WiFi 7 Support?

Hello,

is there a WiFi 7 router that support OpenWrt?

Thanks

Apart from wifi7 not being finalized yet, no.

It took three years from the first wifi6 devices hitting the market, to e8450/ rt3200 support becoming supported in OpenWrt - expect a similar timespan for wifi7 (yes, filogic 880 is looking promising, but it will still take time, both for devices becoming a) available, b) affordable and c) supported). Someone will still have to buy these devices - and then spend a lot of time doing hands-on development on this new/ expensive device (with a high chance of killing it in the process - or at the very least destroying the case in order to get access to the serial console), this takes time and there are no schedules.

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I'm a little less pessimistic than slh. The Banana Pi BPI-R4 is already out in prototype form and is being sent out for small batch production. Some basic support for the Filogic 880 has already been committed to OpenWrt.

What slh said is very true for the purely consumer devices - that will take time. They lag behind by a long shot. But anyone willing to put in just a little work (really nothing more complicated than screwing a board inside a case) should be able to get their hands on one really soon.

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Also, don't forget that WiFi 7 MLO support in mac80211 is just getting merged to mainline linux.

Wrt topic, the message there is

Note: wifi 7 module not include , wifi 7 module all test ok , but public sale will at Q1 2024

So, no,, there is no WiFi 7 router yet, and won't be for some time

Different definitions of soon and some time. :slight_smile:

Maybe :slight_smile:

I tend read such predictions as somewhat too optimistic, so "Q1 2024" is interpreted as "hopefully next year".

It's not that I don't trust sinovoip. All vendors do this. And I'm sure it's their real current estimate. But it's best case, and in practice there will be unexpected delays.

I agree with Q1 2024 being optimistic, by that time 802.11be should probably get ratified and maybe some SoC-s start mass production.

I mean, the upstream kernel is still mostly missing 802.11be support so like always its going to take some time.

Wifi 7 i still under heavy Development
See also https://www.phoronix.com/search/WiFi+7

Hopefully there will be a few supported devices by 1H 2025

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There is already one. And quite cheap!

OpenWRT uses only LTS kernels as developers don't have time to maintain and backport security fixes themselves. The latest LTS kernel is 6.1 so until a new one comes out don't expect support for this SoC.

What most people don't understand is that OpenWRT tries to upstream to mainline kernel as much as possible and then use these features as it removes a lot of burden from developers and prevents double work. OpenWRT follows mainline and by doing that it is unlike any other vendor or custom firmware for routers.

What SoC vendors often do is use some OpenWRT version as a base (version that was stable at the time they started developing the SoC - so let's say 4-5 years ago) and then add their own proprietary patches and drivers on top. Then they sell the whole package (with source code under NDA) to device vendors. They make further customization and sell it to end users.

This is a wrong way to do it but the only available to hardware vendors as SoC vendors don't rebase their proprietary software on newer kernels / newer OpenWRT versions - they just publish feature or security updates for a year or two by backporting fixes to that original release.

What OpenWRT is doing instead is following what LTS mainstream linux distros are doing: every new release uses a new mainline LTS kernel. This enables OpenWRT to support all modern features from mainline and not have 10 different private APIs for configuring 10 different vendor NICs. And this also enables new version of OpenWRT based on new kernels to support almost all devices from previous releases.

In this example WiFi 7 requires Multi Link Operation that was mainlined only in Linux 6.5 in commit 3a8a670eeeaa40d87bd38a587438952741980c18

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Just read specs for available in store TP-link BE65 router.
Look like it based on Qualcomm® Networking Pro 1220 Platform
and IPQ9574 chip.
As per manufacturer product brief

stated: Supported OS Openwrt, Linux Kernel 5.4

If it mean that support of WiFi7 on Openwrt should be available soon?

No, most likely their firmware is based on OpenWrt 21.02 (seeing as they're using kernel 5.4) and they've added their own code and patches on top of that, which can't have been upstreamed to 5.4 since it doesn't even have WiFi 7 support.

Many vendors say that they're running OpenWrt, but it isn't true at all since it's their own fork (with a few notable exceptions) and is basically a black box unless you have source code access. OpenWrt won't be getting WiFi 7 support until a new LTS version of the Linux kernel is announced and released (cause I assume that at that point in time you can start backporting patches), which hasn't even been decided yet. I wouldn't bet on WiFi 7 support being available in OpenWrt any time soon.

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I think the entire Deco BE line uses Qualcomm.

Not disputing the claim (I really don't know), but I wouldn't quite trust the chipset vendor's (QCA) claims on that, the actual device manufacturer (TP-Link) might have different ideas down the line (past the joined press release). In other words - trust, but verify - always.

That general advice aside, we don't have support for ipq9574, ipq5332 or ath12k yet, none at all (and no need to point at QCA's patchset for ipq9574 submitted last week, that's not going anywhere soon - no ethernet support, no wireless support, not a single supported -let alone working- device so far). When -or if- any of these is going to be supported, is unclear at this point (for pricing reasons, ipq53xx might beat ipq95xx, but that's just guesswork), I don't think any developers have their hands on either of those devices/ targets yet.

Given the activity around Mediatek filogic 880/ 660 support (both SOC- and wifi side), it's quite likely that it's going to beat ipq95xx/ ipq53xx when it comes to being merged into OpenWrt.

tl;dr: don't bet on the future, wait until the actual devices are known to be supported by OpenWrt.

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Hello, I saw this commit by @daniel which seems to enable support for the SmartRG SDG-8733. Does this mean that now OpenWrt officially supports a Wi-Fi 7 router?

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Yes, this is the first officially supported Wi-Fi 7 hardware, however, not all Wi-Fi 7 features are supported by hostapd and our scripting around it at this point.

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Someone should really look at this device https://www.amazon.com/BE11000-Enterprise-grade-Triple-Radio-included-NWA130BE/dp/B0CTJ3BVTX because

image

(Sorry, couldn't resist when I saw that.)

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I'll be sure to buy one right away :rofl:

1 Like