I recently switch to a fiber connection ~900mb↓ (~400mb↑).
I'm currently using my ISP WiFi router (the Archer C7 did not reach the bandwidth now available).
Fist I thought I would stick to the all-in-one solution with a Linksys
WRT3200ACM. But then I read about mwlwifi driver not being maintain anymore,
then I believe decoupling the router from the WiFi AP is a more sensible
choice, at least more "future proof".
After reading some posts [0] and [1], I'm thinking about using an "Ubiquity Edge Router" and an extra AP (device yet to determine).
For crypto/intensive userspace... either add an x64 after the edge ... or use x64 for the edge... I go with option 1 for the decoupling factor....
You'd be surprised what many routers can do when they simply route. ( it's even possible to re-purpose older devices for such a setup and get good speeds albeit not line-speed... but wifi is going to be a bottleneck in any solution )
At 100€ overall budget, that seems a sensible choice. It won’t reach 1.5 gbps aggregate, certainly not with SQM, from what I’ve read, but mid-range x86_64/AMD64 is going to put you over budget.
a WRT32x is going to have dramatically more CPU available. It's available for around $99 refurbed on Amazon. You can turn off the WiFi entirely and use it as wired only router, which it can do at full line speed without SQM and can probably do 300-500Mbps with SQM, not sure exactly. I use them as my wifi APs and I do think they have subtle problems with wifi, it seems particularly true for IPv6 broadcast packets for NDP, which causes my router to lose connectivity to my sleeping phone type devices... but I am waiting out another couple years before switching to something like TP-Link EAP access points.
Then I think I will get this Ubiquiti ER-X. I don't think I need SQM (well, I'm not sure I understood what it is about, but seems like dslreports is not reporting bufferbloating issue on my connection).
I'm not sure I understood what @jeff meant by “It won’t reach 1.5 gbps aggregate”, but all I want with my setup is to remove any middle boxes reducing my bandwidth (as did the Archer C7 router).
My current ISP router is certainly not x86 (device is a nb6vac-fxc-r0, can't find any technical spec) but I reach ~900mbps on my laptop over ethernet.
The next step is to choose a WiFi access point (openwrt compatible). While the ubiquiti AC Lite is quite appealing, I'm also thinking using a Netgear R6220 and configuring it as an AP (I'll use the switch to connect my raspberries – media center, hifi player…).
Is it ok to configure a WiFi router as an AP with OpenWRT? Or should I get a dedicated hardware?
"1.5 Gbps, aggregate" was a reference to "~900mb↓ (~400mb↑)" -- to a large extent the CPU demands are based on packets per second, without regard to to direction. So if you "max out" that connection, you're close to 1500 Mbps.
Dedicated APs sometimes have application-specific benefit that come with their often higher cost
Appearance
PoE
Weatherproof
Dish or other directional antennas for point-to-point links
Unless one of those applies, it's hard to beat an all-in-one, especially as they are often the same chipsets and probably same RF chains in them at a lower price than a same-branded dedicated AP.
I just discovered the MTK MT7621A router (currently at ~31€), I guess it's unbeatable, half the price of the Netgear R6220 with pretty much the same spec (less flash though), it is probably enough for a dumb AP.
