

Update on Linksys WRT1900AC support for OpenWRT - atriix
https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?pid=230686#p230686

======
paulgerhardt
Our startup has tried both the Asus RT68-U and the Netgear N7000 (the two top
of the line, AC1900 class, consumer routers on Small Network Builder[1]) for
both office and factory operations with both stock and DD-WRT[2] firmwares.

Our initial preference was to lean towards the Asus given their track record
on OpenWRT for the past few years. If your last experience with flashing a
router's firmware was with the Linksys WRT-54G back in 2004 than you may have
missed out on all the Asus development that happened in the past decade.

We found the Netgear N7000 performed better overall. We were reluctant to use
it as it did not support Dual-WAN mode initially like the Asus on stock
firmware. (I.e. primary Comcast internet, secondary Verizon MiFi usb adapter.)

We recently updated both routers to [Kong]'s firmware mod of DD-WRT[3] and now
the Netgear N7000 blows everything out of the water.

At our factory we are concurrently connecting 50 previously unassociated WiFi
devices every 30 seconds and the dual-core 1Ghz Netgear just keeps on trucking
with no problems. Our Asus meanwhile will crash about once a day.

Going forward we will stick with the Netgear. It seems to have become the
'default' router on the DD-WRT community, with support for other routers being
forks off the N7000 code. Given Linksys has long no longer been 'Linksys' been
'Cisco' been 'Belkin' been Marvell, I don't anticipate it superseding the
thrown despite the _classic_ throwback black and blue livery. The 1.2Ghz
processor and quad-band antenna is nothing to snub at. Should be an
interesting year for router enthusiasts.

[1][http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-
reviews/322...](http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-
reviews/32239-ac1900-first-look-netgear-r7000-a-asus-rt-ac68u)

[2]In broad strokes, DD-WRT is like a nice, easy to install, easy to configure
version of OpenWRT. If you previously preferred using Tomato to OpenWRT this
is for you. OpenWRT is when you really want ring-zero console access only with
no amenities out of the gate.

[3][http://tips.desipro.de/](http://tips.desipro.de/) \- [Kong] made some
modifications to DD-WRT to work better with the new AC-1900 class routers.
They are fast becoming the master branch.

~~~
newman314
What build number of Kong's are you using for the R7000? I just picked one up
to potentially replace a flaky RT-N16 running Kong but it's not the cheapest
device for home use.

For that kind of money, it seems that Ubiquiti could be a viable option.
Trying to decide if I should return the R7000 and get the Ubiquitis instead.

~~~
jzelinskie
What's the model of router that people are recommending for Ubiquity? I
recently upgraded my parents to an Asus and was extremely satisfied with
Merlin's builds of the Asus firmware. Ideally, I just want something that runs
Debian and lets me install packages so it can act as a home server. Why isn't
this a thing yet?

~~~
Spittie
I don't own one, but I usually see lots of raccomandations for the EdgeRouter
Lite or the EdgeRouter POE (which is a Lite + integrated Switch + POE).

It does run on Debian, I think you can just ssh in an do everything you want.
By the way, on DD-WRT/OpenWRT/Tomato you can install pretty much what you want
by using OptWare/EntWare.

The problem is usually not the software, but the hardware. Router are still
slow (for example, I tried once to use transmission on my puny e3200, and the
speed was capped at ~350kbps by the CPU) and they don't have lots of
connectivity (on high-end routers you get maybe 2 USB 3.0 ports. The WRT1900AC
is in fact the first router with an eSata port, and the first one with decent
speed over USB).

If you want to run anything somewhat "heavy", you're far better with having a
different box, or using a custom pfsense/smoothwall/m0n0wall/vyatta box.

~~~
pktgen
> The problem is usually not the software, but the hardware.

It's both. The hardware is slow and the software (in the cases you mentioned,
the Linux network stack) is slow and inefficient.

The ERL uses hardware acceleration to avoid all this. It's capable of routing
1M PPS and the latest beta build does this with PPPoE as well. (In other
words, it'll support Google Fiber connections well, for the lucky few.)

------
IgorPartola
Personally, I now only buy and recommend routers that are supported by OpenWRT
even if the end user does not end up using it. Usually such support means that
the device is fairly open and uses fairly standard hardware. Something new and
esoteric is likely to be more buggy. OpenWRT is also a great OS. If your
router supports it, please give it a try, for security's sake.

~~~
ferongr
That means the WRT1900AC is not one of your choices yet, right?

Also, I'm personally very bummed by the fact it has Marvell WiFi. They tend to
be really mediocre and buggy, both in Windows, Linux and embedded
applications.

~~~
IgorPartola
I have been sticking to TP-LINK products lately. They and Buffalo seem pretty
open and reasonably priced. Just a personal preference though. Lots of people
I know are happy with Asus, Linksys, etc.

Also, from what I understand Microtik routers are a great alternative to
OpenWRT, though I have not used them myself.

~~~
snowwindwaves
The mikrotik hardware is good but I find the documentation is poor and several
times I have found their implementation of a feature is half baked. For
instance their openvpn is over tcp only.

If you can make sure they do what you need and figure out how to set them up
to achieve that they can be very cost effective. They are popular with the
wireless ips crowd but have been facing strong competition from ubiquity.

Given the choice i buy ubiquity products, but they don't have as many
"features".

Mikrotik have also been gpl violators.

