Which Router is best for OpenWrt in 2021?

[@OneMarcFifty]

Please visit my channel page: kzbin.info Want to talk to me? Join my Discord Server: discord.com/invite/DXnfBUG

[@edelexport]

It is now 2024 and I have found a pretty decent router for OpenWRT, which is quite cheap and works stable, fast and power efficent. The TP-Link Archer AX23. Damned easy to convert to OpenWRT. The only little restriction is the small amount of storage (16/128)

[@yuan.pingchen3056]

Be care of hardware backdoor/trojan.

[@edelexport]

@@yuan.pingchen3056 O.K. thank you, but I am hopeful , that with OpenWRT, the router doesn´t do any backdoor actions...

[@rklauco]

Main problems with these routers - versions. Vendors often start with some nice chipsets, lots of RAM and storage. And over time, without external change, the internals change, the same model suddenly runs completely different HW with much more limited RAM, storage, etc. It happened to me multiple times that I purchased some device listed on OpenWRT as supported, just to find out that supported was Version 4 and I got Version 5 (not listed at the vendor site, of course) and my device is either not yet supported, or even worse, never will be. So, be careful when checking the device, always also check version.

[@OneMarcFifty]

You are spot on. That's really a big challenge. And unfortunately it drives a lot of people away from OpenWrt because they think OpenWrt is to blame. That's also the main reason why I am so reluctant to do the same video for 2022 - Any time that I "recommend" a router, I have no control what the vendor will do next and potentially steer thousands of people to an unusable device ;-(

[@Fulcanelli88]

​@@OneMarcFifty Your own isp

[@adrianis]

so don't buy tp-link )

[@bnee4313]

Tplink do it more often.

[@jettangeles2707]

i have been using the wrt3200acm ever since it came out & i absolutely love it

[@0ChAnTi]

Jesus, I appreciate your hard work to put this comparation together.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Many thanks 😉

[@danny_the_K]

Marc, well done sir. 1 brief correction for you. The number of antennas you have one your router or AP governs the maximum speed you can go. So in the case where you have a router with 4 antenna, 2 might be used for 2.4G and 2 for 5G, so 2.4G can only go 300Mbps for 802.11N speeds and AC/AX will max out at just under 450Mbps. The next limiting issues are your devices connecting to the router/AP. If the router/AP has 4 antennas and you phone only has 2, you only get 2 streams of MIMO, hence the 300Mbps on your phone. Last but even more importantly, the farthest device (weakest signal) governs the max speed of the whole network. Since Wi-Fi has built in rate fallback functions to keep client devices connect, all devices connected to the router/AP suffer the same fall back. I recommend you turn off the lower speeds in N, turn off 802.11B completely and add a second wired AP (turn off dhcp service and set it’s address statically). I hope this helps and doesn’t confuse to many out there. Yes, wireless is my professional role.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Awesome feedback Dan, many thanks!

[@francocastilloAR]

It's not quite like that. Some routers are 4x4 on 5GHz and 4x4 on 2.4GHz and have 4 physical antennas instead of 8.

[@stephenlipton525]

thank you for the really clear explanations. I have paid for courses and not learned anywhere near as much as i learn from you

[@OneMarcFifty]

Many thanks for the friendly feedback !

[@TheMave95]

For a budget router I can recommend the Xiaomi 4A Gigabit Edition. I've got mine for 15,99 € at Amazon Warehouse Deals. It only has two regular LAN ports, but the WAN port can be configured to be LAN. Flashing OpenWrt is pretty easy with OpenWRTInvasion.

[@fifo85]

Here is the thing: I was looking for a router/ap to buy in place of the Archer C7 which is pricey where I live, saw your suggestion, got a Xiaomi 4A Giga for half the price of the C7, flashed OpenWRT and... everything is great! Thank you! May the networking gods smile upon your packets.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi, many thanks for the feedback ! Xiaomi comes up quite often as a suggestion - I believe I'll have to have a look at them ;-)

[@adrian4jc]

Can I buy 2 or 3 of this to daisy chain? I am sorry I am a newbie on this.

[@TheMave95]

@@adrian4jc You can create a mesh with OpenWrt

[@adrian4jc]

@@TheMave95 many thanks. I have a virgin media router and runs at 200mbps speed. If I successfully flushed it with openwrt, should I just plug this with my existing router and daisy chain this with 2 or 3 XIAOMI routers?

[@AresROC]

Thank you for another great video! I very much enjoyed it, especially learning about hardware acceleration & htop monitoring!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Many thanks for your feedback;-)

[@snax4499]

Thanks !!! You saved my day with the flow offloading setting !!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Awesome! I am happy that it was useful!

[@hiyoshi177]

Inglés I have seen this video 4 times and learned some things, I did not even know what iperf3 was, but now I can use this great tool, thank you sir for your knowledge.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Many thanks - I am happy you liked it!!!

