I have a trusty Archer C7 v1 which has just been doing its thing for years. But I have a HomeHub 5 Type A at my disposal, and i'm considering flashing this using and replacing my sky router (MER connection I know).
This could give me the oppurtunity to use a 5Ghz wifi access point, which i've never previously had or needed, my decent stuff is hardwired but its a nice to have.
Now is it better for the two routers if use both one for each band, the way I see it is I get more processing power, and don't have to share antennas, is this correct?
Would this be better or worse than running one wifi access point router, say the Homehub 5 on its own?
Had a search, but the results consist more of a single or separate SSID. I'm considering separate or not hardware
You can sure do frequency segregation as you suggest. It is a bit overkill, since they can operate in both 2,4 and 5GHz at the same time, but no harm if you split the duties.
If the router is dual band capable there is no reason to split the two bands over multiple access points. Performance differences (both good and bad) will be caused by using a different radio (it's unlikely both routers perform exactly identical), and not by splitting them up over multiple devices.
There's no advantage in this setting to running two devices, while there are clear disadvantages, however small they might be: power draw, usage of physical space, maintaining two devices over just one.
My Archer C7 v1 doesn't support 5GHz with OpenWRT, So i'm swaying to retiring the Archer C7, and leave the Homehub to take over everything all in one.
Power draw isn't an issue vs the unraid server it runs next to, neither is space in the closet it sits in.
Range isn't an issue, my Archer C7 2.4GHz does everything I want.
The sky router is not doing everything I want, I want to replace it with the HomeHub5, and I thought that might be a good oppurtunity to add a 5Ghz band to everything that already works perfect.
So from my experience, the BT HH5A is a nice device, but not as computationally capable as more modern devices. I tried to replace a wndr3700v2 with the HH5, but even with my 50/10 VDSL2 link the HH5A was running out of cpu cycles with "just" running 2.4 & 5 GHz radios, firewall/NAT, pppoe-termination, and sqm for traffic shaping, I got reliably much less than the expected ~46/8 goodput out of the HH5a (using the 17. series of OpenWrt/lede firmwares). I then relegated the HH5a to operate as bridge modem only (I kept the 5GHz radio on as emergency access to the HH5), and moved everything else back to the wndr3700v2 (which can do all of this with a 50/1- link but fails to deliver at a 100/40 link).
Anyway, just a reality check on how many things can be run concurrently on a HH5... I also want to note that there is a thread about improving the performance of the lantiq platform, so maybe there is some hope
Right-o, so your experience basically confirms what i want to do. Happy with the C7 and its performance, want the HH5 but ideally want it to do probably something like what you are saying. A more custom Modem with a 5Ghz interface if i want some wifi devices to have VIP access.
Keep the Archer doing what its done, and Unraid will pick up the big things for me.
I just want to be able to manage traffic to it and the network easier, the sky modem is just terrible for this.