~~~
Spidler
I gave up on Mikrotik when I got one of their Switches, which explicitly have
support for VLANs, and could only discover that the .. vlan..support was so
botched that it couldn't make default VLAN's on different ports.

~~~
snowwindwaves
I think you have to "unslave" the ports from the master so they pass their
packets up to the CPU, assign the ports to a bridge, and then the assign the
bridge to a vlan.

It took me about 50 hours to figure out but I did manage to get three SSIDs on
one radio, each of which would connect the client to a different vlan.

------
zokier
Here are the patches (and discussion) mentioned

[https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-
devel/2014-April...](https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-
devel/2014-April/024589.html)

[https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-
devel/2014-April...](https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-
devel/2014-April/024703.html)

[https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-
devel/2014-April...](https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-
devel/2014-April/024837.html)

~~~
mng2
_The firmware can be built with what we have provided, and will run on the
WRT1900AC successfully. It is true that it would lack wireless support, but
that would not stop the firmware from actually working._

[https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-
devel/2014-April...](https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-
devel/2014-April/024858.html)

~~~
lstamour
> The code quality issues in the patches are fixable. The biggest problem with
> this is the fact that right now, the wifi chip (from Marvell) needs a
> proprietary driver to run. The submitted patches only include a prebuilt .ko
> for this driver. The response I got from Belkin indicates that they didn't
> realize that this was going to be a problem and they are now trying to fix
> it.

More at: [https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-
devel/2014-April...](https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-
devel/2014-April/024680.html)

[That said, I find this to be typical of Belkin overall and would not, at the
moment, recommend any of their Belkin/Linksys products if you expect to
interface with them using software.]

------
TehCorwiz
Linksys (cisco) dropped the ball a long time ago. I've moved on an have been
using Ubiquiti stuff for years. Their router even runs Debian.

~~~
tacoman
I couldn't agree more. The Ubiquiti wifi hardware is better than any of the
SOHO (Linksys, Asus, etc) I've ever used. I've changed most of my friends and
family to using Ubiquiti stuff and I never hear about wifi problems anymore.
The Nanostation and Rocket product lines are what I usually get.

I put 4 Unifi's in a friend's large house and it the performance is great.

------
ram_rattle
Tplink MR3020 is the cheapest in India, do try it you can create lot of
application with this router

~~~
jhenkens
I wish it had more than 4MB flash, but it is an awesome little box! The 4MB of
flash just means you pretty much need to roll your own OpenWRT image if you
want to change anything. A friend has one, and I have an MR3040 (3020 +
2000mAh battery) arriving today to hack around on to make it the perfect
travel router for me.

~~~
ram_rattle
You can add a pendrive in the USB and extend the internal memory, search the
web there are many tutorials

------
Omniusaspirer
Knowing this, can anyone enlighten me on why you'd buy this router over the
Netgear R7000? It seems to be a worse router from the reviews I've seen,
albeit with better storage performance.

[http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-
reviews/323...](http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-
reviews/32393-linksys-wrt1900ac-ac1900-dual-band-wireless-router-
review?showall=&start=5)

~~~
voltagex_
Last time I tried a Netgear (a model from last year I think, AC enabled), it
was awful. The web interface hadn't been updated since 2008-ish (could see
stuff that was in older routers, old images etc) and didn't work properly.

Netgear support denied the existence of a telnet interface [1] and I returned
it after some other problems I don't remember.

1:
[http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/netgear/telnet.console](http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/netgear/telnet.console)

------
buzzkills
It still appears in their list of supported hardware though.
[http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/start](http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/start) of
course when you dig deeper it is clear it doesn't work but still should it be
in one of the other tables showing support in progress

------
dfa0
Wow, this costs more than a Chromebook!

~~~
jotm
It has some impressive specs, though. The 1.2 GHz processor may finally be
able to write to a HDD at full USB 2.0 speeds without getting overloaded.

~~~
mrsaint
Hey, it comes with a cooling fan even! ;)

So it has USB 2.0 + 3.0 and eSATA. According to this chart, r/w performance
seems quite good (and certainly above USB 2.0):
[http://core0.staticworld.net/images/article/2014/04/wrt1900a...](http://core0.staticworld.net/images/article/2014/04/wrt1900ac_usbharddrive_benc-100262010-orig.png)

------
13throwaway
ELI5 why companies don't open source drivers. The hardware is proprietary so
what do they have to lose?

~~~
zymhan
A great deal of performance differentiation in hardware comes from the drivers
themselves, not the underlying hardware. This is evidenced in things like
differing performance in similar situations using different OSes, such as a
game in Windows vs. the same game in Linux (assuming they both us OpenGL).

The techniques that companies use to improve performance on their hardware are
almost as complex and important as the hardware itself. This isn't to say that
there isn't a benefit in open-sourcing drivers, just that companies are
justified in being weary of open-sourcing their drivers.

~~~
ris
This may be true for GPU drivers, but I would argue it is the exception, not
the rule.

~~~
mey
There is an upper limit of a piece of hardware, but if the software driving
it's use is not exposing that or performing actions in a less efficient manner
it can certainly have a negative impact.