[@idmhead0160]

You rule Marc. You solved a problem for me. Namely, checking the check boxes for offloading did it. I have a Linksys EA6350v4 and Frontier fiber Internet, 500 Mbs upload 500 Mbs download. A couple weeks ago, my router started disconnecting from the Internet. If I unplugged and replugged the Ethernet cable to the modem, it would start working again, but, would always disconnect after 5 minutes. I have the exact same setup at my sister's house and the same problem happened there. So, I upgraded to OpenWrt, hoping that it would fix the problem. Indeed it did. It is a drastic improvement over the Linksys factory firmware. The only problem I ran into was that upload speeds on wireless were slower with OpenWrt compared to the Linksys firmware. I could get close to 500/500 with the Linksys firmware. With OpenWrt, upload speed seemed fine, but, download speed was only about 350. Checking the box for software offloading fixed the problem. I had been using htop previously, like you demonstrated and I could see that it was using multiple CPUs, but, that it was nearly maxing out. CPU is still high, even if I check the hardware offload checkbox, but, now download speeds are close to 500 Mbs. If I had gigabit, I would need a better router. The EA6350v4 isn't the most powerful in the world, but, it is working pretty good for my basic setup at the moment. Thanks for making this video. It was very helpful.

[@tinkeringsolderbro1968]

Thank you, as my Archer C7 went up in smoke, i got some interesting hints from here. Next will be a Linksys EA7300 with mediatek base.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi, many thanks for sharing. Let me know how things go.

[@vantruongsinh]

This is what I need to start with OpenWrt :) Thank you. Current using TP-link Archer C2 but it show its age now :)

[@OneMarcFifty]

Many thanks - glad it was useful ;-)

[@raunomakela9226]

Great comparison! Cannot wait for the next video.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thank you very much!

[@clonetrooper5674]

I love the videos. Could you do an updated video for 2022? Thanks Marc

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hey, thanks for the feedback - I might do one for 2023 ;-)

[@0ChAnTi]

Can't wait to see you DIY router build.

[@OneMarcFifty]

It’s coming ;-)

[@leeeee888]

Can you do a follow up for 2022/2023? Appreciate all your videos!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Luke, this request has come up a couple of times. I am a bit uncertain about a follow up. The hardware shortage and limited availability of Wifi6 options makes this a real challenge.

[@obithunter]

'Preciate the video. One of the things I got out of it was the software page showing the sysupgrade download. Just used it to update my c7

[@OneMarcFifty]

Awesome, many thanks for sharing!

[@shenidan2023]

Excellent video, very interesting stuff! Thanks for taking the time to post it.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Many thanks Gurdeep. And thanks for watching.

[@LampJustin]

Thanks, great video as always! I use a Mirouter 4A Giga that also uses the MediaTek mt7621 and except the 2.4GHz driver it's fantastic. The stability isn't perfect yet, which is why I have a cron job that restarts the router every week. I had some weird stuff happening after 40 days uptime so I thought it might as well reboot every so often to never run into stuff like that, but for just 35€ new it's a steel. Also I think that MU-MIMO is unfortunately not supported in hostapd atm if I'm remembering correctly.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Many thanks for the feedback. I just checked on MU-MIMO and it should be implemented in theory, at least for ath10k and mt7615. I'll double check and test. Maybe hostapd needs some trigger to actually use it...

[@ivansostarec2564]

SO useful and such a easy to follow/navigate around format! Thank you, subscribed!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Many thanks Ivan, glad you liked it !!!

[@nitinkumar-vf7wj]

Thanks a lot sir. Cleared my all doubts. Going for C7 as it suits best for me.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Nitin, glad it helped, many thanks!

[@1over137]

I came here as I need to replace my Archer V600 with an OpenWRT or DDWRT router. Leaving the Archer to handle the VDSL only. I see you are recommending a TP-Link. However the reason I am replacing the Archer is that it's wifi is unstable, it's fine for a few weeks, then randomly it drops a handful of device, usually those that can't migrate to other APs due to signal. Reboot the archer, it all works again.

[@OneMarcFifty]

I could not see that happening on the C7. If I remember well the V600 did only have 2.4GHz right ? Alternatively you might want to look for a cheap Mediatek alernative like the Xiaomi Mirouter 4A Gigabit

[@1over137]

@@OneMarcFifty Thanks. I was mistaken it's a V900 I'm replacing. I think it suffers from memory corruption with high device count. I bought a WRT3200acm and a Draytech VDSL dedicated modem. At the same time I updated my switches to managed and have been following your other videos for OpenWRT to set up a Guest VLAN properly for wired access (work laptop). Your video on VirtualBox was helpful and allowed me to set it up in a lab and play around. That was after locking myself out of the router a few times playing with VLANs :)

[@hishammohamed4268]

Great job with this video. Very thorough. Thank you!!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Many thanks!

[@chmoduk]

I wouldn't have one device doing all those things because if it breaks then the whole thing collapses. Lets say a raspberry pi4 could be your server and router, with a managed switch and an access point for the wifi, using vlans to separate your domains. You can use the managed switch to route your internet modem into the pi4 and all vlan interface on the pi4. Access point will use the vlans with unmanaged interfaces for each network, bridged with the wireless interfaces. All dhcp will be on the pi4 and you can run pihole for your whole network. Plug a couple of large usb3 drives into the pi for backups and media serving. (One armed router).

