Topic: Update on Linksys WRT1900AC support

3 Aug 2014, 22:39

qasdfdsaq wrote:

Meh, serves them right for believing marketing hype. Learning the hard way that you should never believe any marketing claims from a manufacturer without third-party verification first.
I would never buy a product based on the manufacturer claiming OSF support, after routers that have shipped with Openwrt or DD-Wrt out of the box in the past have almost always had ancient, out of date, or hacked/proprietary versions of them that are years behind the main trunk.

All TRUE..

4 Aug 2014, 03:23

jalyst wrote:

drawz wrote:
Does Broadcom have open source drivers for that would support the R8000 that none of us know about? How about Quantenna in the case of the AC-87U? Nope. So it doesn't sound much better than the WRT1900AC in that respect.
WTH is wrong with this forum sw, sick of unsub'ing & resub'ing just so I can get email notifications again about new posts. R8000 will prolly be supported, going by Broadcom's track-record there's a good chance*, Marvell was always a gamble, RE AC-87U I had a temporary memory lapse, actually I recalled at the time of posting but CBF'd amending. For background on what will happen with it see here, approach is "similar" to 1900AC, only BSlayer/Kong can say whether it's been better to work with, ask them: http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=907960#907960

There is an open-source Broadcom wireless driver, but it is not as full featured as the closed-source version. See here:

http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/hardware/soc/soc.broadcom.bcm47xx#wifi.drivers

DD-WRT devs have access to the full Broadcom wireless driver source, but must have signed an non-disclosure agreement. This only helps DD-WRT, but not other projects like OpenWrt, Tomato, etc.

4 Aug 2014, 22:34

Looking at the latest belkin source release there is now a binary library + kernel module glue source. So at least it's no longer a precompiled .ko, but still a large chunk of precompiled code linked into the .ko.

https://github.com/jimmychungbelkin/Mamba/tree/master/barrier_breaker/package/network/marvellac

4 Aug 2014, 22:38

nbd wrote:

Quite frankly, this is completely ridiculous. Belkin has already released the source code of this driver in a GPL tarball. Interestingly enough, the driver there has GPL license headers apparently added by Marvell.

Which GPL tarball? And it had full sources without precompiled library?

5 Aug 2014, 00:00

hno wrote:

nbd wrote:
Quite frankly, this is completely ridiculous. Belkin has already released the source code of this driver in a GPL tarball. Interestingly enough, the driver there has GPL license headers apparently added by Marvell.
Which GPL tarball? And it had full sources without precompiled library?

Marvell 88W8864 Linux Driver/Firmware Source

https://github.com/TheDgtl/mrvl_wlan_v7drv

Regards

5 Aug 2014, 00:57

gufus wrote:

hno wrote:
nbd wrote:
Quite frankly, this is completely ridiculous. Belkin has already released the source code of this driver in a GPL tarball. Interestingly enough, the driver there has GPL license headers apparently added by Marvell.
Which GPL tarball? And it had full sources without precompiled library?
Marvell 88W8864 Linux Driver/Firmware Source
https://github.com/TheDgtl/mrvl_wlan_v7drv
Regards

I'm having a hard time believing that the driver we've all been waiting for and still can't/won't get without some binary blobs has already had its full source available in github for over 2 months. That makes no sense.

Even if it is actually a driver for the same device, it must be worse in some important way compared to what Belkin are about to release, otherwise why would there be all this fuss/delay now?

(Last edited by justniz on 5 Aug 2014, 00:58)

5 Aug 2014, 01:16

meh, gonna try compiling and running their latest source. Better than nothing for now I guess.

5 Aug 2014, 01:24

justniz wrote:

gufus wrote:
hno wrote:
Which GPL tarball? And it had full sources without precompiled library?
Marvell 88W8864 Linux Driver/Firmware Source
https://github.com/TheDgtl/mrvl_wlan_v7drv
Regards
I'm having a hard time believing that the driver we've all been waiting for and still can't/won't get without some binary blobs has already had its full source available in github for over 2 months. That makes no sense.
Even if it is actually a driver for the same device, it must be worse in some important way compared to what Belkin are about to release, otherwise why would there be all this fuss/delay now?

FYI
https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?pid=234569#p234569

5 Aug 2014, 04:49

justniz wrote:

gufus wrote:
hno wrote:
Which GPL tarball? And it had full sources without precompiled library?
Marvell 88W8864 Linux Driver/Firmware Source
https://github.com/TheDgtl/mrvl_wlan_v7drv
Regards
I'm having a hard time believing that the driver we've all been waiting for and still can't/won't get without some binary blobs has already had its full source available in github for over 2 months. That makes no sense.
Even if it is actually a driver for the same device, it must be worse in some important way compared to what Belkin are about to release, otherwise why would there be all this fuss/delay now?

