Hi all,
I'm projecting a LAN upgrade for my home.
I would keep my actual WRT3200ACM with OpenWRT as main router, but turning off the wifi part.
I'm thinking of a couple of EAP245 as wifi AP, with the controller app in a RPI server.
I want to create multiple vlans: for the kids, for IoT stuff, for the servers, maybe for the cameras, for guests and for my personal devices.
Before buying anything, I'm looking through the forum and the documentation to try and better understand this topic but I still haven't found if it is possible to tag the different SSIDs in the TP-Link Access Points (with original firmware) and have the tags read and used by OpenWRT router or by any managed switch I could put in place.
I see, but I'm asking if my main router with OpenWRT will be able to manage the different vlans from a stock AccessPoint; any stock AccessPoint actually.
Thank you, I think I've over-complicated the thing.
So the vlan tags are a standard thing among different vendors and I'll be able to set the same value into APs of different brands, managed switches and the router itself.
The TP-link firmware is pretty simple VLAN handling compared to the OpenWrt firmware for eap245.
In OEM you just set the VLAN connection directly in the wifi setup.
EAP245 is a business AP so it is expected by the market to be able to handle multi SSID and only tagged VLAN and admin VLAN.
This is my very first time splitting the feature of the all-in-one router into several objects and it's also my first time segregating my devices into different subnets, but my LAN has got bigger in the last months and I'm not happy with the WRT3200ACM wifi performance
So I'm considering the EAP245 exactly for its OpenWRT support.
I plan to install OpenWRT on the AP too in the future but not at first: I've already a lot of work to do and even though I'm a developer, I know quite nothing about networking, so I prefer a KISS and progressive approach.
But after a while I went a step further and replaced the wrt3200acm with an ER4 and PoE switch.
Must say it is the most stable and fastest home network I have ever owned (fast as in it actually delivers within 4-5Mbps what I pay the ISP to give me).
When the switch is fully operational on OpenWrt everything runs OpenWrt.
I guess it is pro and cons with that but one thing I liked is to only learn the setup procedure of one firmware.
TP-link oem firmware has one irritating thing, it is really slow! Seriously slow!
At the moment, my ISP speed is 85Mbps/20Mbps (Down/Up) but I could be able to get a gigabit by the end of the year, hopefully...
Thus I'm considering a further future upgrade with a NanoPi R4S or a Raspberry PI4; the latter can also be reconverted to different purposes once obsolete.
TP-link slowness: you mean when updating a config value or slow in networking?
Hi guys.
Sorry OP, if I'm hijacking your topic, but I would like to ask how's the EAP245 (v3 in my case) performance using OpenWRT currently?
Last time I checked, OpenWRT's 5Ghz performance wasn't that good (about half compared to the stock firmware).
Did things improved recently? Or will we see improvements in the next releases?
I'm using stock firmware now (which is decent), but I would switch to OpenWRT in a heartbeat if the performance was 80-90% of the stock firmware.
Thank you.
I still haven't bought EAP245, I'm just designing my future LAN in advance.
But this worries me: OpenWRT on EAP245 is not good?
I'd choose this AP just for its OpenWRT support but I'm not so sure anymore...
Afaik, the 5Ghz performance wasn't that great on OpenWRT for EAP245 (about half of the stock firmware).
That's the reason I asked if the situation has (or will be) improved
I see that there are people here that use OpenWRT on these devices (like @flygarn12 and @svanheule ) and I would be really grateful if they could report the EAP245 current status (mainly the 5Ghz performance, which was the main problem).
I would test it myself, but, unfortunately, I can't afford the downtime (the device is under intensive and constant use / also, these devices are a bit tricky to reinstall the stock firmware back).
The stock firmware is decent and does everything I need, but I would rather use OpenWRT instead, if the performance was near the stock firmware.
I think it runs like a bat on fire.
But I am also a bit confused!? What specific performance issue on the 5 GHz do we talk about?
I have been around in the forum a while and I can’t really remember some big performance issue treads in the forum.
AFAIK nothing has changed. The problem lies with the ath10k and ath10k-ct drivers, which I have no knowledge of, nor time to investigate. The radio on the EAP245v3 is a rarely used model, so nobody seems to be bothered enough by the fact it doesn't work perfectly (it's certainly good enough for me). If you care about getting maximum wireless performance, stick to stock. OpenWrt provides other benefits.
@flygarn12 Like @svanheule said, this device seems to have driver issues, which don't allow EAP245 to reach it's maximum throughput (~900 Mbps download) on 5Ghz, when using OpenWRT. @flygarn12 Are you able to reach ~900 Mbps download with your EAP245? If so, there's maybe some unknown quirk, maybe related to the region variants (btw, I'm using an EU-European model). @svanheule Thank you very much for the status update and thank you very much for your work.
It's really unfortunate, because this is the perfect budget pure AP (cheap, fast, good coverage and all the main components are Qualcomm).
Unfortunately, I will keep using the stock firmware for the time being (which is fine for my needs), but I will switch as soon as this ends up being fixed.
Being a fairly popular device (I think), I hope someone is able to fix the driver issues in the near future (I wish I could help with this, but it's way out of my league).
Btw @svanheule is there some place to keep me updated about this issue, aside from testing it myself?
Thank you very much @flygarn12 and @svanheule for your help.
This used to be a good thing with ath9k, but the situation has worsenend with ath10k (11ac radios).
IIRC there was a ticket filed with the ath10k-ct driver, but you would have to look it up. Don't get your hopes up though. People have reported throughput issues on this device nearly since the day it was supported.
Really? I thought Qualcomm was the best for open source drivers.
Is that not the case anymore?
I will look it up, thank you.
But will it be absolutely impossible to get the stock throughput on OpenWRT (due to lack of proper drivers)? Or is just the case that no one with enough/proper skills got interested in this issue?
Again, thank you very much @svanheule for taking your time to answer my questions,
