Router recommendation

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

I recently moved into a building that provides free symmetrical ~100Mbps wifi via a hodgepodge of Ubiquity APs. It was also put together by complete buffoons, so I need a cheap device to put in the one corner of my apartment that gets signal then run ethernet to my actual router (tp-link ax50, no openwrt :cry: ) because yes I despise Comcast that much.

Tbf I'm also toying with just moving their utterly asinine AP placement in the hallway when nobody's looking so I'm not in the shadow of the elevator shaft. Or cracking boxes and fishing personal eth. But I digress.

I think a trelay setup will suit bc that looks lightest-weight. All this needs to do is hog as much bandwidth off another AP as possible (that's around an elevator shaft and through metal studs in the walls, ugh) and pump it (eth) to my ax50's wan. If I'm reading this correctly: setting up trelay does not require admin access to the upstream AP, and my ax50 has sufficient controls on stock fw to configure downstream.

Anyway, I need a hardware recommendation. I think I'm looking at a cudy wr3000 or gl.inet mt3000 (beryl ax), but there's so much trash out there I'm getting overwhelmed staring at specs -_-

Many thanks

2

Here is a cheap unit that might be able to help you out to capture the WiFi signal
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Linksys-AC2600-4x4-MU-MIMO-Dual-Band-Gigabit-Router-with-USB-3-0-and-eSATA-EA8100/225762324
For about $45 you get 4x4:4 so you have a better signal.
I doubt that putting a WiFi 6 device will give you a better results: https://www.wiisfi.com/#wifi6
Anyway, here is an easy way to figure out what's a good option to pick a router for OpenWRT:
Go here https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_extended_all
On the WLAN hardware pick a MediaTek wireless chipset with the features you want (these are the best supported by OpenWRT).
Search here for the technical details for that device: https://techinfodepot.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page.
If you want details as to what MediaTek chipsets features, you can find them here:
https://techinfodepot.shoutwiki.com/wiki/MediaTek

1 Like
3

Nice. The Cudy's weaker on storage and ram, so it's not like I'd be future-proofing with it. And it doesn't look like this Ubiquity junk does wifi 6 anyway hah -_-

Thanks a ton!