Upgrade from Archer C7

Currently have the TP-Link Archer C7 v2, which has been working flawlessly with absolutely no problems for 5 years on OpenWrt. However as time went by, I kept adding stuff on it, like Wireguard, SSD NAS, Ethereum staking (which is network-intensive) etc. and also recently upgraded my internet connection to 200Mbps Verizon FIOS. I feel the C7 is being pushed to its limits, and looking for an upgrade for a more powerful router. So here are my requirements:

  • How fast is your internet connection? 200Mpbs

  • Do you need Wi-Fi? Both 2.4GHz and 5GHz.

  • Do you need Gigabit Ethernet? Yes

  • Do you need USB ports? How many? USB 2.0 or 3.0? At least one USB 2.0 (USB 3.0 preferred)

  • How many family members/devices must the router support? About 15 devices

  • What other services do you want? Wireguard, miniDLNA media server, SSD NAS, DDNS.

  • Price range: About $200

I am not considering RPi as a solution. Saw some suggesting R7800 but not sure. My main requirement is to be at least as compatible and reliable as the C7, only more powerful.

Used Archer C2600, you can often find them for $35 and up on eBay,
or a refurb from Newegg (on eBay), for $77.

New Belkin RT3200, $85 at belkin.com, note it's currently in snapshot ( =beta),
and it's an AX device, not AC.

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As I said, reliability and full compatibility is very important for me, so I'm also not considering devices in snapshot or those not fully compatible with Openwrt.

C2600 looks like an option. Is it preferable over the R7800?

Just because it's beta/snapshot doesn't mean it's unreliable ...

The C2600 seems to be easier to find than the D7800, I was going to suggest both, but I didn't find any D7800s on eBay.

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I see a thread on C2600 about unexplained reboots:

Is this issue resolved?

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I have three of them, running as APs, the one with the oldest openwrt release have 400+ days uptime.

the 2nd oldest is 200+ days.

The 3rd one I upgraded to 19.07.8 just before X-mas, so it was recently rebooted.

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A used Linksys EA8500 is another alternative (4x4 and same ipq806x target as the C2600) that looks like it runs ~$20 less shipped than a C2600 on ebay currently - for a reason: the EA8500 case needs to be opened, and the serial pins connected with a serial to USB dongle to a computer to flash it the first time through a serial console (e.g., PuTTY). It's not too complicated, but could be more trouble than you want to bother with.

From my point of view this issue can be regarded as being resolved, but since I follow the latest stable my uptime is limited by the release cycles and maintenance I do. However, I do not have unscheduled reboots since I run them at fixed frequency. I have four C2600 that are playing up without the extra as mentioned below, none reboots by itself with the fixed frequency settings. All are running 21.02.1 for a while now.

I added this to /etc/rc.local (through LuCI System > Startup > [Local Startup]):

echo performance > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor
echo performance > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/cpufreq/scaling_governor
echo 1200000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy0/scaling_max_freq
echo 1200000 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy0/scaling_min_freq
echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpuidle/state0/disable
echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpuidle/state1/disable
echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/cpuidle/state0/disable
echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/cpuidle/state1/disable

I've applied the scaling_governor parameter on the devices with the newish firmware, the .3 400+ days unit doesn't seem to need it.

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