I got one of these last week. I ran my own tests with iperf3 and while it was not the fastest device I have used, it was within 5% so I didnt bother to post any of it. I still have it, its awaiting me finishing my new router setup. If there is a specific test someone wants me to give a crack at, holler.
FYI I've just flashed back the stock firmware at the first try using nmrpflash. Just wonder why the tftp doesn't work here
Home@MacBook_Air ~ % sudo nmrpflash -i en6 -f WAX202_Firmware_V1.0.5.1.img
Password:
Waiting for Ethernet connection (Ctrl-C to skip).
Advertising NMRP server on en6 ... \
Received configuration request from 34:98:b5:0f:6d:9f.
Sending configuration: 10.164.183.253/24.
Received upload request: filename 'firmware'.
Uploading WAX202_Firmware_V1.0.5.1.img ... OK (23200472 b)
Waiting for remote to respond.
Received keep-alive request (1).
Remote finished. Closing connection.
Reboot your device now.
The I've changed few settings in the stock firmware and I found is not that bad, I have about the same performance as the R7800
No is not the firewall, on the R7800 and R7000 tftp works. Is this router that’s weird, as said, there’s no flashing red/orange LED, so the boot I think is different from the other Netgear routers. Probably it needs to load/put the firmware in another moment, not when the orange LED is on (but solid, not blinking).
Is a WAX202B the same as WAX202 without the "B"?
I just picked up one at Office Depot and in says WAX202B on the box.
however, the Netgear site only shows WAX202.
They’re exactly the same. The sticker on the device itself makes no mention of a B model, nor does the stock firmware, and mine flashed to OpenWrt without issue.
I think it’s just to distinguish the boxes sold on store shelves, that have all the pictures and info, and the plain brown boxes sold by Amazon (and probably other sources).
I've ordered a TP-Link Archer AX55 (yes it will never be supported by OpenWrt), because it was on amazon (Italy) for 80€, less than the WAX202, and it has 4 nice external antennas, just to understand if the issue is the ax protocol or the WAX202.
(But I can confirm that the speed of the WAX202 from the iPad and iPhone near it, is far more superior than the ac, I can easily go to 650/700mpbs, compared to 550/600 of the ac, so consider the "Long range issue" if you want to buy it)
Yes, but from the MacBook Air (wifi ax) from my desk I get better speed from the R7800 with ac. Ax is faster near the router, but it degrades also fast with the distance.
I’m just curious to understand if the range issue is a router issue, due to the lack of external antennas, or is a behavior of the ax protocol, because to me looks weird to have also bad performance from the same place using Wi-Fi ac (with wax202).
Netgear R7800 X4S: Official documentation does not include specs about antenna. Found this thread though, in which people speculate it might be some with 3-5 dBi
# Bought a $29 WAX202 - was getting high ping when doing speed tests (QoS was the issue)
[WiFi](https://www.reddit.com/r/NETGEAR/search?q=flair_name%3A%22WiFi%22&restrict_sr=1)
We have gigabit fiber and have the desktops on ethernet, but the .ac wireless in our AT&T-supplied gateway has been getting super flaky lately so I picked up the WAX202 to add some WiFi 6.
It feels snappy (I get like 400-500 Mbps which is fine) in normal use, but when I would run a speed test it would have bad ping, especially on the upload test - like 500-1000 ms.
Turns out the default QoS was throttling the laptops and phones but as soon as I switched them from "laptop" and "phone" to "desktop" - the ping went back to normal/super-low.
Hope that helps any one who bought one of these!
Maybe configuring QoS (or disabling?) would have prevented the wax to disconnect sproradically. You speak of your devices having to go through 2 walls...
I personally have the same problem.
In my experience, regardless of distance:
0 wall = perfect
1 wall = ok
2 walls = bad
3 walls = very terrible;
Of course with higher distance the problems intensify..
@ThiloteE about the antennas, indeed on the R7800 I get the best scores at 18/20dbm (instead of the 24 by default) but if I lower the power to the WAX202 I have worse performance.
About the latency issue: I’m using it as AP only, wired to a nanoPi R4S, so in AP mode doesn’t have QoS service.
But if you want and you tell me the commands/buffer to test, I can make a iperf2/3 test, I’m curious too. For my test the ax latency is lesser but only near the AP.
I tested the Tplink ax3000 with external antennas.
Same behavior as the WAX202: maybe from my desk the speed are inferior to the wax202. At 6/7 meteres and one wall, I’m unable to go above 350/400mbps VS 500/550mbps of the R7800.
1/2 meters from the router the speed are superior: above 700/750mbps for the ax and about 600/650mbps for the ac/R7800. To be honest, near the router the tplink is faster than the wax202, some iperf test reported speed above 800mbps!
In the end I think the bottleneck is the ax protocol, not the wax202.
The final proof should be testing something like the Netgear RAX120/200 that is an ax router of the same price range as the R7800 was for the ac.
Tplink ax3000 uses a different chip for wifi (and is different altogether), so we are comparing red apples with yellow apples. You are right, both use the same protocol, so the problem could in fact be the protocol, but at the same time the problem could also be that the hardware of both routers is not completely optimized to work with the ax protocol.
Although 802.11ax had been in the pipeline for almost a decade, "The IEEE 802.11ax standard was [only] finalised on September 1, 2020 when Draft 8 received 95% approval in the sponsor ballot and received final approval from the IEEE Standards Board on February 1, 2021" - Source. This statement is based on information from the IEEE working group project timelines website
ax3000 uses the Intel Lantiq WAV654A0 chip for wifi, which was released in 2019. wax202 uses the Mediatek MT7915D DBDC, which was released in Q1 2020.
Both therefore are early adopter devices.
We could speculate that these chipsets may not have initially been designed explicitly for wifi 6, but I have no proof. What we can infer though is, that there propably was not a lot of time to test the protocol on this hardware. Moreover, the drivers are not yet quite mature too. For comparison: It took 4 years until explicit updates for my wifi card on my Aspire E13 (from 2014) stopped being provided to the linux kernel.
Just recently i saw that Uplink Mu-Mimo was deactivated for mt7915 in the newest linux kernel, which would proof this point, as with this change, mt7915 officially is not completely compliant with 802.11ax anymore (hopefully it will be more stable with this update). There are still many updates to the driver as you can see here and here
Yes I bought the tplink because of this: they have different hardware. In order to test if the issue is the wax202 or the ax protocol, and the results are the same with different chips and different antennas: long range poor performance. So at the moment, at least in the midrange routers, the ax protocol performance decades quite fast with the distance in my (little) test.
I’ll keep the R7800, maybe I’ll try an ax device from the high-end range.
From my bathroom I’m able to connect to the R7800 at 30/40mbps but from the ax router I have 3/4mbps or I’m unable to connect. Just few walls away (on the 5GHz band).
In order to use ax routers I would prefer a mesh system, but then again the latencies increase. So there’re no benefits at the moment. Unless you’re using the ax clients only in the same room and you have Ethernet cables + APs every 1/2 walls to cover all the house.