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi, many thanks for your feedback - yes, you can scale up/down as much as you want - in a nutshell that's the great thing with Open Source and standards - you can design nearly every infrastructure you like at nearly no additional cost ;-)

[@HexPortal]

I bought a second hand WRT1900ACS V2 for €25. It handles gigabit speed with SQM Cake enabled, without software or hardware offloading enabled. Also a good recommendation. The wifi does not support DFS though, but I don't use it myself.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thanks for sharing! 25 is a bargain ;-)

[@webcrawler5548]

I think the title should read: "Which WiFi Router is best for OpenWrt in 2021?" since your suggestion appear to be concentrated around WiFi routers. I personally like the Luxul ABR-4500. Nevertheless, your video is very informative. Thank you!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Good point, many thanks.

[@caangelesPH]

you explain things really well, good video

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thank you very much ;-)

[@hamhumtube]

I asked the same question below on one of your old O.wrt videos would like to repeat here. I am sure if a competent it person such as yourself chooses O.Wrt over pfsense there is for sure a valid and solid reason. Kindly share it with us. Thanks again

[@OneMarcFifty]

Copy of the origina answer: "Well, you know - like so often in IT you use what you know - I know Linux and I know OpenWrt - just happened so 😉 I have just never felt the need for anything else. I am tempted to believe that it must be the same for someone who uses pfsense. I do have it on my list though 😉"

[@hamhumtube]

@@OneMarcFifty thank you for taking time and putting info here too. Any one who might wonder could find the answer here as well. Regards.

[@hamhumtube]

@@OneMarcFifty btw I use neither openwrt nor pfsense. I installed pfsense on docker but much scared to dive into.

[@gasparem16]

Excellent video, I was just looking for some sort of performance test (old routers refurbished with Openwrt :P ) and didn't know about the iPerf tool. Thanks

[@OneMarcFifty]

Many thanks for the feedback! I have been thinking of maybe doing a Toolbox video on iperf3 and another one on htop. Very much like Webmin and Ventoy those are just little helpers I don’t want to miss ;-)

[@Globulov]

thx u comrad u allowed me to understand why I had issue with my linksys wireless a true bro !!!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Many thanks for the feedback! I am glad it helped. I remember when I discovered the problem I was so disappointed and was about to throw the device out - glad I kept it ;-)

[@Patrobasket]

Very interesting video even for those like me who have been using Openwrt since Asus WL500gP. BTW I still have a C7 as a spare an a 100Mbps connection at home

[@OneMarcFifty]

Many thanks for the feedback! I still have my C7's in a box - I will probably use them to build an 802.11s mesh for one of the next Wi-Fi videos and then pull out the ath10K cards in order to build my own router on X86 ;-) kzbin.info/door/G5Ph9Mm6UEQLJJ-kGIC2AQ

[@andreashallmann18]

Thanks for the great video series on openwrt. I love it. Going for a 1GB internet connection now, I verified your test results for my 4 tp-link archer. Great. I had to learn that it makes no sense to install iperf3 on a router. But a warning to all, the DIR-3060 I bought after this video IS NOT SUPPORTED by openwrt. Board design seems to differ a lot, and a trial to port got stuck somehow. Just a warning for all others watching. Next trail, will be an arm-based router board. Marc for your device, have you found a usable port?

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Andreas, I am using the DIR-2660 firmware on my DIR-3060 and it works great - just I can't use the 3rd radio, but 2 radios are fine for my use case.

[@hir3npatel]

Nice in-depth review, did not know hardware accelerators existed or made such a difference.

[@OneMarcFifty]

It depends so much on the hardware being used - the native / stock firmware very often makes use of those but with the free drivers we are very often limited....

[@hir3npatel]

@@OneMarcFifty Thanks. By the way, if you enable super thanks on your channel, I will send you a super thanks.

[@rklauco]

Btw, good idea for testing speed instead of iperf3 (a bit more visual) is to run open speed test on some docker-capable machine in your network.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Great comment Robert, many thanks - I did not know that I could self-host open speed test (until I dug a bit deeper following your comment ;-) )

[@portman8909]

I bought a Eero Mesh to solve my bufferbloat issues on the network. Seems to have done the job thanks to SQM.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thanks John - and you are running OpenWrt with SQM on it ?

[@portman8909]

@@OneMarcFifty Nah, just using the default firmware that came with it. I can activate SQM through the beta labs.

[@helmanfrow]

Hi, Marc, I would love to see a video on the NaoPi R4S and R2S!

[@OneMarcFifty]

I might look into those once prices go down a bit more ;-(

[@FeralFoxDX]

I use the Linksys E8450, currently it only supports snapshot releases, but its working perfectly with sysupgrade and everything from what I can tell. The only issue I am having with it is 160MHz does not work.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Can the Linksys not do it or is it maybe your clients not being able to connect to 160 MHz? I’ve had issues with my iPhone connecting to 160 MHz in the past…

[@FeralFoxDX]

@@OneMarcFifty I can select 160, LUCI says its working, but no device in my home can see it. I live in a very rural area, so there are no other access points. It wont even show up on any SDR I have setup. Not even my desktop with an intel AX card sees. Stock firmware has it locked at a max of 80Mhz so I assume the card on the router is incapable of it or something. Very odd.

[@OneMarcFifty]

@@FeralFoxDX i’ve had the same with my iphone and the D-Link so I assumed my iphone can just not handle it. But I would need to test with another router as Wifi client in order to verify.

