Hello,

I'd like to inquire about the status and ETA of the 802.11ac routers support. The "Supported Hardware" table has 3 routers listed, although none of them are supported yet (as I understand).

What is the cause of the delay? Are vendors not releasing necessary source code? From the past experience (of the gap between product release and code release), when is it likely to happen?

thanks!

It's being worked upon:

http://patchwork.openwrt.org/patch/4398/

The open source driver for Qualcomm/Atheros chipsets (ath10k) is already there. The problem is that the only device having OpenWrt images available (Archer C7) has an old, buggy, version of the 802.11ac chip (with no support in ath10k). Sitecom WLR-8100 has the newer chip, but I don't think any of the developers have actual hardware to work on it.

Sitecom WLR-8100 should be more usable now.
I managed to add some hackish support of AR8337N switch to it (see forum thread : https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=45802 ) and the image works

some things are not ironed out yet - getting / setting MAC from nvram/ubootenv , flashing from factory firmware (see wiki/forum)

Any hope for the D-Link or Trendnet routers support? Anyone had their hands on the new Linksys WRT-AC?

have a look at http://wikidevi.com/wiki/List_of_802.11ac_Hardware

Hardware with Broadcom BCM4360 and BCM4331 is not supported in OpenWrt because there are no drivers available to use. see other threads about that (search for it for more info)

Realtek chips dont know - the drivers are not in the main kernel and require modifications /dunno if they work on SoC / routers (example: https://github.com/gnab/rtl8812au )

Most unit use these chips.  There are some exceptions

WRT-1900AC: No one has seen one of these units.
supposedly its Marvell.
Atm there are no Marvell drivers for this chip in kernel. There are for others.
read the information in the other thread
Edit: OpenWrt uses drivers from kernel. Since there is no mature driver available the chances of a "current" OpenWrt running on it are low. Notice that many routers use heavily modified, really old kernels on their devices that say "OpenWrt" but its like from 4 years ago

viable units:
TP-Link Archer C7 v2(?) - most old units with v1 radio should be out of stock by now because there were not many chips produced; works with AC (new hw v2 card works instead of the hw v1 one that was included in it by default, tested with Sitecom WLR-8100 as AP)
Sitecom WLR-8100 ; has hw v2 ; works with AC - some issue with fw image (has serial pins ...)
TP-Link Archer C5 : maybe, HW unknown
Sitecom WLR-7100 : maybe, HW unknown
Almond+ : maybe, there was a redesign - it has QCA radio now (ath10k) but has an additional CPU that might complicate things

- AC is missing stability with current trunk
- missing config options in luci

(Last edited by zloop on 25 Jan 2014, 08:06)

Thanks for all the replies. I'm wondering if there's been any progress there?

Archer C7 v2 is close to being ready:
https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php … 82#p228782

Technically, it *is* ready, somebody just needs to hit the "go" button to accept my (trivial) patch.

I noticed several 802.11ac related things have been patches in lately, is the C7 fully functional from trunk builds yet?

For the v2, I believe it was originally, but a more recent issue hasn't been resolved yet.

More info

(Last edited by Charles_Brown on 30 Jun 2014, 10:53)

How can I find out which AC-routers are supported by BBrc3?

I'm sure I'm not the only one who would like to know -- more and more consumer products support AC now.

See the wiki for tags 802.11ac: http://wiki.openwrt.org/tag/802.11ac?do … g=802.11ac

You'll have to look through each device to see what's supported. The Archer C7 v2 is the best 802.11ac option for OpenWrt right now in terms of compatibility and support.

And sadly/frustratingly even when using the Archer C7 V2 tcp throughput suffers for some reason.
I was about to buy 6 of these today to replace my old batman mesh which consists of 1043's right now but I'm going to postpone my decision. Batman/open-mesh doesn't have possible tcp overhead nor possible iptables related overhead but I don't feel comfortable risking my money just yet. I have 2 archer C7 V1's on native firmware doing buggy (probably not 4 address) WDS bridging right now already.
TP-Link probably knows a lof of their router's success is due to openwrt working so well on a lot of their models. They should pressure aetheros and broadcom into releasing pristine opensource drivers a little more.

With the release of the newer (probably cheaper to make) archer C9 which is not compatible with openwrt I'm also getting worried the door to a 11ac mesh is slowly closing behind me. How long will the C7 V2 still be for sale.. By now all the models who are going to be sold have probably been made and shipped. Buy now and cross fingers speed issues are going to get fixed ?? Or wait and risk future routers are not going to be openwrt compatible at all..

source: https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=53703

(Last edited by phoenixxl on 2 Mar 2015, 05:56)

Imho openwrt staff should start a kickstarter to start production of an ac router tailored to run openwrt perfectly. Then again.. by the time the thing rolls off the conveyor belt there will be something new out there.

Maybe an existing manufacturer / Openwrt collaboration.. idk..

ath10k drivers are still being optimized unfortunately. Ath9k for 802.11n wasn't totally reliable until well after AC hardware was out. The same may happen with ath10k and 802.11ad release. If you're not using a trunk build, try that as there have been several improvements to the driver, as well as 802.11ac support added in Luci.

There are several routers out there now with the same or similar chipset as the C7 V2, with similar support in OpenWrt - Zyxel NBG6716, D-Link DGL-5500, Engenius ESR1750, and probably more, so I think you'll still have options on this type of hardware.

I'm waiting to upgrade until QCA IPQ806x is available with dual-core ARM CPUs. Oh and I probably need to get some 802.11ac devices first too!

Luci and AC devices aren't issues for me. The batman mesh for which I use the 1043's is doing the job that cabling can't do. Each router is connected to a lan segment in otherwise inaccessible parts of the building. The current setup is working very well. I'm not sure there will be a luci setup page for open-mesh/batman any time soon. Not that it's needed tbh. If one can't handle some shell and some config files one probably shouldn't be messing with meshes.

My speeds with uncompressible data over the single wds bridge with the archer C7 V1's really make me want to use AC for everything. I do hope that other routers become a viable option as well.

(Last edited by phoenixxl on 2 Mar 2015, 06:35)