OpenWrt One - celebrating 20 years of OpenWrt

Release and security announcements
80

THANK YOU

First I would like to start by wishing Happy Birthday to OpenWRT. It's my absolute favorite to run my networking for years now! I have it running for everyone I have set it for by picking and choosing components of the setup I mentioned below all running OpenWRT.

Router specifications feedback
However this router/AP is not something I would buy.
It's simply not desirable except for a very small group of people

  • As a router: worse than my workhorse R7800 :
    Plus:

    • 2.5GbE - Useless as the other one is 1GbE; If there is a use-case for having it a single 2.5GbE (I assume only as LAN) and I don't know about it (while knowing a more than the average person about networking) think about what that average person will see when looking at the specs
    • m.2 - Maybe for a WiFi network card to add 6E;
      used for storage no for me, no for average person, required for some advanced users:
      1. But why do you even need storage on a router (more on that later... seriously why?)
      2. Size is 2042 for NVMe. I don't want to buy yet another format. I want all my NVMe to be 2280 so I can move them around as I please.

    Minus:

  • As an AP: worse than my Cudy WR2100 which I got a whole bunch of them for $30 a piece when they were still around
    Plus:

    Minus:

    • (2x2 2.4 GHz + 3x3 5Ghz) vs (4x4:4 + 4x4:4) on WR2100

Current ideal setup
Below is my ideal setup for 1GbE + WiFi 5 from which I pick and choose components based on the needs of whoever I am doing the installation for:

  • Router: R7800
    • Requirement: Routing, Firewall, AdBlock, DFS channels
    • Works decently. Although it can't really route the full 1 GbE WAN, most ISPs don't really offer the full 1 GbE bandwidth anyway
  • Switch: Any run of the mill 4x1GbE; 8x1GbE; etc +PoE as needed
    • Requirement: Add more wired ports
  • Dumb AP: Cudy WR2100
    • Requirement: Expand WiFi coverage with Ethernet back-haul, set each AP on non overlapping channels
    • Why: Extenders and Mesh just add interference as they use WiFi for back-haul use only if your can't realistically run cables
  • Server
    • Requirement: Raid 1 storage [absolutely mandatory as I mentioned here], x86 just because it's the most flexible to find components runs absolutely anything in terms of software
    • Why: As discussed here or here and here, you should really, really get a separate server

Upgrades

Now let's talk real life upgrades, here is what I see as upgrades:

'peak' speed for one user using the entire channel at distance changes very little (around 11% improvement over 802.11ac

Keep all of the marketing hype in perspective: In order to take advantage of Wi-Fi 6 improvements, you need client devices that support Wi-Fi 6 and you must be very close to the router. Until this happens, Wi-Fi 5 will do just fine in most homes. Most of the speed advances in 802.11ax (MU-OFDMA) will NOT materialize until ALL client devices are 802.11ax

When Wi-Fi 6 CAN deliver the goods: If you have a brand new Wi-Fi 6 client device and a brand new Wi-Fi 6 router supporting DFS channels, and are using both in the same room (so both devices are very close to each other) there is a high likelihood that the two devices will negotiate an initial 160 MHz channel width (Windows laptops and Android; not iOS). Throughput can be as high as 80% of the 2401 Mbps PHY speed (or around 1900 Mbps) -- which is very nice! However, this only happens when the client device and router are very close to each other (in my testing, four feet away) and only if 1024-QAM can actually be used -- and once you start adding distance or walls, the two Wi-Fi 6 devices will 'slow down' significantly (use lower QAM levels) and communicate with each other at much closer to Wi-Fi 5 speeds.

Big shout out to Jerry Jongerius from www.wiisfi.com formally https://duckware.com/tech/wifi-in-the-us.html whose website I linked here for cutting trough all the nonsense

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