[@FeralFoxDX]

@@OneMarcFifty I see you have purchased the Belkin branded model in some of your newer videos. I forgot to mention until now that I was able to successfully enable 160MHz by changing the country code...I believe the driver prevents it from transmitting unless it's set for a country it is allowed to use that bandwidth in.

[@crazypict]

Brilliant video!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thank you very much.

[@tonybell1597]

Excellent work! Thank you Marc…

[@OneMarcFifty]

Many thanks Tony!

[@bradkaral1188]

Very well done, Marc. Clear, sequential, easy-to-understand.

[@VyLeTien]

A very interesting comparison. I learned many things from this video. Thank you!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Awesome, glad you could use it ;-)

[@unknown_channel_name]

You explained the subject pretty well ! Can you make videos on following topics : 1) Does getting dedicated Access point hardware necessary? 2) PFsense vs OpenWRT

[@james48228]

Hi, ive been researching a bit and heres what ive found: 1) getting a dedicated hardware access point is not necessary for most people and just adds unnecessary complexity. Also most of the time they are more expensive than an old router thats put into AP mode 2) pfsense is most of the time ROUTER only and has no wifi capabilities, so an AP is required if you are going to flash something with pfsense. However, pfsense is being phased out with opnsense as there is some controversy with pfsense. meanwhile, openwrt keeps the wifi capabilities of the router.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi, many thanks for your comments and feedback. Yes, 90% of the Wi-fi users presumably will never need a dedicated / separate Access point. Unless you have a) a larger area to cover or b) you are interested in DIY and want to learn how to build the stuff yourself or c) you realize that your device saturates on CPU etc. in which case separating router (OpenWrt, RouterOS, PFSense, OPNSense) and Access point (OpenWrt) makes total sense ;-)

[@0_1_2]

You’re the man

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thanks mate!

[@nandoscotti4624]

damn right

[@MuhammadImran-hw8hy]

Great Video

[@OneMarcFifty]

Many thanks!

[@SebVEVO]

Excellent video indeed. Thx

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thank you very much ;-)

[@prattler26]

Please make a video about Netgear R7800!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi, it seams that a lot of people are using the Nighthawk R7800 with OpenWrt - and - seriously - it's a great device - Ath10K wifi etc... The reason that I chose those devices to compare was to make people aware of possibilities on how to measure throughput and CPU usage and also show the hardware offloading possibilities for MEdiatek ;-)

[@hamhumtube]

Awesome comparison thanks

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thank you very much;-)

[@hamhumtube]

@@OneMarcFifty May I ask why you are not publishing your Patreon or preferably crypto currency receive address? I and surely many others would like to contribute to your lab.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Yes you may - of course. Going larger from a commercial point of view is effectively on my list, but I want to do it right, i.e. with proper planning. That would include affiliate links, where people can purchase the hardware at no additional cost but I would earn a small commission, also patreon and mailing lists are on the plan. Just need to figure out a couple of things such as taxes and data protection plus of course there should be added value to viewers who contribute. I would say it should all come live before the end of the year, but without any impact on the quality of content and visuals. I just had to figure out a couple of mainly technical things first. While the channel is running as it is that still gives me time to experiment with a lot of other things (SEO and the like)

[@JrManPT]

Great video, I will try openwrt on my 3200acm!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Let me know how it goes! I've had a hard time in the beginning, but once I sticked to the best practices everything ran smoothly ( I have it running OpenWrt 19.07 for roughly 2 months now)

[@simplyklairee]

Amazing video. Thanks

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thank you very much ;-)

[@skug978]

Not sure why you aren't getting it - But I'm running an upgraded 19.07.7 firmware Archer C7 v2, and it is offering me Software Offloading and Hardware Offloading options (in the Firewall settings page). I ticked those ('experimental') options and the router is running okay (so far).

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Steven, the boxes are always there. Just ticking hardware offloading doesn't do anything on the Archer. Currently only for Mediatek.

[@skug978]

Ah. That makes it clear. Thanks for the response. I hadn't analysed it myself.

[@user-zr7kz4vs7c]

Perfect video! Thank you🙏🏻

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thank you ;-)

[@user-zr7kz4vs7c]

@@OneMarcFifty Do you know how to port forward (port 443) but only allow connection coming from a list of Cloudflare IP addresses, is this possible on OpenWRT?

[@edelexport]

I am interrested in listening to your choice of routers in November 2022....are there any new models, which you recommend ?

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi, that's something I am thinking about for a long time. There are a lot of things to factor in. Wifi6, GBit Speed and the like. The Belkin RT3200 is a good choice but building your own with X86 is definitely a good option as well.

[@edelexport]

@@OneMarcFifty Thanks...I also considered the Belkin 3200, but its expensive and not easy to get at the moment... I flashed a Xiaomi 4A gigabit edition with OpenWRT using your instruction video, but all of the Mediatek 7603E 2,4Ghz Wifi chips are not working stable. 5Ghz is fine, NAT-speed also fast enough for my 500Mbit/sec WAN. Tested a Cudy WR1300 with the same Mediatek configuration , same unstable, and slow 2,4Ghz network, especially, when transfering Data from my NAS, it´s pure luck, when the data transfer runs until the end, without interrupting or bringing error messages...my problem ist definitvely the Mediatek in combination with Open WRT. It´s also a concern regarding the power consuption. There, the Xiaomi, with under 3 Watts (5Ghz off), is one of the best I tested so far. I would be happy having a low power consuming router with OpenWRT, goes over 500Mbit/sec NAT-speed and has a stable 2,4Ghz Wifi faster than 5MByte/sec.. All other things like Wifi6 are not essential for me using mostly cabled Ethernet....those things would be a bonus for me 🙂 I´m afraid building a X86 system and have a high power consumption, only because there are less and less routers on the market running OpenWRT AND beeing fast AND do not consume too much energy....having not any good alternatives I am running my old Archer C7 Ver5.0 with original or my Archer C7 Ver.2.0 with Open WRT at the moment to have my family peace. Btw. thanks a lot for your videos. I have learned a lot out of them.

