Poor WIFI Performance on TP-Link Archer MR200

Hi,

I've used @Heinz's firmware to flash LEDE and later upgraded to OpenWRT 18.06.1. Everything seems find and working, but the wifi performance is terrible. The maximum throughput I can get on wifi connection is about 10-11 Mbits/sec.

iperf

Is this the expected result on current drivers/firmwars for the wifi? Is there any ways that I can improve it? Any advise is really appreciated.

My device is TP-Link Archer MR200 v1.

root@dev:~# lspci 
00:00.0 PCI bridge: Ralink corp. Device 0801 (rev 01)
01:00.0 Network controller: MEDIATEK Corp. Device 7650
01:00.1 Bluetooth: MEDIATEK Corp. Device 8650

root@dev:~# cat /etc/config/wireless 
config wifi-device 'radio0'
	option type 'mac80211'
	option channel '11'
	option hwmode '11g'
	option path 'platform/10180000.wmac'
	option country 'US'
	option htmode 'HT40'
	option legacy_rates '1'
...

root@dev:~# lsmod | grep -i 802
cfg80211              202032  5 rt2x00lib,mt76x2e,mt7603e,mt76,mac80211
compat                   544  4 rt2800soc,rt2800pci,mac80211,cfg80211
mac80211              390272  7 rt2800lib,rt2x00soc,rt2x00pci,rt2x00lib,mt76x2e,mt7603e,mt76

Anyone can help on this please?

try changing wifi channel, it is possible of signal inteference. Also make sure the devices are not too far away, the farther the slower it will be. I don't have this issue with this router.

I've changed the channel, no change. Then I enabled "Force 40MHz mode", it's about 28-30 Mbps now.
How much is the throughput in your device @gurangax?

That depends on device capability, distance from router etc. On my laptop I can get full connectivity at 300 Mbps. on my mobile phone I can get 110+ Mbps same location with my laptop. But I will get full 300Mbps once i place my mobile phone at closer range. So basically it will depend on how strong the signal is and device capability (mimo support etc).

Testing the LTE network through wifi I will get full speed of my LTE at 30+ Mbps. The same goes for 5Ghz wifi network. It depends on signal quality and strength.

Thanks a lot @gurangax for the info. Unfortunately I couldn't fix it and 25-30 Mbps is the maximum throughput I can get with only 1 meter distance between my laptop and the router.

So, I think I have to restore official firmware for now and try it some other time. Just to make sure I don't mess up and brick the modem, and considering the point that I've updated to OpenWRT 18.06.1, is it still safe to flash Heinz's "mr200_back_to_stock.bin" back to the modem?

There are cases when someone who uses custom firmware from their ISP will have problem with the bootloader which failed to change the firmware with TFTP method after using "mr200_back_to_stock.bin". You can try it if you bought the router from retail shop and not provided by your ISP. It should also be possible to flash via wifi from the webflash gui, but the recommended method is by LAN. BTW what is the connection speed as seen on your laptop network adapter status?

Thank you @gurangax for the help.
For the sake of records, I just flashed back to the stock ROM successfully. Everything seems fine.

Just another question, is there any other newer firmware bundle (other that the one from Heinz) for this device that I can try? Any possibility to activate 5GHz wifi?

BTW, I noticed there is an update for the stock firmware. Build 180502 for Archer MR200 V1. It is a minor update with only bug fixes.

Not sure what you mean by newer firmware bundle, but the stock firmware already has 5ghz supported. I did post LEDE firmware with 5Ghz support somewhere on the forum. Try find my previous posts.