Upgrading from a TP-Link WDR4300

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

Hey there,

I've checked the topic about 1 Gbps uplinks, but I've got a hard time picking a good device. As more of us lucky bastards experience nowadays, my ISP now offers me a 1 Gbps uplink, and my good ol' WDR 4300 has a hard time hitting top speeds (even when disabling QoS scripts and enabling offloading, I still hover about 300-350 max download, whereas connecting directly to the ISP's box nets me 800-900).

I'm looking for a good replacement with the following qualities:

  • Good OpenWRT support (goes without saying on this board, of course)
  • I don't care about Wifi - the router will be in the basement, right next to my ISP's modem. I've got simple AP's in my actual house, and the main systems are wired.
  • Device size / looks are irrelevant

After browsing the boards here, I identified some possible candidates, but please add your own if you want to

  • Netgear R7800 - Some of them are available second hand to in the €80 - €100 price range. It is unclear to me how good the standard OpenWRT build is for this device, I see a lot of people running custom builds
  • WRT3200ACM - An older device, but well supported and still quite the powerhouse (so I read). Only available to me at retail price, which is a tad high
  • RPI4 + ethernet dongle - I am familiar with RPI's, but I don't really look forward to fiddle with buggy/flaky ethernet dongles. Is there a recommended dongle here?
  • Edgerouter X - Looks good, simple, but I'm not convinced this would be a major upgrade over my WDR 4300 when it comes to performance. Also out of stock everywhere in my region.

Any other suggestions / thoughts?

2

As a WRT1900AC(S) user I can recommend the WRT series. While being the predecessor of the 3200ACM, the 1900 series are a powerhouse to this day. So I assume the 3200ACM should be even better. Sadly I've never had the luck of a 1 Gbps uplink. So I can't speak for it's uplink performance.

But overall I would say the WRT series are worth their price.

3

While a great router, the r7800 cannot do routing at 1 GBit/s linespeed - it maxes out somewhere between 500-650 MBit/s (or just shy of 200 MBit/s with sqm).

Wireless on mvebu/ mwlwifi can't be recommeded at all.

I wouldn't feel comfortable with choosing mt7621a for a 1 GBit/s line either - yes, it technically can do that, but falls flat on its face when tasked with anything beyond just that (sqm, vpn, etc.).

--
yes, ipq806x could do 1 GBit/s with NSS offloading, but that's not available in OpenWrt - you can't depend on this feature.