Well to be honest, 900Mbps per client over wifi…I don’t have a internet line to fill it up with anyway. So I haven’t even tried.
From the beginning my ISP used to have free floating outgoing line and then I could get around 800Mbps output over wifi before a rebuilt the network with a vlan trunk. But now they have regulated the speed on both ways.
But it doesn’t matter anyway. I run the internet line on a Gbit duplex trunk connection inside the network so like 500Mbps is kind of full speed anyway.
Since my new neighbors recently moved in the wifi air got really crowded so now I down 20MHz channels.
But I never bought it for that speed anyway. I wanted multi VLAN, multi SSID and WPA3 and business class hardware to get rid of all this home devices crap.
Unfortunately, for me, maximum throughput is important.
For your use case is awesome, because this device meets all your needs.
When I bought my device (more than a year ago), I had an eye on EAP225 (which seemed/seems better supported on OpenWRT), but it was slower than EAP245 and seemed more prone to hardware failure, from the reviews I read. I also had an eye on the Ubiquity equivalent (AC Pro), but it was considerably more expensive (about 50% more expensive), for about the same performance (and was not always in stock).
WPA3 is the most notorious absence, compared to the stock firmware and one the most compelling reasons to switch.
Multi VLAN and multi SSID are present on the stock firmware (I use them both with success), albeit I think there is an hard limit to the amount you can have/create. I don't now if it's the case with OpenWRT.
As I mentioned, for my use case, the stock firmware is fine (much better and cleaner than other tp-link products, at least), but I would switch right away, if possible, to OpenWRT, because the community is awesome and the support is unmatched (and is open source, of course ).
Thank you very much for point that out, the result looks very promising
As I said previously, my device is being used constantly and intensively during the day, so I have my concerns about making sudden and drastic changes that may lead to extended downtime (the fact that is not dead easy and safe to go back stock firmware is also a big concern of mine).
If this driver change is the key to improve the device performance, I may give it ago, when I find a suitable time to test it.
Have you test it on your system(s)?
Will you give a go in the coming days? @svanheule Also, is there any problem in changing to different drivers? (stability wise and for future OpenWRT updates - do I need to have special care with future driver updates? Or are these non CT drivers automatically update with every system upgrade?)
Again, thank you very much.
I'm really glad you hijacked my original post (and let's say quite silly noob question).
This is really useful information.
I'd like the possibility to keep the stock firmware, at least while reorganizing my network.
And I need to pass multi-SSID VLANs to the router; I don't know many APs in the same price that allow this out of the box.
I've read that EAP225v3 has a better known hardware but it's indeed slower and older.
The EAP245 firmware fix could be a game changer.
TP-Link RE650 could also be a good candidate: flashing OpenWRT seems really easy.
Where I live it also costs quite similar.
You can submit a patch to change the default driver, if you want. You should argument why you want to make this change (throughput issues), since there are other differences in features provided by the ath10k and ath10-ct drivers. I don't know exactly what the differences are though, so you would have to look that up, or ask people more familiar with these drivers.
The stock firmware is decent and is dead easy to set these and work really well. The main problem (I think) is that there is an hard limit to the amount of SSIDs and VLANs you can have/create.
EAP245 is a very nice piece of hardware and, for me, at the time, ticked all the right boxes.
Having OpenWRT support is the cherry on the top.
Also, is not that easy (and cheap) to find a pure AP with the right specs and that also supports OpenWRT (at least where I am).
I will try to find what are the differences and what are the consequences of this change.
Is it common to have this driver variation/swapping during the hardware's lifetime on OpenWRT?
Or, usually, a device has a specific driver on OpenWRT and sticks to it to the end of hardware support?
Also, if I make this driver change, do I need to update the driver manually or is it automatically updated with every update?
Sorry if I'm making stupid questions, but all this is new and fascinating to me.
Again, thank you for taking the time to answer my questions.
One thing I notice but without any scientific proof but the -ct driver was as I understand implemented around 2018 I think and many problems seems to be from 2021?
So was there a change in the driver in that time frame?
I dug a little bit about the ct vs non-ct drivers.
If I read correctly, the ct driver is a fork of the non-ct (mainline) driver, maintained by a single person.
Also, the ct driver is shared by a bunch of different devices, each with their own uniqueness.
What may happen with time is that changes that fix one (or more) devices may break others, which may explain why some devices improve with time and others get worse.
I may be completely wrong, though.
Meanwhile, @adamcstephens results for the non-ct driver don't seem to be very encouraging... (the ct driver had 2.4Ghz tier speeds, which is ridiculous / the non-ct had a significant improvements, but, apparently, it still pales in comparison with the stock firmware).
).