[@satrionuswantoro9023]

great work. thank you

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thank you very much!

[@ratonilophe]

Very thanks !!!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi David, you're welcome;-)

[@paldo771]

Belkin RT3200 can be had for cheap and works great with openwrt..

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Paul - yes, I bought one last week ;-) Will make a video on Wifi 6 with OpenWrt soon ;-)

[@eneoroberto]

Congratulations. Do a review of openwrt and mikrotik and also ubiquiti. Mainly about your installation 911,922, groove metal and others. Also mention using with nanosation ac m5, thank you very much.

[@rake.]

An old PC (x86) and a couple cheap access points works great for me, especially with VPN service.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Yes - that's definitely a great way to go at the moment given the difficult situation on the hardware market. Older x86 hardware (broken Laptop, Thin client or the like) definitely beat everything else in terms of CPU.

[@MOHAMMEDABAALAWI]

Thanks for wonderful video I really enjoyed 😘😘😘😘😘😘😘

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thank you very much - I am happy that you liked it ;-)

[@hayktum]

Thank's for Great video. What do you think about Netgear x4s r7800?

[@OneMarcFifty]

Looks great ;-)

[@HeinserTorres]

Great video! keep it up!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Many thanks ;-)

[@AindriuMacGiollaEoin]

how do you upgrade MediaTek MT7621AT to OpenWrt 21.0X, maybe you could do a video on upgrading - the dos & don'ts.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi, many thanks for the feedback - I'll need to do something on 21.x Upgrade - defo. The one thing people are struggling most seems to be the changed VLAN / DSA thing ;-)

[@AindriuMacGiollaEoin]

@@OneMarcFifty I got it upgraded after some posts on the openwrt forum, lots to learn about openwrt, keep it up!

[@RifatErdemSahin]

Marc gr8 video. I am still watching videos. It means there is value. The a3 paper works....do you place the ad paper into a storyboard(powerpoint) before shooting ?

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Erdem, no - I just start writing ;-)

[@maximusg88]

Great... Will use my Archer C7 v5 in combination with my Unifi AP for fast roaming via OpenWRT then

[@OneMarcFifty]

Let me know how this goes - it's not sure that different products use the same technology here. If you can however enable 802.11r and type in a mobility domain on the Ubiquity then it might work.

[@maximusg88]

@@OneMarcFifty what's a mobility domain? :) sorry - I'm a noob... I can certainly enable 802.11r on my ubiqity

[@OneMarcFifty]

@@maximusg88 It#s a setting on the Wifi parameters to indicate that different SSIDs belong to the same fast roaming domain - there is a video on this here : kzbin.info/www/bejne/oX7KpGWOe6ifl68

[@maximusg88]

@@OneMarcFifty awesome - thanks :) Will check that out!

[@sincerelyyours7538]

Really excellent video! I am looking for a router for my soon to be built new house and replace my old but reliable D-Link DIR-655 which I just discovered is not compatible with DD-WRT and maybe the other open source router OSes as well. Rooting routers is a new process for me so I've much research to do and, at the moment, only a cell phone to do it with. I don't know if the 655 can take Open-WRT or not, do you? If it can I plan to use it as a test platform to teach myself how to root routers and get the most out of whatever becomes my next one. Thank you for this very informative video!

[@OneMarcFifty]

I couldn‘t find the DIR-655 in the OpenWrt table of hardware. So I am afraid that it‘s not supported

[@gustavrsh]

I run a DIR-882, great speeds and reliability with the RC2. I'll skip RC3 and wait for the full release.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Awesome thanks for sharing

[@antons7202]

A Very informative and well-composed video. Opens up a lot of valuable information about routers and their inner functionality. So if we take an average router on the market, say Asus, does it mean that they always use a generic CPU and do no background hardware offloading at all, unless this is mentioned somewhere in the GUI as an option? Is there then any benefit of using a router as a box solution vs a software router on a generic CPU and mainboard?

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Anton, if there is Offloading or not depends on the Software/Firmware used and the provided hardware capabilities, so hard to say. Open Source like OpenWrt does not really have a choice here quite often because the calls to the Firmware are not always (or even rarely) documented. Whether you run this on embedded hardware or X86 as such depends on the use case. Advantage of the embedded Wi-fi systems is that you get Wi-fi for (relatively) cheap. W/r to Softrouter - depends if you use it on tin (X86) which is just another architecture to use or if you virtualize it (in which case Wi-fi would be difficult to achieve)

[@digitalshooter2905]

Wish you would've kept this up. It's hard to find a more current router that is being sold to use opnwrt on.

