So I'm now in search for a new router replacement for my aging Asus RT-AC56u.
I hear great things about the Netgear R7800, but wondering since it is I think a few years old now, is there a newer version of maybe something on par in the same price and spec range with OpenWRT?
And curious if there's a good solid affordable option out there with Gb lan, ac1900 wifi or faster router that's kind of bang for the buck in the $100 and lower price range.
I lean on the 7800 equivalent for flash size concerns and performance. But if I can justify saving a few dollars for a bit less performance then I might go that route.
Not really, aside from the ZyXEL NBG6817 (which is virtually equivalent); both are terrific high-end devices, as long as you don't expect more than 350-400 MBit/s WAN speed from them.
With ipq807x a 802.11ax successor is shaping up, but it's neither supported by OpenWrt yet (and I wouldn't expect it to be within the next couple of months), nor does it share the same price range.
Slightly below you may find some ipq40xx devices, which may do a sufficient job as well.
Have you already searched through the Hardware Questions and Recommendations section of this forum? There are already multiple discussions regarding similar requirements, maybe you find some helpful information.
WRT3200ACM/WRT32X does work good and have better network performance than IPQ8XXX however WIFI can be a mixed bag but that can also be said about ath10k. Keep in mind that the ethernet/switch driver for IPQ8 devices isn't great so you may run into some issues. In that regard IPQ4XXX devices are probably a better choice.
Let's not forget Marvell sold its WiFi business to NXP so nobody knows i what will happen with it. Until then, I would not recommend anyone to buy Marvell hardware - as long as they come with Marvell radios. Frankly, the whole WRT AC series is not an option until there's a clear future for the radios.
..because of? Do you have any hands on experience? They are by far the best SoCs as far as networking goes with the most solid/mature support. I run a few in multiple locations and they all work fine, but as I said there's no 11ac driver hardware that's really rock solid. It performs much better than mt76 and is pretty much on par with ath10k-ct. That said, I haven't heard much noise from users who got their device donated by Linksys but as with everything, if there's a huge user-base you'll also get a lot of noise which usually irregardless of product is more negative than positive...
Please dont abbreviate ipq806x as ipq8xxx, as that would also cover ipq807x - which is a totally different beast (and which can handle >1 GBit/s without requiring hardware acceleration).
Furthermore the known issues with stmmac (which is not unique to ipq806x but is a Synopsys IP block used in many SOCs) in combination with jumbo frames have been fixed in kernel 4.19, the MIB lookups which had a tendency to add delays no longer happen at all.
Because you don't recommend people stuff which might well be abandoned in a few years.
Marvell will do the bare minimum (if anything) for their radio business and by the time NXP gets in the game and decides what to do with it, who knows what happens? So you give it some time, instead of giving them the benefit of the doubt like so many people did when Linksys clamoured they were offering 'AC routers with OpenWrt support'.
Wait and see is the best approach. Until then, it's ethical to tell people to spend their money on stuff you know can be supported.
Which still isn't in for ipq806x so either way you're not going to have stable ethernet and to my knowledge there's no timeline mentioned when this is going to occur. Can it do gigabit or is cpufreq still broken? Again, please stop leaving out crucial information.
If you have business insight about NXP's next steps feel free to share, I think the community as a whole would benefit if that information was available.
Linksys/Belkin did upstream support and offerted units for development so I don't really see how they failed on that but I might be missing something.
That aside, everything is going to be dropped by the manufacturer/vendor at some point. QCA will more than likely spend much less time on ath10k once 11ax hardware is getting some traction so in that case it's also out of the question. Which leaves us with mt76 which is already a bad choice given performance and since more or less only Mediatek MIPS SoCs are supported they're hardly a "good buy" unless you don't have high performance requirements especially and have rather sparse upstream support.
So, in the end everything has pros and cons. Marvell SoCs works best by far, I hardly think anyone can argue against that. Wifi may be a mixed back but as mentioned earlier that is also true for ath10k and mt76 and unless you have a loads of cash you can't guarantee the life of any radio driver as the majority of the work is funded by the vendor/manufacturer.
Also, instead of just point out negatives feel free to suggest a device that performs well (better).
