We have April 2024. Vendors offer WiFI 7 hardware, at least WiFI 6E.
Their drawback: They still do not account for complex setups (multiple external IP adresses, distributed backend routing situation, etc.) And: They all offer "easy setup" over mobile phones that require registration and limit control.
OpenWRT on the other hand offers a versatile and secure (see Cisco to know what secure is) router OS, fully configurable, extensible, lean.
Its drawback: It runs on outdated hardware that cannot even be purchased on second-hand platforms any more.
With home office becoming ubiquitous, it is essential to have state-of-the-art hardware and suitable software to meet requirements. Having a 10+ year old hardware dealing with sensitive gatekeeping 24/7/365 cannot be considered reliable.
My question: Are there any plans to support modern router hardware? (I think about the top 5 vendors - Netgear, Linksys, TP-Link, ... and their top-of-the-line router model)
Development happens at the pace of the relevant developers, they are putting their own money on the shelf to buy their hardware (so excessive early adopter's pricing does not help) and they put in the hours (month+) of development work necessary. They are rarely sponsored with hardware and neither get early access to pre-release hardware.
If you are looking for new hardware you either need to go with something that is supported already - or need to do the development yourself, betting on future hardware support rarely succeeds (and usually takes months++, if at all).
What are you missing with second generation WiFi 6 devices like GL-MT6000 and GL-MT3000 in real world small office home office scenarios? Please sell me real world everyday perceived user experience benefits of WiFi 7 in 2024. I am curious to hear about your use case where you urgently need WiFi 7 in this year.
@fakemanhk: I chose my question carefully and would like to reiterate: what modern router hardware is supported by OpenWRT? (extend by adding, hardware that is available in Europe).
as to your question: Can vendors create OS friendly hardware: Yes they can, but they don't want to. Simple economics prevent this. But that was not what I asked.
I just registered to ask the same question. I really want to use OpenWRT but none of the existing supported devices suited our requirements (and also the hardware list was difficult to search and very few were available for purchase in my country).
In the end I bought three TP-Link Deco XE200 even though I loathe apps and the product makes me feel surveilled.
But if there was a bounty system where one could pledge money towards a goal that would get development going for my particular model, I'd happily contribute towards it!
The good news, IPQ8074A - so theoretically supportable (if TP-Link didn't spoil it via secure boot)…
…the bad news, it still needs someone (e.g. you) to do the necessary development - and ~460 bucks for a single device is far from a bargain.
If there was a system in place where I could pledge say 100€ towards support, and then other XE200 owners could also discover it and pledge too, maybe after 10-20 people pledges there would be enough of a pot of cash that someone would take up the task?
Device bring up requires having the device in hand for testing and development, so you’d need to provide a device + the bounty.
But before thinking about that you would want to know if there’s any chance of support.
1, is secure boot enabled? If so it’s likely to be a dead end.
2, post an oem bootlog, preferably from the uart interface, to see if tplink has customised anything else that would make support difficult
Yes. Wifi 7 device support is needed. The point is that if someone is buying new router better to buy latest standards. And it can last for years before buying new one. Otherwise buying old standards wifi6 wifi5 will be outdated in 2-3 years
