Netgear WNDR4300 flanged in router mode

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

Hello community,

A short time ago I went from a bandwidth of 125Mbps to 400Mbps.

Since then I see that when I set the Netgear WNDR4300 router in "AP" mode and the ISP modem-router in "router" mode, I do achieve 390Mbps downlink bandwidth

If I set the Netgear WNDR4300 router in "router" mode and the ISP modem-router in "bridge" mode I only reach 230Mbps maximum.

I carried out the test with the ISP modem-router in "bridge" mode connected directly to a workstation and I have reached the speed of 390Mbps.

Router: Netgear WNDR4300 V1
Firmware: V1.0.2.104

Are you aware of this problem with the WNDR4300?
I have not yet used the OpenWrt firmware.
What do you recommend that I do ?

Thank you.
Yours.

2

The router is too old and has a weak CPU to achive such speeds. :frowning:
Either you'll keep it as dumbAP, or you'll upgrade to a newer model.
I did the same recently and got myself the RaspberryPi4, in cooperation with a smart switch to assign vlan subinterfaces in OpenWrt and overcome the single ethernet. Another option is a USB3 to GigEthernet adapter.

1 Like
3

Also stock firmware is optimized for speed, possibly using "secret" hardware acceleration features that are only operable with the manufacturer's closed-source drivers. So switching to OpenWrt does not improve ultimate download speed, often it is less.

4

This is what I also thought because using NAT the performance is greatly reduced.
Thank you very much for the valuable information.
Do you have a type of wired router (only) to advise me?

5

Had a similar issue after upgrading from 100 MBit/s to 400 MBit/s.
TP-Link WDR3600 could not catch up with that speed (NAT)
Got an Archer C7 that was capable of doing 400 MBit/s (NAT) but only with the TP-Link software, with Openwrt it maxed out at about 250 MBit/s.
I finally went for a IPQ4018 device which can handle that speed with Openwrt.
(in my case Fritz Box 4040, just make sure to pick one with 256 MB RAM)

6

Many options to choose from.

  1. download gwlim qualcomm sfe https://github.com/gwlim/openwrt-sfe-flowoffload/tree/master/FEB-2020/openwrt-sfe-flowoffload-normal

or

  1. enable software offload

I like qualcomm sfe by gwlim.

400mbps is nothing. no mention of sqm, wireguard so basic routing --> Save your cash for 802.11ax 6e final specs.

And yes, factory firmware uses kernal bypass (usually provided by Qualcomm SDK) that marketing disguises as hardware acceleration. Of course marketing conflates switch ASIC (which does hardware acceleration) with bypassing packet processing to get you 390mbps...

Now of course there is another thing you should know about ath9k soc on the 2.4ghz band with openwrt....

the make wifi fast implementation/tweaks kills the bridging performance so much that you'll get STA disassociations if you have alot of phones and devices hammering it with small packet sizes. In some cases, the wifi shuts down. you have alot of people doing the dissassoc tricks, etc etc but it doesn't get the root cause of the problem. Factory firmware aka Qualcomm sdk bridging software also addresses this problems (different tiers of implemetation -- enterprise vs consumer).

so you can compensate with

  1. move your devices mostly to ath9k 5ghz band (consumer router on ath9k 5ghz band are not integrated soc and immune to this problem)
  2. 24 hour cron job to reboot wifi (takes 2 seconds). Wifi has enough buffers for 2 seconds that devices will be fine/stay connected.
  3. stay on factory firmware
  4. buy new router if all this doesnt make sense