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  • I used to use R7800s. Then switched to UAP AC Pro / U6 Pro. Today just tested the OpenWrt One.

    • The R7800 (on OpenWrt) is superb, fast, reliable. Can't say anything bad about it. One of the most successful wireless platforms I've used. Probably the best implementation of this chipset too.
    • The UAP AC Pro / U6 Pro perform better than the R7800. They have significantly better radio performance. The range is longer, coverage is uniform, performance is more consistent within the covered area. Adding a local Unifi controller (can be done in Docker) adds some nice wireless and management features like band steering. They don't work well for bridging / mesh though. I had to run a bridge at some point and a set of Unifi had significant latency spikes, making it bad for gaming and other low-latency applications. A R7800-to-R7800 wireless bridge in the same application was superb with consistently low latency. Unifi can be had for cheaper second hand. Lots of corpos have them and old units get dumped upon upgrades.
    • The OpenWrt One, through my very limited testing shows great performance in good radio conditions. Once you put some obstacles for the signal, performance degrades much quicker than Unifi U6 Pro. In a particular test where the Unifi achieved 50Mbps, the OpenWrt One did 1.5Mbps. I haven't compared it to an R7800. I don't know if it would perform any better with different antennas.

    Before that I've used R7000, WZR-300HP, WL-500g, WRT54G/L, among others, but none of these are relevant today. :D

  • I wanted cheap and OpenWRT, so I got some GLinet Shadows. It has it's own GUI, but if you go into Advanced Settings, you get the usual OpenWRT Luci interface.

    You can set them up as APs or repeaters, and have failover connections. Pretty versatile and easy to use.

  • I purchases a few Netgear R6220, and of course flashed OpenWRT on all of them!

    Great hardware, cheap, and perfectly supported. A few years old, so I could even find them used at an amazing price point.

  • I have two TP-Link EAP610, one EAP245, and one EAP615-Wall. The Omada controller runs on my home server in an LXC. Three of the units are powered by PoE, and the garage one is meshed in. I needed three in my house because the walls have chicken wire in them which blocks and reflects WiFi. It took some trail and error to get the WAPs in suitable locations. The main one in the basement is under a wall, such that it has line of sight into 5 rooms of the house. I used iPerf to test performance at the edges of each room, until I could get at least 300 Mbit reliably. That was the only way I could ensure that I was getting a direct signal and not a reflection off a wall.

69 comments