I’m looking to find a device to use as WiFi access points on which I can reliably run OpenWRT. The ideal device would support PoE, but I can run power, too, if necessary. I’m looking for the best performing device and not too concerned with cost.
Currently, I use a bunch of Netgear R7800 routers. What I love about these is that OpenWRT runs super well on them–I never worry about upgrading–and they are essentially unbrickable–no matter how badly I mess up the device, I can always just reflash it over tftp. However, I don’t need the switch/router functionality, and the R7800 is getting a bit old. I would ideally like to upgrade to something that supports WiFi 6E or 7, maybe multigig Ethernet, PoE, and maybe a smaller footprint that looks less obtrusive when mounted to the wall or ceiling.
What are the best modern options that really well supported and difficult to brick?
OpenWRT One is a solid choice, despite it only supporting WiFi 6 (no 6GHz).
The Banana Pi R3 (mini) and R4 boards are also good contenders and in general mediatek filogic is well supported, but I wasn't able to find any with WiFi 7 support that are actually available. For instance the SDG-8734 has great specs, but seems to be not for sale to consumers.
If it's not used as the main router, but as access point only, then the Cudy AP3000 will be a good fit with 2.5Gbit and PoE.
I will keep an eye on this topic as well for other recommendations.
For a dedicated, ceiling mount PoE AP, whenever Asus finally releases the EBA76. Has everything you want + filogic based. Could be released tomorrow or never.
Asus BT8 exists. Near unbrickable. Soldered header for serial. Very compact.
Note: Wifi7 MLO is busted on all models no matter how much you spend.
You say ax -> be is far better... My 2 1/2 year old GL-MT6000 sees almost 700-900Mbit bidirectional with wifi 6 on 5.2GHz bands with only 80MHz width (exceeds 1Gbit at 160MHz). What wifi 7 device with good OpenWrt support beats this? The BT8 maybe (but that has low storage)? Not trying to argue, generally curious.
Wifi7 tri-band currently = "Wifi6E Plus" i.e. wifi6e with latency and bandwidth improvements.
Dual-band wifi7 currently = "Wifi6 Plus" and I would not buy that.
wifi6 -> wifi7 = nice leap
wifi6e -> wifi7 = I would not pay a premium to upgrade
Technically be is an improvement over ax, it's faster and MLO opens another dimension.
But:
we currently have very few supported be routers
these devices are high-end (triple-radio will always be more expensive than dual-radio, just by the nature of it) and correspondingly expensive
MLO support in general, including the proprietary OEM firmwares(!), is still very fragile - it's not clear if it needs future h/w revisions (wifi 8?) to really take off
it's still very early days for MLO support in OpenWrt, the basics are there, it may take several more months to become good - and we may need further driver/ firmware updates for that to happen
At the same time good (high-end) ax devices are available, well known and fully supported.
Now you can be an early adopter, pay premium, wait months+ to get a supported devices and months++ for it to really take off, at which time there may be better devices (fixing some early silicon bugs) for less money.
Yea that's what I thought. The statement above mine was made as though there is some 802.11be device available that is much better than ax and I have my doubts, or else everyone would be talking about it on this forum. I understand the theoretical benefits.
Coincidentally phoronix posted this article about mt76 yesterday but with very little meaningful info (at the very least implies mt76 support should stay strong upstream): https://www.phoronix.com/news/MediaTek-MT76-Linux-7.1
eMLSR - working right now. Issues: client (in-)compatibility and people believing marketing hype / unrealistic expectations.
eMLMR - not happening. Rel 2 hardware likely required. I expect Rel 2 delayed and rebranded into wifi8/pre-wifi8. That means 2028/2029 openwrt support.
Wifi7, as-is, is still a worthwhile upgrade for everyone on wifi6 or below. I would still avoid dual-band wifi7 at all costs.
Well, I got an ASUS ZenWifi BT8 to try out, and so far the results are not great. With the US regulatory domain, all of the 6GHz channels are marked “(no IR)” in the output of iw phy, which I understand means no initiate radiation–you can be a client but not an access point. But okay, I wasn’t super hopeful about getting 6GHz with OpenWrt.
Unfortunately, there’s a worse problem, which is that I can’t get 5 GHz working, either. I keep getting messages about “daemon.err hostapd: Failed to request a scan of neighboring BSSes ret=-22 (Invalid argument).” So basically the only thing that works is 2.4 GHz WiFi.
Has anyone else gotten the BT8 to work as a 5 GHz (or 6 GHz) AP? If so, can you post a sanitized working /etc/config/wireless with your passwords and ssid scrubbed?
update: I got the 5 GHz working on phy1. It seems maybe phy0 is for 2.4 GHz only, phy1 is for 5 GHz, and phy2 is for 6 GHz. I wish I understood why all the 6 GHz bands are no IR when they should be legal in the US. I wonder if it is restricting me to the global regdom or something. I bought the router new in the USA.
I would not pay a premium to upgrade