OpenWRT compatible Wifi6 router

greenhorn

greenhorn

Patron
Hi All
I was thinking of upgrading my home wifi to wifi 6, but none of the budget tp links seem to be Open WRT compatible, and neither are the DECO series, same for mercusys etc.

I have a budget of around 8-12k for a set of 3-4 nodes (1 main + 3 extenders). I use a tp link a6 + a bunch of RE 305's on onemesh. I don't use much of openwrt features - just that its much more stable.

Usage - 10-15 smart devices all over the house, 2 TV's and 2 laptops which are used for WFH by me and Wifey, mom has a tab for youtube. 1400 sq ft 2 floor house

What are my options?
 
2 floors in an Indian standalone house (ie RCC construction) = multiple APs .. there is simply no way around this..

Unfortunately openwrt (or opnsense/ pfsense) are great for wired routing purposes, not so much for wireless distribution.
I know openwrt at least on paper supports mesh - but it's not widely used for a good reason

I suspect The FOSS community kinda gave up on wireless while the TP Links and Netgears of the world kept investing $$$$ to corner this gigantic market.

My honest recommendation - go distributed (SDN) using a known and well reviewed consumer/ prosumer proprietary solution . I use Omada and super happy with it ..Its a one time moderate expense that will last for many years and given the heavy amount of usage in any typical home is totally worth it .

or if wired isn't possible, get a (proprietary) tri band mesh from any of the known players
 
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I had managed to get a wired connection ready between two floors, but then i found out that TP Link Onemesh does not support wired backhaul -_-
For now I got the ISP to move their equipment to the top floor so we have better connectivity, and bought an RE450 (AC1750) to sort of take care of the ground floor. Now both are situated centrally in the house, and the range situation is better. Also used the RE305's to take care of the blind spots.

The RE450 has something interesting - apparently TP Link is "supposedly" moving from its proprietary onemesh to easymesh, which is apparently an open standard. Easymesh supports wired backhaul in some models, but weirdly, the support has been built for a bunch of AC devices, and very few Wifi6 models. You can buy two A6 v4's and set them both up as nodes of a mesh with wired backhaul, but my RE450 (which has easymesh compatibility) does not support wired backhaul!

Just a bad situation - but now the connectivity in my house is a lot stabler, even with the stock firmware. I wish someone comes up with an open source solution that delivers mesh using a bunch of commodity routers/extenders/wireless AP's

I have a bunch of iball batons which are tenda MW3 clones - my experience with them hasnt been that great, and Wifi6 stuff is too pricey. I've decided to stop buying AC hardware. Will start getting AX stuff once their prices beging to drop (on another note, why is AC so pricey? When AC was launched, an N300 device would be 1-1.2K, and an AC1200 device would be available at 2-2.4K. Now an AX1500 router is 5K, and an AX 3000 is 8K.. what gives? why is the price blowing up so much? It's not like people are running 4K screens all around the house. Most of my devices are AX, but I am really not seeing a point in spending this amount of money when my family (mind you, all youtube addicts) are happy with a 100 Mbps connection
 
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greenhorn said:
I had managed to get a wired connection ready between two floors, but then i found out that TP Link Onemesh does not support wired backhaul -_-
For now I got the ISP to move their equipment to the top floor so we have better connectivity, and bought an RE450 (AC1750) to sort of take care of the ground floor. Now both are situated centrally in the house, and the range situation is better. Also used the RE305's to take care of the blind spots.

The RE450 has something interesting - apparently TP Link is "supposedly" moving from its proprietary onemesh to easymesh, which is apparently an open standard. Easymesh supports wired backhaul in some models, but weirdly, the support has been built for a bunch of AC devices, and very few Wifi6 models. You can buy two A6 v4's and set them both up as nodes of a mesh with wired backhaul, but my RE450 (which has easymesh compatibility) does not support wired backhaul!

Just a bad situation - but now the connectivity in my house is a lot stabler, even with the stock firmware. I wish someone comes up with an open source solution that delivers mesh using a bunch of commodity routers/extenders/wireless AP's

I have a bunch of iball batons which are tenda MW3 clones - my experience with them hasnt been that great, and Wifi6 stuff is too pricey. I've decided to stop buying AC hardware. Will start getting AX stuff once their prices beging to drop (on another note, why is AC so pricey? When AC was launched, an N300 device would be 1-1.2K, and an AC1200 device would be available at 2-2.4K. Now an AX1500 router is 5K, and an AX 3000 is 8K.. what gives? why is the price blowing up so much? It's not like people are running 4K screens all around the house. Most of my devices are AX, but I am really not seeing a point in spending this amount of money when my family (mind you, all youtube addicts) are happy with a 100 Mbps connection
Click to expand...
You will be absolutely fine with AC for a very long time. Bear in mind (and this is important)
You will be far better served with good quality AC equipment as against low grade AX.

