Wifi 6E Router with OpenWrt

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

Hi,

I am looking to test configurations with newer routers with Wifi 6E support using OpenWrt. Does OpenWrt support Wifi 6E? Are there routers with Wifi 6E support that are supported with OpenWrt? If the support is not yet there, when should we expect Wifi 6E support with Openwrt?

Thanks,
Jared

1 Like
2

At this moment no devices with 6 GHz hardware are supported by OpenWrt, yet.

Speculations about future support are just that, guess work.
If/ when according devices get affordable, Mediatek and QCA based hardware stands a chance to get supported (probably in that order), but it's too early to tell, even less thinking about time frames. It depends on hardware- and (mainline-) driver availability - and when it actually ends up in the hands of experienced developers or regular contributors, which in turn depends on pricing.

--
Yes, technically we already do have support for Intel ax210, but that's useless for AP mode - and some minor things might need work to actually use the 6 GHz band in client mode at least.

1 Like
3

Ah I see, thanks for the info. Do you think we'd see support by the end of this year at all if you had to speculate?

4

Considering the HW prices, I doubt it.

5

Is this primarily an issue of available hardware? Wondering if contributing a device would get the ball rolling.

6

Probably software.

8

At least for ipq807x, the main obstacle would be availability and pricing - but ath11k not yet supporting AHB and PCIe concurrently certainly doesn't help either.

9

As far as the Mediatek side - probably the retail device that openwrt could support most quickly is if some vendor decides to take a current gen MT7622 based WiFi 6 device and replace the MT7915 wifi with an MT7916 chip. But I kinda doubt any vendors are gonna do that, heh. So instead I guess we'll have to wait for something based on the "Filogic 830" platform to come out, and for someone to do the work to bring openwrt up on it.

That said, there's some vendors selling MT7916 mini-pcie cards if you have something that can take one of those :slight_smile: I'd expect those to work out of the box with the drivers in openwrt 22.03.

2 Likes
10

Hey Guys. Any news here? I want to buy the Ubiquiti 6U Enterprise and replace the default software with OpenWRT. What do u guys think, will the Ubiquiti 6U receive OpenWRT support in the future? Thanks!

11

depends on the hw used inside.

12

Any updates on Wifi 6E Router with Openwrt? I have a plan to buy 6E Router and install openwrt as paprt of research work. Any help would be appreciated.

13

Nothing has changed.

14

Yes, still waiting for this pull request https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/pull/12276
That's one device at least, although availability is a bit limited.

root@OpenWrt:~# iw list|grep -A5 Freq
                Frequencies:
                        * 5180 MHz [36] (6.0 dBm)
                        * 5200 MHz [40] (6.0 dBm)
                        * 5220 MHz [44] (6.0 dBm)
                        * 5240 MHz [48] (6.0 dBm)
                        * 5260 MHz [52] (6.0 dBm) (radar detection)
--
                Frequencies:
                        * 5955 MHz [1] (23.0 dBm)
                        * 5975 MHz [5] (23.0 dBm)
                        * 5995 MHz [9] (23.0 dBm)
                        * 6015 MHz [13] (23.0 dBm)
                        * 6035 MHz [17] (23.0 dBm)
--
                Frequencies:
                        * 2412 MHz [1] (20.0 dBm)
                        * 2417 MHz [2] (20.0 dBm)
                        * 2422 MHz [3] (20.0 dBm)
                        * 2427 MHz [4] (20.0 dBm)
                        * 2432 MHz [5] (20.0 dBm)
root@OpenWrt:~# ubus call system board
{
        "kernel": "5.15.114",
        "hostname": "OpenWrt",
        "system": "ARMv8 Processor rev 4",
        "model": "ZyXEL EX5700 (Telenor)",
        "board_name": "zyxel,ex5700-telenor",
        "rootfs_type": "squashfs",
        "release": {
                "distribution": "OpenWrt",
                "version": "SNAPSHOT",
                "revision": "r23288+5-7a0ec001ff79",
                "target": "mediatek/filogic",
                "description": "OpenWrt SNAPSHOT r23288+5-7a0ec001ff79"
        }
}

On a side note: I'd love to figure out those weird 6 dBm values on 5 GHz. AFAICT, they are not real. The beacon is as strong as other nearby APs. Looks like a display error only. But where?