Like the title, I'm wondering which chipset I should be looking for to get a good 160MHz channel experience today on openwrt? I don't really care if it's AC or AX.
If two perform similarly, of course the cheaper one wins.
I was eyeing the Xiaomi R3P and then I read that mt76 support isn't too good. It may be fine for reliability but maybe not for performance? I'm not sure.
Performance doesn't have to be the best. I just want to be around 1 Gbps real world throughput over wifi with a 2 antenna 160MHz wifi card like the Intel 9260 or AX200. Apparently this can be achieved with AC and AX. (1.73 / 2.40 Gbps link speed)
It won't, those are lab or powerpoint values, nowhere near real life.
Keep in mind most routers (AX and AC) have gigabit ports, you'll never go faster than 1 gigabit,
if your communication goes outside the router.
You can get about 2/3 of the link speed in real world performance.
160MHz channels are rarely used under AC so people think it's much slower than AX, but it's not really. With a link of 1.73Gbps you can saturate a 1Gbps ethernet connection which is what I'm aiming for.
One way of doing it is to use a cheap router just as an AP and not run OpenWRT on it. But then I'd have to run two devices, which isn't a very clean setup.
I'm wondering if there's an affordable router/chipset out there that is well supported with 160MHz channels, under OpenWRT.
Maybe Mediatek isn't the right way to go. Maybe Qualcomm has a better wifi driver? I don't know. What your experience?
1.7Gbps on 802.11ac is 4x4 configuration, while in real world I only see 3x3 client (old Macbook Pro) and it would be 1.3G link rate max. In the past I tested routers with Macbook Pro (no matter it's OpenWrt or not), the fastest transfer rate is < 800Mbps.
802.11ax with 160MHz some routers are able to give 1.5-1.7Gbps actual throughput but seems they are not OpenWrt friendly. Cheap (or affordable) already has an implication that it won't do as good as you wish.
if you're going > 1gbit, I think there's only one MT device capable of doing it, it's the WAX206.
for QCA there're at least three, with the WRX36 being the cheapest.
Using mt76 driver on OpenWrt master snapshot, mt7915 can push past 1 Gigabit/s with ax 160 MHz capable client devices as seen here: https://github.com/openwrt/mt76/issues/748, but it's 2x2, so adding multiple devices might decrease performance real fast.
As I mentioned, AC also supports 160MHz channels, which provides 1.73Gbps with 2 antennas. Not all routers/chipsets work in 160MHz mode or 80+80 mode which is the point of this thread.
I have read that for mediatek, 4x4 chipsets are a prerequisite to be able to run 160MHz channels on 2x2. It means that MT7612 can't do 160MHz but MT7615 can. However there are exceptions apparently.
Where I live a Xiaomi R3P (MT7615) is only 12usd. If that could do 1.73Gbps links it would be great.
Ok, thanks. That means going with a mediatek ax chipset.
I'm curious if someone got VT160 or 80+80 to work on OpenWRT.
And if it's stable...
If I'm not mistaken VT160 is AC, and HE160 is AX.
The mediatek ax routers where I live come in large enclosures and without usb, and 256/128MB ram/flash.
I'd much rather go with the cheap and tiny R3P at 512/256 ram/flash if it could do 1.733Gbit, VT160 on AC. That would rely on the mt76 driver.
I saw on a russian forum that Openwrt wifi performance can't come close to PandoraBox on the same mt76 wifi hardware. That's interesting. I'm curious if years later, OpenWRT has caught up or not.
I'm ok without 2.5G ethernet. I just want to saturate 1Gbps over wifi and with 2 antennas on the client.
I can't figure out if I should go with AC or AX. AX routers are more costly and bulkier, and not as many have usb ports or as generous ram/flash as AC counterparts like the Xiaomi R3P. 12 usd for 512/256 MB and 4x4 AC2600 sounds like a good deal. But does Openwrt today support 160MHz channels on it? No one knows. Padavan on the same unit supports 160MHz apparently.
I just realised that if you have a usb3.0 port you might be able to connect a 2.5G ethernet adapter to it. Wouldn't that turn any gigabit router into a 2.5G one? (Assuming the cpu can keep up)
I don't have fast internet but it would be cool to saturate a 1.73/2.4G wifi link from a file server.
You have to be very close to the router to get a decent WiFi performance like > 1G sustained speed.
Not talking about OpenWrt models, I have Asus RT-AX82U being used as AP (802.11ax w/160MHz support), with my client laptop having WiFi 6 160MHz support, my laptop has to be within an arm's distance to get > 900Mbps transfer speed.