my posts XD

I am afraid I didn't quite get that, if the question about the firmware was addressed to me, it is the stock chinese firmware, trying to install openwrt on it once I install Luci if I ever succeed in doing it.

ok then we are BADLY OT in this forum ^^

anyway, afaik tp-link firmware never had telnet/ssh service running.

for web management from wan side you should find something under  security -> remote management

http://www.tp-link.com/resources/simulator/Archer_C7/index.htm

Excuse my ignorance, with accessing the wdr7500 from a webmanagement port, currently set to 0.0.0.0:80 should I change it to an ip in the same subnet of the first router to which the 2nd router is chained to on the wan port? And would I be able to install luci through it since there is no telnet/ssh daemon installed as you thankfully explained or are we talking about a different way installing luci/openwrt?

I had it connected to my laptop during the recovery process so I had no internet connection to pull packages with. On the firmware front I've tried with both firmwares to make sure I wasn't missing something. At one point after having the C7 connected as a client, I reverse roles and restarted wifi on both devices and my bridge continued to work. After rebooting the 4300 the bridge failed to come back up. At that point I gave up for the day.

Which firmware should I be running to get WDS with AP mode?

While typing this reply I actually rebooted both units after changing back to the 10.1.467 firmware everything seems to be working. One thing I did notice is I never had WDS working on the 5ghz band until I turned off WMM. Would that have anything to do with it?

Also I've attached my current wireless config just in case you see anything wrong, though it seems it's working now.

C7 wireless:

 config wifi-device 'radio0'
        option type 'mac80211'
        option channel '36'
        option hwmode '11na'
        option path 'pci0000:01/0000:01:00.0'
        list ht_capab 'LDPC'
        list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
        list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
        list ht_capab 'TX-STBC'
        list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
        list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
        option txpower '17'
        option country 'US'
        option htmode 'HT20'

config wifi-iface
        option device 'radio0'
        option network 'lan'
        option ssid 'ssid'
        option encryption 'psk2'
        option key 'key'
        option mode 'ap'
        option wds '1'
        option wmm '0'

4300 wireless:

 config wifi-device 'radio1'
        option type 'mac80211'
        option channel '36'
        option path 'pci0000:00/0000:00:00.0'
        list ht_capab 'LDPC'
        list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-20'
        list ht_capab 'SHORT-GI-40'
        list ht_capab 'TX-STBC'
        list ht_capab 'RX-STBC1'
        list ht_capab 'DSSS_CCK-40'
        option txpower '17'
        option country 'US'

config wifi-iface
        option device 'radio1'
        option network 'lan'
        option ssid 'ssid'
        option wds '1'
        option encryption 'psk2'
        option key 'key'
        option mode 'sta'

10.1.467.2

Doubt it. I left it enabled.

Configs look right to me... so I don't know.... ???

definesinsanity: Thanks for all of the help, much appreciated. I'd have probably given up well before now if I didn't have someone to bounce ideas off of.

It looks like at least in my setup that WMM was the problem. Each time I enable it WDS breaks. I've done it twice now with consistent results.

Well as long as you have it working, that's great news!
As for WMM... probably won't do anything useful anyway. Its just some weird-o QoS that seems to require support in both ends of the wifi connection, AS WELL AS application support.

I'll go out on a limb here and say that its probably a glitch in the firmware. The ath10k firmware seems to be quite lacking at the moment.

So is the WDR7500 V2 ready to replace WDR3600/WDR4300 units as the home router yet?

Or is the WiFi support still too flaky?

That's an understatement about the firmware lacking. I did more testing last night I can't get the WDS link to use 40mhz channels, nor can I get it to link at more than MCS0 on 20mhz despite the signal looking good.

Also last night with my laptop I couldn't get more than 4mbit over wireless on the C7. Turned off WDS for more testing and speeds didn't improve. I'm ready to give up on the C7 for now and wait for drivers/hardware to mature a bit more. I even switched back to my plain old wireless N card in my laptop to rule out Intel AC card.

Disabling WMM disallows the use of 802.11n (and ac), i.e., you are stuck to 54 Mbps at most.

Thanks that explains a lot. I wondered why I kept seeing everything linking at 54 Mbps. I'll have to go back to the ath10k mailing list and see if anyone else has had issues with WMM and WDS playing nice together on this device.

That seems.... broken.

Just part of the standard. I don't know the reason for that, though.