I’m a fan of the Archer C6 v3.2, which is available cheaply and definitely under your price point. As long as you don’t enable HW acceleration (i.e. change from the default) then users report it to be very stable. It’s a dual core 16/128 device, so should be fine for OpenWRT releases in years to come.
First, thank you all. I have now a much better picture. There seems to be consensus about MT7621 being reliable. Good to know. Again, thank you all.
I have to build a 22.03 image to see how the requirements have changed, now that dropping IPv6 isn't a viable option anymore. We were used to put Luci and IPv6 out as a matter of routine. For the time being, it looks as if I could fit it into an 8MB image, but I still need to strip out some more things, then look how the utilities we want fit into that image, then look at RAM consumption. But I'm pretty confident it could be made to fit into a 16 MB image without much hassle, and that 128 RAM will be enough for our need for some years to come. Yet this has to be proven. I hope to do it before next week.
We have no problems with difficult installations as long as they are possible and the result is reliable after that. So, reading a flash chip, etc, could be done, no problem.
After a meeting with the friends, it has been decided to purchase some ram and flash chips to try and upgrade some of our old ath9k devices, and to purchase a router to test it. I'm the one making the decision about which one.
Since it looks as if a 16/128 device could be good enough, I'm leaning towards cheap ones that are about €30. That would mean Xiaomi Mir4A, Cudy WR1300 and ZBT WE826. First two could be obtained from local vendors that can be contacted by phone to make sure what version we are about to get. We had some nasty surprises in the past when the device was delivered an realized hardware had changed without notice. Fortunately these were small purchases.
So, any additional information about of Xiaomi Mir4A and Cudy WR1300 would be greatly appreciated. Any information, not just about reliability.
@reinerotto Hi, nice to be again in contact with you. We find ZBT WE826 quite interesting, mainly because it looks as if you have quite a few of them deployed. But there are some different models. We would like to have 802.11 ac since that could be obtained from the other two candidates, and upgrading the hardware in that way without getting ac wouldn't be easy to explain to our people. We found an Alibaba provider but the model would be WE826T, without ac and with LTE hardware which we are not interested in.The price, after transport, VAT and taxes would also be higher. Could you give us some more info about it?
Since you're prepared to do some manual labor, have a look at the Mercusys MR70X (MT AX1800),
it's not officially supported, but you can use the DIR-853-R1 firmware, with additional package for
the AX radio, and hands on.
Might want to use google translate on https://www.openrouter.info/forum/viewtopic.php?p=48451#p48451
It's cheap too, often < 40€.
Google Translate isn't working for me, unfortunately. I can get the original polish language only. It looks in early stages of development anyway?
OK, copy-paste the text into google translate works. However information about reliability would be helpful
@nicefile & @jetsnguns you wrote in OpenWrt support for Mercusys MR70X about the MR70X, are you using it, and how reliable is it ?
You can safely say MT7621 is the new workhorse. Similar to the QCA MIPS SoCs, but higher clock, a bit more powerful, dualcore and 4 threads (for the MT7621(D)AT), and hardware offloading to some extent.
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You should contact zbtlink.com directly. Dunno about 802.11ac, but you can ask them. There was a WE826 within plastic case, may be, still available. You do not need to buy LTE, only upon request. I only deployed the MT7620A version, lowest cost.
Minimum Order Quantity: 1000pcs
Wow. A little bit too far for us...
EDIT: never mind, I was looking at the wrong one
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MR1800X have no issues with wireless or whatnot from more than 1year. I've flashed breed to keep classic ramips flash layout and OC @1100Mhz. Also cross flash it to dir853-r1 + mt7915 via firmware selector .
Currently with OpenWrt SNAPSHOT, r21271-6f729163b1
I've seen good reports in MR70X/MR1800X PR from regular users.
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1000pcs is minimum for custom logo printed on device.
I contacted them. But tomorrow is Chinese New year...
I guess you are happy with MT7620A. Have you experienced any quirks at all?
I do not like the power connector, in case of we826 within vehicle
(vibrations). Wifi is not the very fastest, when running openwrt, but that is attributed to the driver. However, "workhorse" for hotspots, with a dozen users or so.
Never had luck with 762x. WHere are those cheap 9331s, which i modded dozens..aven those gl intet wnt expemsive mas disapperaed. The hw in enough for simple APs, no need push newest fw, or ipv6. Remeber those rt5350 for few $,half had no need mod ram. just flash. Nice printservers.
Archer C6 V3 is quite a good router for the price.
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I've both WAC104&WAC124 at home, but strangely once a week at random they crash and cannot even reboot properly (infinite boot loop)...
Despite that they are very nice, I could install Samba on the WAC124 for backup, a level 2 firewall ebtables, 4 Wifi on 2 frequencies (2&5) ... Maybe I missed something for reliability.
I reboot nightly, but it's not improving...
I suspect it is over heating, but it is not happening when people are using them much.
I've got two (because the first one was such a joy to setup) CUDY WR2100 WiFi Routers running OpenWrt. They are rock solid, and fall close to the price-point you seek.
What about ac wifi being somewhat unstable?
I've managed to put an image that fits our needs into an 8/64 device (TP-Link TL-WR1043ND v2). Yet I didn't checked RAM consumption with the device working. But it looks as if we could upgrade the chips in our old devices and get some more years of use from them. But, should it to take an hour for each device, it could be cheaper to just buy new devices. Some tests are to be done after we get the chips. Meanwhile the chinese holidays will be gone and we will see what the ZBT guys can offer. Then we will make a decision about whatdevice to test.
Thank you all for your answers, your experience is helping us a lot
Weird indeed.
I have experience with several R6220. The WAC104 is a clone (minus WAN port), so I assume its behavior should be almost identical. Thanks for sharing bad experience.
I've seen nu such instability.
Perhaps that report is no longer relevant.