Netgear R7800 performance and functionality

Hello, I bought a netgear R7800 I wanted to know if OpenWRT supports VLANs with this model and exploits its hardware 100 or there are limitations in one of the two cases.
Thank you.

VLANs work.

Regarding full hardware support, for the stock OpenWRT unfortunately the answer is "no", but this missing support for NSS cores (i.e. hardware NAT offloading) only matters if you have more than 800 Mbps connection. Also, please follow this topic: Ipq806x NSS build (Netgear R7800 / TP-Link C2600 / Linksys EA8500)

Huh, this is good to know.

Was considering upgrading past the half-gig connection we currently have, so will also give that a read.

I have a giga connection, so it counts. :slight_smile: Is the management of VLans done via graphical interface or do I have to use line commands? Will the R7800 ever be 100% supported? What router would you recommend to support this type of connection to have 100% openwrt and spend little? Thanks

isn't it 100% supported ?

RT3200, it's $46 used in US, and £60 in UK (at ebuyer).

But if you're looking into gbit speed(s), read So you have 500Mbps-1Gbps fiber and need a router READ THIS FIRST
TLDR; x86 is the way to go, repurpose the 7800 as AP..
Which leads to Tips for getting cheap used x86-based firewall with full Gbit NAT (a PC Engines APU) if you are in the US.
There are some additional suggestions after the sw301da/sw302da talk.

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NSS hardware offloading is not supported, and while the chances for that are non-zero, they're very, very low. Aside from that, the r7800 is a very well working device, which I would consider "fully working" (up to about 500-650 MBit/s wan speeds), even if its two 800 MHz NSS/ NPU cores remain dormant.

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The two 800 MHz NSS/ NPU cores are supported in the future?

No. They are supported in an unofficial fork, and there is a big factor that prevents accepting this fork: the hardware offload is written not in the way consistent with how it is officially expected in the kernel to be done, and hard-coded to be on.

To avoid misunderstandings: Netgear R7800 is still one of the best routers (if not "the" best one) that I can recommend for OpenWRT.

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Sorry for getting back on such an old thread, but I am curious, if I only plan to use it as dumb AP, does the NSS matter here? Since this router has eSATA ports I am thinking to use it as dumb AP as well as internal backup device.

Is there any harm done just trying?

There is some kind of wireless offloading associated with NSS as well, but that is a) fragile and b) shouldn't really be necessary for 802.11ac speeds either. So while 'no' would be a lie, it's close to 'almost none' - and in practice, it shouldn't really make a difference.

Because I haven't got it yet :stuck_out_tongue: (it's very cheap here so I am thinking)

It's a great device, no regrets to be expected.

Still, time is moving on and 802.11ax roughly doubles the wireless performance relative to 802.11ac - so at least be aware of the market around you (and some of the 802.11ax options are relatively cheap).

Whether or not NSS matters, please consider that with the default ath10k-ct driver and firmware there is a limitation: it supports the maximum of 32 connected devices. For non-home use, this limitation is quite serious.

Oh this can't be changed?
BTW is this limit only applies to wireless? It will be mainly for my IoT so probably won't have that many devices at home.

This limit applies to wireless devices only and can be increased at the cost of decreasing the number of SSIDs that can coexist on the wireless card. The problem is that this process is not well-documented and can only be done using the command line.

The non-default "ath10k" driver (non-ct, with the non-ct firmware) can support more devices, but at the cost of worse latency.