[@dennisdesgehtdichnixan2022]

Danke. Schönes Video.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Danke - gerne ;-)

[@FeralCompanions.]

Cudy AC2100. $40 on Amazon. Works great. Very fast router for the money.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Looks good - I might have a look at that one ;-)

[@nathanpopp7313]

Very poor range, limited by low quality cpu

[@BrendanGrainger]

Hi Marc, your channel is fantastic thanks. Any chance of a DSA on OpenWRT for dummies video? :-)

[@OneMarcFifty]

Definitely. Many thanks for the hint. I just recently thought “man, all your VLan videos won’t work any more” when they changed the interface. I’ll make a note of that

[@mantaspabarska]

@@OneMarcFifty Waiting DSA video on OpenWRT for dummies :) cheers

[@radumamy2000]

Marc, would you still recommend the D-link DIR-3060 in 2022? Could you please please do a video on this router? Many thanks.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hey Radu, yes - I mean, it's a great device. The only thing that startles me a bit is that there is no MU-MIMO support in the mt76 OpenWrt drivers, even though the proprietary drivers have MU-MIMO support.

[@tatlonggwapings6936]

Next topic please. SQM for wan, lan and wifi

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi, Quality of Serivce is on my list - especially with everyone working from home these days I think it's a big issue.

[@transkryption]

I didn't realise the Slingshot Channel was into OpenWRT 🤗

[@OneMarcFifty]

I had to search for that on KZbin;-) I get it - really funny rofl ;-)

[@impact0r]

Hi Marc. Great material. How do you think of comparison of Archer C7 (v2 or v5) vs Asus RT-N66U (running Merlin LTS or FreshTomato)? The uses I consider are either AP only (5ghz for phone/laptops/TV + 2.4ghz for IoTs), or AP + WAN-LAN routing, with same use. I also wonder if the fairly newer Xiaomi 4A (50% of their price in the used market) is in the similar league as the other two. Internet connection is 100MBits, but likely to upgrade to 300MBits or 600MBits soon.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi, currently I will be looking at Wifi 6 routers such as the Xiaomi AX3200, AX3600, Redmi AX6000 and the netgear WAX206. Follow up to come shortly. In the meanwhile see the status on my github repo here: github.com/onemarcfifty/mu-mimo-test#test-progress

[@ipstacks11]

I am surprised one of your criteria wasn't at least 3 radios for backhaul in a mesh. You may have good reasons for that as I am not as familiar with OpenWRT as many are. I was thinking 4 radios would be best in a mesh but I don't see that in the wifi routers I have looked at recently. If you were doing city scale wifi, then it seems more reasonable to me.

[@tonizator]

Great and detail review

[@OneMarcFifty]

Many thanks !

[@archie591]

thanks for the great video sir! May I please know how were you able to power your routers with PoE? was it by injector? thanks again!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Archie, I used to power them with 48V injectors in the past. I have now switched to a PoE Switch and I am using Trendnet TPE-104GS and TP-Link TL-PoE10R as splitters.

[@kyme32]

It would be awesome if openwrt would make firmware for a in-wall ap for a fast roaming network, there are lots of them on ali for cheap and the in-wall thing it sounds even better

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi, many thanks for the suggestion - it might already be supported - which hardware would you be looking at specifically?

[@kyme32]

@@OneMarcFifty perhaps for Comfast CF-E550AC, it's on MT7628DA+MT7613B chipset, i've searchd about it but i found nothing, perhaps you can take a look, thank you

[@jithinsankar787]

Hey i bought dir 2660 after so many research but did saw your video as the title of video didn't mention any router name😅...i have installed latest openwrt and setup sqm qos (i dont know if i configured it correctly). My connection speed is 150 up and down fiber. The help i need is ,can you make any video for setting sqm qos for fiber network. Im just a noob at these kind of things.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Many thanks for the feedback - I had tagged the video with the product name but KZbin doesn't show it prominently - w/r to SQM - I will do a separate QoS/SQM video very shortly.

[@svengonzales2664]

Thank you.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Sven - you're welcome and thank you for watching ;-)

[@Tofflus]

this is a very good video. professional

[@OneMarcFifty]

Thank you very much !

[@jonathanpayne9956]

Well you are probably wondering " how is jon getting on?" marc ! so i will tell you! so i picked up a WRT3200ACM so i can move my netgear R7800 (a capable openwrt router) to AP duties and ditch the R7000 and i picked up a sff dell optiplex 3050 to take over server duties from my odroid ! so i have nearly caught up to date with your tutorials! even have the vps running in the cloud and serving me wireguard vpn. Busy migrating all my docker goodness over from the odroid to the optiplex! but been side tracked a bit becouse those optiplex 3050's are just brilliant so picked up a second for travel duties as a media and retro gaming rig! now i went and lost knollage of how i got the R7800 to publish to mqtt the arp periodically i have the script which if i remember was your script that a adapted for my use now i am hunting for the tutorial to jog my memory!

[@jonathanpayne9956]

Ok! so found your github looks like my genius edit of the script was to publish to mqtt on my odroid mosquitto server with user-pass authentication. so i guess slap it in /etc/init.d/ and enable or luci startup ?

