Hi everybody,
as the name hopefully suggests, the goal of this thread is to collect here all the main and useful threads on this forum about the router Netgear R7800 AC2600 Smart Router Wi-Fi Nighthawk X4S.
I have this idea because there is a lot of great materials on the forum but sometimes it's hard to find the right one for a newbie as I consider myself.
The scope is a little bit wider: for each thread I would write a very short description, because sometimes the original title may be too generic or misleading; if necessary, including a direct link to a key post.
I'll upgrade this first post when I discover something useful or, more important, when someone report it to me, directly here or via private messages.
Please please please, note that the aim of the thread is only to build a sort of how-to/guide/doc/... thread repository, so the discussion should be about what contents add in this main post
and how: this is not about config evaluation, help requests etc, except for asking if there already exists a thread about a subjects... but I'm not sure about this approach (the idea that stay under this is that if someone answers "Look here to more info about this!" I could add to the repository: will see). I have not found anything similar and I think you agree that the "official" openWrt page has a different scope.
Actually I have not thought about a structured way of the item in the repository: for now, if you would like to endorse something, may use the following simple one:
Hyperlinked Thread Name: short description of the thread content and why a newbie should read or partecipate to it...
I will add this suggestions to a simple ordered list, probably splitted in several sections.
In the following first posts I will put also general and fondamental info - for example, installation way... it was no clear to me at the beginning - to avoid newbie to start jumping from thread to another in the early steps.
As often happens, structure, organization and contents may vary widely at the beginning, until the post and topic will reach a stable version.
Finally, I know this is the openWrt forum but I think it could be ok to add a little section about few general links of other firmware or topic related with r7800.
Official openWrt WIKI page: contains general info about the router, details and picture about the hardware. The wiki page contains or is based on some of the following links. Special thanks to people who made it.
r7800 exploration a really great exploration job on the ruoter, with a lot of useful infos, pictures etc. You should read at least the first posts, if you are a r7800 owner!
going back to stock firmware. Maybe you may need this, there is already a topic rich of details and considerations. Original netgear firmware can be found here.
USER-BUILT FIRMWAREs
hnyman custom firmware: the official thread about the custom and widely used release made by hnyman, since 2016. It contains lot of tweaks for the router and updated packages and more. Full details are in the first and always updated post. I actually reach 600 Mbps on a gigabit line.
kong custom firmware: this firmware is known to be good for high speed line. You you can find his/her firmwares directly here. Note 2: kong is also well known for a dd-wrt custom firmware version, actually unmantained.
ACwifidude custom firmware: this firmware is for high speed line (>200 Mbps). This is the link to a big thread about the using of a driver that allow to unlock some hardware features (NSS cores) and increase overall performance. Jump to this post of user darksky for more details, or evaluate to use master nss factory.img "findable" here and made by user ACwifidude. Another great summary can be found in this post written by ACwifidude himself. I can reach 950 Mbps on my gigabit line, with this firmware.
voxel firmware: based on standard netgear, this one updates packages and features. Use it if you are scared about openWrt or for a soft approach to custom firmware... I did so. The link refers to the current version, browse this site for last news;
kamoj plugin: a plugin that has to be used with voxel firmware. It adds lot of features. Amazing work!
Hi darksky, thanks for the contrib. Can you explain a little more? It is a firmware? Only a driver? It have to be integrated rebuilding something? It seems something advanced...
you seem to have missed the R7800 exploration thread, the general discussion thread about the device. Only 2441 messages abut the device, so far... the 4th most read thread on the forum
Hi!
I've seen it, I just would make a collection and summary, reading thousands of post may be difficult for newcomers like me, just this. If all of you prefer the wiki and I can add there the infos I'm actually putting in the second post of this thread, I will do so (may I?): it's the same for me.
I prefer a "collection thread" because user can also discuss about the contents with an informal approach, in my experience the wiki like that is tipically used for main and short reference.
going to read Netgear R7800 exploration (IPQ8065, QCA9984) carefully! as said, i just would like to summary infos for newbies like me in a couple of post. If this thread is useless we can close, really no prob and I dont want to increase information entrophy.
I´m new in this site and also a "newbie" but What I think is, when I want to searching something, or solution to an issue or howto in this forum, it is very complexes one. I have a router with some brand & model, and when come to this discussion, I cannot found something useful related to my equipment.
There should be in the subjects and filters something that indicate what type of equipment the post is for. The speed that enters this forum posts, we get lost a little.
Anyone who create a new post, should be required to use these tags [Brand] [Model] - [Issue subject]
and who is the Administrator of this site/forum create a filter that within the category "Installing and Using Openwrt" by model, brand, etc can be searched.
NSS is a driver included in the OEM firmware that allows for "NSS cores" to do work that the stock OW build does on the CPU if I am not mistaken. (See the OEM boot log here).
Why use it? If you suffer from buffer bloat as I do, and if you're buying bandwidth >200 Mbps or so, you will be unable to manage the bufferbloat without suffering a speed cap due to CPU saturation on the R7800.
With OW patched to use NSS in the thread I linked above, and using these settings, I get 650+ Mbps downloads that are very low latency in bufferbloat tests. Without the NSS patch, the best I can do using SQM on wired devices is ~220 Mbps. As well, devices connected to my WiFI with NSS patched OW can see d/l speeds 400-500 Mbps. They too were capped to 200 Mbps before it.
When I saw this thread and your question about does this have value, I immediately thought about this youtube video.
"Knowledge management" is not difficult given google, the search function on this site, the wiki, git, github, the mailing lists, irc, etc. All these resources work well regardless if your new to openwrt or not. Helping users (i.e. us cats) is very difficult.
Consider what happens should you lose interest in maintaining this forum thread (say because your r7800 dies or you upgrade)? How can someone else maintain it?
I don't think you are wasting your time. I think you should keep this thread open to solicit comments about what information is current as well as point new users to the various sources of documentation.
After a month or two trying to maintain this thread, please (re-)consider migrating the content here to the wiki (if it is not already there). Try to keep your wiki contributions to one "screen" if possible.
Lastly, for me, the second post in this thread titled with the last edit date-stamp is unhelpful and redundant. This forum already date-stamps edits and shows edit history on the top right of every post. My suggestion is to title this post something like
"R7800 (ipq806x) Helpful Forum Threads and Posts"
"ipq806x" is there for people like me who have an ip806x based device, find posts about the r7800 helpful, but don't have a R7800.
I agree on the most of your considerations. Some informations are distribuited into a lot of threads and posts, some are outdated... that's why I tried a collection approach. I'm not wiki expert but I could move to it, why not? I just wanna find a way to give my little contribute.
I know this is an old post but it does summarizes quite nice the status of the development. And it seems that they are all still up and running in 2022.
I've been running the official image for some years now and I've been happy with it (only extra functionality I use is a samba share...). But now I am ready to update and try to get a better speed for my network. Which version do you all recommend ?
Just start reading from here.
There is plenty of info and plenty of versions. The final choice depend just on your needs.
Most probably using any of the latest NSS enabled builds will make you feel you are in the next millennium compared to the official image you run now.
See this post.
Here is another R7800 running an older ACwifidude's NSS master build without irqbalance and packet steering as those probably caused crashes.
