Netgear R7800 Firmware Selection

Hello,

I currently have an R7800 and I am interested in one of the community builds because my ISP provides me with 900Mb down. From what I am understanding, the official release from firmware selector can only handle up to 500Mb wired. The build I am wanting can handle vlans wired/wireless and client isolation all in AP mode. I hope someone can point me in the right direction.

Thanks!

Did you try a forum search?

(Magnifying glass icon in the upper right corner of the screen).

You might need an NSS build which I think are considered experiment/potentilaly unstable. At the very least enabling 'software offloading' should get you to gigabit speeds (at least it does on the mvebu platform easily which is similar performance I think). SQM will not run that speed on the R7800 though.

In other words, ask here:

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If really need a sustained 900 Mbit download speed (which is not that realistic in real life use out the speed tests, due to server capacity bottlenecks etc.), you likely need an NSS enabled build like the one from @ACwifidude

My own build does not have the unofficial NSS support, so the speeds with SQM do not reach that.

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You are correct. Official supports ~500-600 mbps. With every tweak out there including performance CPU governor, irqbalance, packet steering, and software offloading - most will get ~700mbps (maybe low 800mbps).

To get full line speed (940mbps) on a R7800 you’ll need NSS hardware offloading. Feel free to try one of my builds in the post above.

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I am currently on Netgear's firmware and I just want to make sure before I switch. I would use the one that says "factory" and upload it to the webgui from your repository correct?

I am not fully understanding this part. I'm assuming the ones with "ath10k" in the name would be better for the NSS build? I really don't know the difference.

Once I flash, I shouldn't have to do anything in the "Replicating my Build" section, right?

Thanks!

those ath10k builds are with the ath10k "mainline driver" while the normal builds are with the OpenWrt default ath10k-ct driver.
It is just about the ath10k driver variant. Both have ath10k.

Even with NSS offloading setup correctly, I found that with SQM enabled, I would saturate the downstream somewhere <700 MBits. I ended up building a RPi4B router for SQM to get the full Gigabit downstream with SQM. The R7800 was configured as a dumb AP. Perhaps NSS has gotten better since I switched over. I do not know.

So it wouldn't really matter which one I choose.

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It may depend on your client devices. Some devices may be more compatible with one variant, some with the other variant. Depends a lot on your specific client device combo...
Try one variant, and if you run into trouble, then try the other.

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Do some speedtest measurements wired vs wireless with stock firmware.

NSS fq codel can do near line rate (highest I’ve ever seen is right at 900mbps- exactly what I’d expect with a little overhead).

I just updated the 22.03 build just now. I’d try the factory image for the R7800 (the one without ath10k in the name). OpenWrt by default has all the wireless turned off. After 5 mins of configuring you should be up and running. Run those same speedtests and see what you think. All the recommended configuration options are in post #2 of the thread. Feel free to post in that thread your findings / post any questions you have.

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Hi, I'm looking into replacing DumaOS with OpenWRT one my XR500 (aka R7800) with 1 Gbps downlink from ISP and just doing research about "unofficial features you want to have", so far it looks like I want to produce a custom 22.03 based build with:

Now a few things unclear (went through the discussion a bit, but since this is 1000+ posts):

  • Somewhat unclear story with bad blocks - I understand this isn't handled during flashing and rootfs ends up misplaced by one block? Can't you just remove one (or multiple) blocks of padding in the image (before rootfs) and flash w/o need of initramfs? Don't really have an issue with going through initramfs once but prefer not having to open the router all the time :slight_smile:
  • Does NSS work for both wired and wireless?
  • What's the difference between ath10k vs ath10k-ct driver?
  • Builds are based off kernel 5.10 or need to use 5.15 for anything in NSS (or is the work on 5.15 more of moving to the next LTS kernel)?

Only if your router device has a bad block in a critical place.
Very rare.

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  • Does NSS work for both wired and wireless?

NSS fully hardware offloads for wired NAT / routing (full line rate / 940mbps with minimal CPU usage), partially offloads for wireless. I’ve got some iperf testing posted at the bottom of my second post of that thread that shows some wireless throughput testing.

  • What's the difference between ath10k vs ath10k-ct driver?

Different clients like one vs the other. -ct has additional newer modifications and is the default for OpenWrt. I personally use - ct, you’ll see posts going both ways. I’d start out with -ct and if you have any angry clients you can try the other.

  • Builds are based off kernel 5.10 or need to use 5.15 for anything in NSS (or is the work on 5.15 more of moving to the next LTS kernel)?

Master and 22.03 are both currently on 5.10. Master will make the jump to 5.15 for ipq806x probably in the next couple months. 5.15 is currently available as a test kernel.

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@ACwifidude, you have a FANTASTIC build. the ping and jitter is LOWER and more consistent than the stock firmware that came with the R7800. I appreciate you and other openWRT developers for this project! :slightly_smiling_face:

I am just stumped on one portion of this. As mentioned in my previous posts, I am only wanting the R7800 to operate as a dumb AP and be able to read VLANs from my main router. I am able to get the VLANs to operate through ethernet (I get an IP and internet works) but not for wireless (I don't get an IP and no internet). I am selecting the VLAN interface when setting up wireless.

Thanks in advance!

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image

This is the VLAN interface if it helps
It doesn't show the wifi antenna on that interface but it shows it on the LAN interface

Then your settings most probably are not correct.
image

Something like this sounds close to what you are doing:

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THANK YOU!!!! I have been fighting this for 2 weeks on my free time! The image from @sppmaster and the instructions from @ACwifidude helped me achieve exactly what I want to do. Thank you all!!!! :smiley: :smiley:

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