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi Jonathan, great to hear back from you - I am happy the Dell Optiplex thing works for you! Btw if you want to put things into Autostart on OpenWrt, go to Luci then system-startup - local startup. This is where you can edit the /etc/rc.local directly.

[@user-il6dq7kh5k]

15:54 What extra antenna has to do with Wi-Fi mesh? What us multi-channel?

[@OneMarcFifty]

In a Wi-fi Mesh you would need to have all Mesh nodes on the same channel. With a third radio you could have the mesh on one common channel on the first radio and run AP mode on different channels on the second radio, hence increase the bandwidth, i.e. use multiple channels.

[@welliopedrodelima4782]

Hello. very good video I know. I bought a pi r2 banana with mt7621 CPU and 2GB memory. Ethernet connections are 1Gb. however wifi is not very good with openwrt. works reasonable with ubuntu. I'm trying to make a CCTV system with ip cameras. still getting beaten ... really enjoyed your video using openwrt and usb camera. Make one with ip camera please!

[@OneMarcFifty]

Will do - it’s on the list ;-)

[@brabri8611]

Currently, what is the best device that can be used to get good internet and has the 5G feature?

[@installmentplan]

Most ath79 targets including the C7 do not support DSA which is pretty disappointing. This may change in the future but as such I don't necessarily recommend it for new openWRT builds.

[@OneMarcFifty]

I do agree that it is disappointing. However, you may still use those devices- just you don’t get DSA

[@francocastilloAR]

@@OneMarcFifty Also, DSA worsens performance.

[@pm71241]

I got a DIR-2660 based on this video... unfortunately it seems the ones you get these days are "V2" and that the bootloader has changed somewhere between the first V1 and now. So there seems to be 2 issues with this device: 1) The recovery page does not accept the current images. (something with image headers and encryption?) 2) You can't upload from Linux since there's some weird TCP issue which makes the router stop answering. People are reporting that it works from Windoze.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Do you have these issues when you try to flash OpenWrt or are you trying to go back to stock firmware?

[@pm71241]

@@OneMarcFifty Both

[@OneMarcFifty]

Here's what worked for me in order to revert to stock: 1. Download Firmware Version 1.00 from US D-Link site support.dlink.com/resource/PRODUCTS/DIR-3060-US/REVA/FIRMWARE/DIR-3060_REVA_FIRMWARE_v1.00B12.zip 2. decrypt Firmware file with github.com/0xricksanchez/dlink-decrypt 3. Using FireFox portable 3.5.6 (with wine) browse to 192.168.0.1, select decrypted firmware, do NOT click upload but leave window open. 4. Restart Router in Recovery mode, NOW click on Upload

[@pm71241]

@@OneMarcFifty Would the DIR-2660 EU 1.04 firmware work as well? Point 3 sounds interesting. Haven't tried that. Also ... I think I saw people mentioning that even with a virtual machine it didn't work on Linux, so I'm a bit surprised if Wine does the trick. Anyway... currently at the stock 1.11 image, so the first problem is to get OpenWRT on the machine at all.

[@OneMarcFifty]

I think wine is not the decisive point here. I have just included that because thats how I did it. Should work in plain Windows. The main points to me are the firmware versions (try to revert to an unencrypted FW first) plus the fact that you need to restart the router BEFORE you click. That recovery console is really very very picky ;-)

[@eduardschmidt6363]

Hi Marc, thank you for your work and for this video! Which vdsl modem would you recommend to go with the linksys wrt3200 (I'm in Germany, if that makes a difference)? Thanks a lot!

[@OneMarcFifty]

I personally use the dsl modem which my provider (Telekom...) gave me - I consider my network to start after the ISP's modem/router.

[@Boz1211111]

Provided gear in my case does not allow bridge mode. Is it advisable to connect my network gear in such network or ask them to replace it with just a modem?

[@bayliner4387]

Would you be able to recommend a router that can work 100% wifi giving both bands for Client-AP-Router functionality. I live on a boat and going from marina to marina I run into many different APs some 5 and some only 2.4. and all the letters of the alphabet, also run a number of Arduino sensors and 2.4 cameras on my boat that I need to be able to communicate with them back to my router. I would like to be able to go into the setup and connect with whatever the marina has to offer while at the same time maintaining my internal 5/2.4 boat network. Last I would like it to have changeable antennas as I use outside mounted antennas to capture the marina signal and internal antennas to capture the sensors. Range is actually a problem. The boat is only 60 feet long but wifi penetration is a problem through the density of hardwood and and fiberglass. Sound like a challange?

[@OneMarcFifty]

I’d go with two devices. One for the inside - something small like the lyra map ac2200 - and one for the outside - maybe a Ubiquity outdoor or even an old 2.4 GHz AP for the outside. The marina presumably only offers 2.4 GHz anyway

[@bayliner4387]

@@OneMarcFifty That's basically what I'm doing and it seems to be the trouble. Marinas are a mix of everything sometimes only 2.4 or 5 and sometimes both and varying protocols. I have 2 EnGenius 3500s, one Netgear WNDR 3400 and a TPLink Pharos CPE710 Dish. I use the EnGenius for 2.4 communication to the Marina and the TPLink when it 5 but its a bit of a wiring problem switching things around and trying to line up the protocols. Would be nice to have one box. As it is now I have everything on 12 volts as shore power or inverter power can be intermittent so I need something that runs 12-24 volts. The TP Link is a Dish type so its great for range but it doesn't do 2.4 so I feed it to the Netgear which then provides 2.4 and 5 internally. When I'm at a marina that only has 2.4 i need to tune up the EnGenius which utilizes an outside antenna. in both case the connecting box to the Marina is hardwired to the NetGear

