Firstly, i have searched through the forums, and i have read this.
I am curious whether now, for archer c9 everything is working: wan (pppoe for me, 1GBit), lan (gigabit?), and most importantly wireless: both AC and N.
Looking in the git log, i have seen some commits both for BCM53xx, and for archer c9 specifically, but i am unsure if all above do work or not.
I am asking this instead of just jumping and installing, as i already have dd-wrt on the router, and i don't want to go through all the headache to install factory tp link firmare, do 10000 resets, pray to all the linux gods (even those which don't comply with GPL), and remain internetless for an unknown amount of time.
What is your opinion about this?
Note: i am a bit dissatisfied with dd-wrt currently, hence my baby-stepped quest in searching for other WRT firmwares.
It is safe to assume that BCM4360 wlan will 'never'(1) be supported by FOSS drivers, which in turn means that it won't work under LEDE either (yes, b43 has some very, very basic support for BCM4360, but that excludes 5 GHz or everything beyond 54 MBit/s).
(1) never say never, but BCM4360 is a softmac design, while Broadcom/ Cypress only seems to be interested in supporting their hardmac drivers.
Thanks @slh for the answer. It makes me sad to hear that it probably will never work :(.
I must say though, unlike you, i have no idea what hardmac and softmac mean, and what they do. Can you please, either explain, or point me to some links where i can read more?
Thank you in advance.
Note: I also have no idea what router should i chose next for my home when it comes to that
I was looking maybe at an asus
ac68u
ac87u?(expensive! -- maybe if i can find a better deal)
ac58u (cheaper! -- no idea if the transfer speeds are good enough for 5 almost always connected wifi devices).
Why don't you check this forum for well supported/ popular routers first?
The Asus RT-AC68u router uses the very same wlan cards as the Archer C9, therefore the very same answer applies, before even looking at basic device support.
The Asus RT-AC87u uses Quantenna wlan cards, while there is some vague hope for them to be supported in the future, I wouldn't hold my breath (either way, they won't be supported within the next few weeks or months).
Among these, the Asus RT-AC58u is the only one which could be supported (IPQ4018), but still currently isn't - and due to the difficulty of installing a 3rd party firmware in the first place (multi-stage, using an initramfs image via serial console) it's not currently scheduled to be supported by LEDE. For further details there is a thread in this forum which goes into details about this particular device, still, don't expect it to be fully supported in LEDE anytime soon.
Your favourite search engine can probably tell you more about the differences between softmac and hardmac chipset designs for wlan cards/ drivers, but this doesn't really matter here. The fact is, one driver (brcmfmac) gets manufacturer attention and updates, the other (brcmsmac) doesn't - both drivers target different hardware and no feature in brcmfmac can help you with a(n unsupported) softmac card like BCM4360.