/basic#wpa_enterprise_client
The old page is for archival purposes only and does not receive updates any more.
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One thing to be aware of is that the external antennas are often for 5 GHz only. Antennas of the “stick” style only have a couple dB of gain anyway.
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So changing that code on /etc fix? So there are a fix after all, just need to flash 3 times maximum until its fixed?
Thats a lot more cheap than I find. Whats the shop name?
Whats the sensitivity gain of that antennas in 2,4 and 5Ghz?
So I went to look for others and I came with a few more options among the Netgear R6220:
Inside budget:
Wavlink WL-WN570HA1
Have 2 x 7dBi detachable antennas, but the downside its besides the few info here, the snapshot link takes us to a 404 error, I found a commit but I dont know if it is the snapshot.
Devolo WiFi pro 1200e
The cheapest but just 2 dbi antennas, don't know if its detachable.
Above budget:
Unifi AC Mesh
Its outdoor what its good.The downside he just have 183 meters range even been outdoor.
Witch you guys choice between the 4?
None of those really. as they all have omni antennas. Since you're interested in making a fixed point to point link to one AP, look for something with a panel antenna with 10-12 dBi.
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I searched for devices in dual band and can´t find any with direction antenna.
Maybe I missed it, can you show me the device you are talking?
Point-to-point links are usually single band. Unless you're getting 6 dB or more in gain over a typical patch antenna, you're unlikely to "feel" the gain at all. mk24's suggestion of at least 10-12 dBi seems like a reasonable threshold. I personally would be going for 15-20 dBi, but I have tooling, connectors, and LMR-series cables to make my own feed lines.
You may need to combine a unit intended for a point-to-point link with general-purpose AP for your local clients.
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Like the R6220 with a outdoor antenna or outdoor bridge?
My idea was to now get a router dual band with dbi antenna enough to grab the wireless in front of me and in the future when I need to login at more far away WiFi then get a high gain antenna in that time.
Having free WiFi here its quite easy, besides many coffee shops share them passwords, the city have a portal made to tourists have free web. For my bad luck, that web portal reach me in the other side of the apartment from where I catch this one and I just grab signal if im almost outside of the window.
If i could find a something that could give me the high gain and extend in my budget then great, if not then just the router now and then in the future the high antenna if this 2 WiFi go no available or the router sucks grabbing the signal of them.
@Phoenix1:
You don't have to compile your own image in case your hardware has no bad eraseblocks in the NAND memory in front of the firmware. You only have to change the offset if you experience issues with reading the firmware. After installing the firmware provided by OpenWrt login to the router using the ssh console and run the command:
dmesg | grep eraseblock
You will see a list like this in case that your NAND has errors (applies only to one of my three R6220):
[ 2.935827] Bad eraseblock 181 at 0x0000016a0000
[ 3.011489] Bad eraseblock 435 at 0x000003660000
If you don't have any bad eraseblocks before the firmware offset you can just use the stock version from OpenWrt. My first bad eraseblock is located before the regular factory partition offset (0x2e00000). I had to shift the offset to 0x2de0000 as a workaround. Please find my Github repository at:
The structure of the files has changed with 18.06.2 but you can still use the information on this page to identify the affected code blocks in the current repository. I didn't update my Github repository anymore as I am waiting for the final fix and my workaround got rejected by the developers with good reason as it is only a workaround and they don't allow workarounds.
I bought the R6220 in Germany on amazon.de - it was quite cheap 1.5 years ago. I suppose amazon just wanted to reduce the stock as this model is getting old. Right now it is priced at 54.99EUR.
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Thanks for the info, pity the release with the fix its taking so long. Will take that in mind when I decide. Anyway its a very good hardware.
Buy it and test my PCIe hardware mod. 
Kidding aside, we have the fix for the bug (2nd post) and I can confirm it does indeed work flawlessly. However the need for custom built firmware is quite annoying, you basically have to have your own repo for packages. That aside I personally am very satisfied with the purchase. The router provides great signal strength, stability and a solderable extra miniPCI-e port to fill with whatever (USB 3.0). But if you don't want to build the firmware, this device may not be for you. Until the fix gets incorporated into the release that is.
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I hope that this will be mainline:
http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2019-November/020043.html
Has nothing to do with mainline... The R6220 is a Mediatek (mt7621) device, the patch you're linking to is for an Atheros (ar71xx/ath79) device.
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