[@johanna-bapt.martaasaeda9499]

Hello ! Thank you for the great video ! I compared the specs of Archer C7 and fritzbox 4020 (which I already have), and they are similar except for Wi-Fi. I use access points (unifi) for Wi-Fi, so the quality of Wi-Fi of the router itself is not very important. Would you say that they would perform the same in other respects ? I plan to order VDSL 100 or perhaps 50 from telekom. (perhaps 50 is more stable?) I suppose there are other routers with similar spec. I wonder what makes Archer C7 stick out among them.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Hi - I can't really comment on the Fritzboxes as I have never owned one ;-( I think what makes the Archer C7 so popular is the compatibility with Linux plus the interesting price point.

[@johanna-bapt.martaasaeda9499]

@@OneMarcFifty Thank you for your reply ! However I don't really understand it;; If C7 gets OpenWRT, it will be managed by Luci or SSH, so I don't understand what you meant by "compatibility with linux".... And with "price point", did you mean a good cost-performance ? (preiswert) ?

[@ducsue751]

Hi there. I've ordered the TP-Link Archer C7 V5, but it arrive as V4. Should I return it or keep it? I don't really care about the 2 usb ports. I see in another OP video about the DIY mesh setup where the archer C7 V5 supports a feature that is needed for the mesh setup. Does the V4 supports it as well? Read online that there is no difference between the V4 and V5 other than the 2 usb ports on the V4. The difference is in the firmware itself was what I read.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Looking at the hardware specs - they seem to be identical so I think you can give it a go

[@SanaagSomaliland]

Thanks very much. You mentioned in the video that you will leave the commands to get WRT3200ACM WIFI working in the description. I think you forgot to include it. Would be kind enough to let me know what those commands where. I am currently having issues with WIFI on this router, everything else is working. I know you also mentioned to go back to older version. Just that I have done enough setup of other things that I just cannot undo them all at the moment. I have another WIFI router that is currently doing my WIFI.

[@OneMarcFifty]

Ooops - my bad - in a nutshell, on the command line you can do (XX being your country code): uci set wireless.radio0.country='XX' uci set wireless.radio1.country='XX' uci set wireless.radio2.disabled='1' uci commit Alternatively set the country on each Wifi in the "advanced tab" and disable the radio2

[@SanaagSomaliland]

@@OneMarcFifty thanks

[@vibrion121]

Great review!. Searching this type of info after fighting with my TP-Link TL-WDR3600 + extroot (succesfully solved!). Unfortunately linksys are around 200usd in my country :(

[@OneMarcFifty]

Maybe have a look at the Belkin Rt3200?

[@IMBlakeley]

Good test. I recently as in 8 weeks or so swapped my ISP router out for a Pi4b currently running 21.02 RC3 the old router an Arch c1200 as a dumb AP so far so good even with SQM the CPU barely gets above 15% on a 500mbps link

[@OneMarcFifty]

That’s not bad at all! 15% Cpu with SQM is great!

[@donwald3436]

@OneMarcFifty The real question is will you consult on the best device and will you supply / specify a supplier for it? My budget is three figures for two devices.

[@xantam23]

Just got myself a DIR 2660 to replace my Archer C7. Guess I use the Archer as a 2nd a Access Point. Do you prefer Fast Roaming over 802.11s?

[@OneMarcFifty]

Well, it's not really a question of preference - I think if you don't have a wired backend and/or you need to serve Wi-Fi in a HUGE building or a whole street etc.. then 802.11s is definitely the better (and possibly the only) alternative. But I stick to the rule "If you know radio then you use cable" ;-) No seriously - using hard wire where possible is always better - but if it's not possible then 802.11s is perfect. I have planned a video on 802.11s anyhow ;-)

[@KnaufL]

The problem with 4 antennas is that one antenna can only work in one frequency spectrum. So basically half of your antennas will always be on one band, and the other half on the other band

[@OneMarcFifty]

By band you mean 2.4 / 5GHz ? The antennas of the D-Link are all 5 GHz afaik

[@KnaufL]

@@OneMarcFifty yes. There are basically 2 options: use a dedicated antenna tuned for a single band or use a dual-band antenna which is neither good on 2.4 nor 5ghz. In order for an antenna and transceiver circuit to work properly on a certain band, both the antenna's lenght must be equal to a factor of the wavelength and the transceiver's RF frontend needs to be fine-tuned to achieve resonance with the antenna in that spectrum. So basically what you have is either 2+2 single band or 4 dual band antennas. Neither of those will perform like 4 single band antennas operating at 5GHz only. So to test this you could wrap 3 antennas in aluminum foil and turn off 2.4/5GHz radios respectively so that only one frequency is turned on and see if you get both 2 and 5 G frequencies at that antenna

[@modjohn]

Personaly I use Netgear R7800 - Nighthawk

[@OneMarcFifty]

Many thanks for the feedback John - very popular QCA9984 wifi device for OpenWrt ;-)