I was thinking of upgrading all my APs but luckily decided to try with the most busy one first.

The net difference has been zero-zilch-nada

On paper, a few devices in that zone link up at 1300mbps instead of 866. The real word diff is nothing.
Wifi6 is supposed to help with reducing congestion in scenarios where single APs have multiple high speed connections being served concurrently. This helps at public spaces/ offices but at home, you are noweher close to saturating it even in a super busy (by home standards environment)

With the wifi AC APs (EAP245), I typically get real speeds of anywhere between 450-650mbps at all locations within the house and a handover speed of well under 200-300ms while roaming.
There is no noticeable benefit i got from upgrading one of the EAP245 to an EAP 660HD so I intend to continue with the existing setup for (hopefully) many more years to come

On a lighter note, I have a feeling you are doing the same thing I did many years ago -which was to keep fiddling with one low grade equipment after the other only to realize that none of them fare truly fit for the purpose you want. You will only end up burning money ( albeit in small increments) this way :)
 
My home is really old(built 60+ years back). It has almost no pillars and 2 feet thick walls. I noticed immense improvement going from EAP245 to EAP660HD in a room(1 wall away). Speeds went from low 70s to ~300mbps.

Overall, Omada has been quite good! I have multiple EAP245 and now a eap660hd. I have 3 other OpenWRT APs that have fast roaming configured(to work with omada APs). FT is seamless in my whole home and transition times are <50ms between omada APs, <100ms between omada <-> openwrt or openwrt<->openwrt APs.
(Openwrt ap has a bug where it does full 4 way handshake even when roaming instead of the shorter handshake which increases transition time)

However, Omada does have some issues. eap660hd supports 4x4 mimo. Ideally, If I have 2 2x2 clients, I should be able to get the full speeds on both devices(around 650mbps on ac and 800mbps on ax) but with omada APs I can only get an aggregate of 650/800mbps on ac/ax. People have complained about this for years because they advertise mimo support and then it doesn't appear to be working well and nothing has changed from TP Link's side. :/


> On a lighter note, I have a feeling you are doing the same thing I did many years ago -which was to keep fiddling with one low grade equipment after the other only to realize that none of them fare truly fit for the purpose you want. You will only end up burning money ( albeit in small increments) this way :)

Buy once, Cry once :):)
It took me years to learn this lesson and it's almost always the right approach.
 
ishanjain28 said:
My home is really old(built 60+ years back). It has almost no pillars and 2 feet thick walls. I noticed immense improvement going from EAP245 to EAP660HD in a room(1 wall away). Speeds went from low 70s to ~300mbps.

Overall, Omada has been quite good! I have multiple EAP245 and now a eap660hd. I have 3 other OpenWRT APs that have fast roaming configured(to work with omada APs). FT is seamless in my whole home and transition times are <50ms between omada APs, <100ms between omada <-> openwrt or openwrt<->openwrt APs.
(Openwrt ap has a bug where it does full 4 way handshake even when roaming instead of the shorter handshake which increases transition time)

However, Omada does have some issues. eap660hd supports 4x4 mimo. Ideally, If I have 2 2x2 clients, I should be able to get the full speeds on both devices(around 650mbps on ac and 800mbps on ax) but with omada APs I can only get an aggregate of 650/800mbps on ac/ax. People have complained about this for years because they advertise mimo support and then it doesn't appear to be working well and nothing has changed from TP Link's side. :/


> On a lighter note, I have a feeling you are doing the same thing I did many years ago -which was to keep fiddling with one low grade equipment after the other only to realize that none of them fare truly fit for the purpose you want. You will only end up burning money ( albeit in small increments) this way :)

Buy once, Cry once :):)
It took me years to learn this lesson and it's almost always the right approach.
Click to expand...
Ok, so the 660 perhaps has better range then.
My house is mostly RCC and thick brick walls so I went the whole hog this time and put an AP in each room with intervening walls + Additional APs in open areas so as to ensure that I have LoS / close to LoS to an AP in each section of the house.

In such a scenario, the difference in speed between 245 and 660 ended up being minimal
 
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