Netgear WAC104

[Thobben]

Hello,

i think about to by the WAC104 (https://openwrt.org/toh/netgear/wac104) to substitude my WNDR3700 to get better wireless- an routing performance. the wac104 seems to have a good cpu/ram and its form factor is small so it fits good in the livig room.

does soemething speaks against my thought to by a WAC104 / put openwrt on it? or are there better deals?

thanks

[frollic]

At least you'll get AC wifi, but there should really be better devices out there, at the same price.

[Thobben]

Could you point me out to an powerfull small device

I could get the wac for 25 euro ….

[frollic]

euro, so you're in EC ?

[Thobben]

Yes. Iam in germany

[frollic]

I'd probably spend som more, like 40€ get a new Xiaomi Redmi AC2100, from eBay.

[Thobben]

I could get a used R7800 for about 70 euro. perhaps i should prefer this device because in future i get a fibre connection with 500 Mbit ... r is this device too old, or is the atk-wifi chipset outdatet and better go with the xiaomi?

i also like the usb3 ports - so i could share harddisk in the network.

[slh]

The r7800 is a great router, but it maxes out around 600-650 MBit/s using swconfig (currently around 360-370 MBit/s using multi cpu-port DSA), so I really wouldn't recommend it for a 500 MBit/s WAN connection anymore (not enough headroom for the future). Yes, the out-of-tree NSS acceleration support can extend this limit, but that's a bit risky to rely upon.

So you have 500Mbps-1Gbps fiber and need a router READ THIS FIRST

It's such a frequently asked question over the last few years that we really need a post we can point people to. So your cable company rolled out 500Mbps or 1Gbps download speeds, or you have 1Gbps symmetric fiber (GPON/EPON) from ATT or Centurylink or Orange or whoever. You realize your old all in one router from 2009 is not up to the task of handling this, but hey by now stuff should be cheap and available that will handle your new fiber connection right? So you want advice about a router for…

[Thobben]

thanks for you feedback and the link to the post.

beside my wndr3700 (i use it as ap and router/vpn for my vdsl 50 mbit line) i have already one raspi 2 running here with raspian/debian-linux for my homeautomation (fhem etc). It works realy well and needs just 2 watts power consumption .

so it would be interesting to migrate the raspi 2 to raspi 4 (raspi 4 is suggested in your post) and add move the router-functionality to the raspi. but the raspi 4 is expensive and mostly out of stock / plus you need an extra usb lan card. and i need some more usb (2.0) ports for my home-automation dongles (onewire, knx-cul, ....). and if i want to boot the raspi from ssd rather from sd card to be more safe.

another idea that i have after reading your post is to use my old Lenovo X201 with docking-station. it has a build in ssd, 2 usb 3.0 ports via expresscard, much usb2.0 ports, ONE GBIT-Lan. but in idle mode it needs 13 watts ... so perhaps its not so good for 24/7 ... , and i also have to put the 2nd lan port via usb 3.0 ...

so perhaps its better to have two separate devices ... i leave my raspi 2 for homeautomation as it is ... and i search for a goot openwrt router/ap. (?)

[dlakelan]

Hopefully the supply chain issues for RPi4 will be eliminated in the coming months, it may be a good idea to wait until then.

[Thobben]

Just for Info. I bought a netgear-r7800 and iam happy ... fiber with 500 mbit down / 250 up will come in a few month.