I wanted to ask for advice, I currently have a Xiaomi AX9000 as my main router (dhcp, dns, adguard services, etc.) and AX3600 connected by cable in ap dumb mode, both with official Openwrt 23.05.3
I'm thinking about replacing both routers, due to the problems they have using NSS since neither of them are officially supported.
I wanted to ask for advice on finding a good replacement for each router, since I want it to have NSS and a USB port and 2.5G, with characteristics equal to or greater than the AX9000.
I have seen the MT6000 which looks very similar to the AX9000 in features and seems to have official NSS, and also includes two 2.5G ports, which is very good.
I wanted to hear your recommendations, and know if it will be a good change, or I will have worse performance/wifi/range/power, also listen to tell if there is a better alternative to another router model.
As for the replacement for the AX3600, I'm not sure if it's a 2.5g wired AP or what model to choose? Any recommendation is welcome!
I would like to go to 10G but I think it is too expensive
Thank you very much for your time and for reading.
Thanks, I've been looking at it. I would like to know if the difference between the ax9000 and the mt6000 would be noticeable and if it would be worth it, also that WiFi is better of the two and general performance as well as hardware acceleration, nss and sqm
I'd say they are very similar, just that IPQ needs proprietary offload engine, while mt76 has opensource one included.
mt76 wed is present but if untested it is not enabled for particular device, but you can test and vouch for enabling it by default.
any firewall offloads turn any QoS into a FIFO (which is one of early bufferbloat countermeasures of its own), both devices have off-processor offloads, and super powerful CPUs, you can choose one or other way any time.
wifi conforms to norms, more distance between antennas kind of further they can beamform, but in close distance should not make difference.
The easiest option would be to keep the ax9000/ ax3600 as APs (which don't need NSS), but to add a wired-only x86_64 alderlake-n/ n100 router PC with four 2.5GBASE-T ports (~120-250 EUR).
x86_64 has the raw power for routing, VPN or SQM.
ipq807x can do a good job as AP, NSS isn't really needed for that.
Yes they can, low-power x86 processors (about 10 watts or less) have been able to route at gigabit speeds for at least a decade now. And that's with just "brute force", without needing network accelerators. The routing functions happen on the router, not the access points.
Ah yes, now I understand. Will the mini PC behave stably and have greater overall performance? I'm thinking about whether it's worth going to 10G since I want the change to last a long time.
Unless you know you're going to require 10 GBit/s support now (or within the next ~year), just don't go that way until you do. A single 10GBASE-T/ copper port will cost you somewhere between 50-100 EUR each, increase the power envelope of your system by ~2-5 watts each and pose a considerable heat source, which will need proper cooling. Furthermore none of the x86_64 devices we're talking here will accommodate them, they're meant to be small and unobtrusive - four 2.5GBASE-T ports onboard, one M.2 slots for an SSD, maybe a second for a WLAN card (no, not good for AP uses), no space (physical, electrical or from a cooling point of view) to add 10GBe cards.
Of course it's possible to do this, but it will end up considerably more expensive (you will end up with something µATX or some SFF system from one of the big four, probably higher-end than n100) and with a considerably higher (idle-) power envelope (fan noise). If you need that, -now-, by all means, take that road. But if you don't, defer that aspect until you really need it - generally stuff is only becoming cheaper in the future, when the early adopters' fee and enterprise nimbus of 10 GBit/s equipment (did you already check the prices for 10GBe switches? that alone should cure your desires) has been paid by others.
Let's take a look at it, you can get pretty interesting n100 based x86_64 systems with four 2.5GBASE-T ports for ~120-250 EUR delivered (including taxes), complete and fully capable of doing their job at those speeds. To get just two 10GBASE-T ports (the bare minimum to be sensible), you're doubling that price - and also require a 10 GBit/s switch (and maybe need to retrofit 1-2 of your client systems at ~50-100 EUR a pop). If you need that speed now and push it to the limit, good for you, do it - if not, save your pennies until you do.
OpenWrt on x86_64 is easy and stable, boringly so (in the best sense of it) - just avoid the temptation to overload it with server tasks, it's a router - only a router.
Be aware that my advice only applies up to 2.5 GBit/s, be prepared to make some further performance investigations about >=10 GBit/s.
if you want a cheap wired router, you can always get a Fujitsu Futuro S920 (quad core version) for 30$/€ and add an USB NIC or a single/dual/quad port PCIe NIC.
Thank you very much for your recommendation, I will stay at 2.5g, since my house is cat6 cable and my computer is cat6 and I will still last without going up to 10g.
Now it raises several questions for me: What mini PC would be interesting to buy? brand and model? that is reliable.
Would you consider MT6000 as the main one and replace the Ax9000? By selling Ax9000 I could pay for the MT6000 or perhaps it would be another option to replace the Ax3600 with the MT6000 and have 2.5g in both. If you tell me to keep AX9000 and AX3600 (1g so it will not give the expected result of 2.5g) what firmware would I use? Official openwrt without nss?
Now let's do an investment count:
Buy mini pc and keep ax9000-Ax3600 as AP (cost about 150-250e)
Sell AX3600 and buy MT6000 (about 60-80e investment)
Sell AX9000 and buy MT6000 (about 0e investment cost)
Sell AX3600 and AX9000 and buy Minipc or MT6000 + an apdumb (depends on the cost of the apdumb)
Minipc with 10G port options and use 2.5G configuration for now (in the future I could update the rest of the devices to obtain 10G but the minipc base would already have it) for example:
Access points have significantly less stringent CPU/RAM/Flash requirements than routers. All my APs are running OpenWrt, and RAM usage is measured in double-digit megabytes. Some are still running on a MT7621 CPU which doesn't even reach 1 GHz.
The suggested APs are not necessarily a downgrade from what you have if you intend to use it with a dedicated Mini-PC-as-a-router device. For APs, I would pay more attention to their wireless capabilities than the amount of cores/memories they have.
I'm looking at options, a little doubtful which way to choose, I currently have two good routers and I don't want to get worse.
I like the MT6000, although I see that it has some serious problems, especially with Wi-Fi.
The 10G option would be a very good option, but I think it would be too expensive (at the moment only looking at the main router as I said, the rest would be updated in the future)
For a Router the CWWK SFP device you listed looks like a valid option to grow with ISP capacity in the coming 10+ years
For Access points though, to see a real improved throughput, you may need to wait a (few) years till Wifi-7 matures and gets Openwrt supported
(filogic 880 devices might be the first ones, but that's a shimmy prediction)
This one doesn't have enough PCI-E bandwidth for 10G dual port so when you really have 2 x 10G in use you'll find that you can't have all ports running at full speed.