I honestly have no idea whether that code is useful, it's far beyond me. I just figured since they pulled it from their code center, and it's GPL, I'd mirror it on GitHub.

5 Aug 2014, 07:44

gufus wrote:

Marvell 88W8864 Linux Driver/Firmware Source
https://github.com/TheDgtl/mrvl_wlan_v7drv
Regards

Interesting. Where was this found? In the Belkin GPL download area?

5 Aug 2014, 08:06

hno wrote:

gufus wrote:
Marvell 88W8864 Linux Driver/Firmware Source
https://github.com/TheDgtl/mrvl_wlan_v7drv
Regards
Interesting. Where was this found? In the Belkin GPL download area?

Yes.

5 Aug 2014, 09:10

drawz wrote:

DD-WRT devs have access to the full Broadcom wireless driver source, but must have signed an non-disclosure agreement. This only helps DD-WRT, but not other projects like OpenWrt, Tomato, etc.

Well said.

5 Aug 2014, 09:18

gufus wrote:

hno wrote:
gufus wrote:
Marvell 88W8864 Linux Driver/Firmware Source
https://github.com/TheDgtl/mrvl_wlan_v7drv
Regards
Interesting. Where was this found? In the Belkin GPL download area?
Yes.

The driver only implements a small part of the Linux wireless extensions (which has been deprecated for about 7 years now) - not to mention not being based on the mac80211 stack. This means unique ways to do almost everything and additional overhead of handling it's specific input/output.

5 Aug 2014, 10:45

Kaloz wrote:

The driver only implements a small part of the Linux wireless extensions (which has been deprecated for about 7 years now) - not to mention not being based on the mac80211 stack. This means unique ways to do almost everything and additional overhead of handling it's specific input/output.

Awesome.

5 Aug 2014, 14:07

greymattr wrote:

Hi all,
I really hope this is the last update I post before the inital WRT1900AC wireless driver is released.
I will admit that this process is taking much longer than I thought it would, but I am very grateful to the engineers at Marvell for making sure that everything 'checks out' prior to the release. Currently we are making sure there are no legal issues with the release, and that is a time consuming process.
So far the testing of the open source driver has been going well, for the few people who have access to it. However, I would not be surprised if there were updates in the future.
Some users may be disappointed to learn that the release will contain a pre-built library. While this may not be ideal for some users, it is good progress and will allow for developers to recompile the driver as updates are made to the kernel. Going forward I am sure efforts will be made to incorporate a wireless driver where developers have access to 100% of the source.
Personally, I would like to thank you for your patience, and understanding through this process. As soon as we are able to release the driver, I will post another update.

I am just posting a reminder for those who does not know how to wait few days/weeks.

Haters gonna hate.

5 Aug 2014, 14:36

Hello everyone,

I followed this thread pretty much all the way and I would like to thank everybody who was and still is trying to get what's needed in order to run OpenWRT on the 1900AC.

That said, I would also like to express my big disappointment in Linksys as a company. Personally - and yes you ought to have your own opinion as well - I think it's very unprofessional to sell a product with features you can't deliver in the end. The correct way would have been to check whether the made marketing statements are legally backed-up. This would have prevented all the mess here. On a side-note: I am also missing the promised VPN Server feature...

I do hope that they get their act together, but as long as this is not fully resolved, I will not recommend my friends to buy this product.

I am aware that this is a bit off-topic, but since you all are owner of this product: Does your unit also get very hot while streaming a movie from a NAS (on a local net)? Mine regulary starts the very noisy fan while watching...

BTW: What would be a good alternative to the WRT1900AC?

(Last edited by gaga on 5 Aug 2014, 21:05)

5 Aug 2014, 19:59

Kaloz wrote:

gufus wrote:
hno wrote:
Interesting. Where was this found? In the Belkin GPL download area?
Yes.
The driver only implements a small part of the Linux wireless extensions (which has been deprecated for about 7 years now) - not to mention not being based on the mac80211 stack. This means unique ways to do almost everything and additional overhead of handling it's specific input/output.

Did not know that.

5 Aug 2014, 21:23

Kaloz wrote:

The driver only implements a small part of the Linux wireless extensions (which has been deprecated for about 7 years now) - not to mention not being based on the mac80211 stack. This means unique ways to do almost everything and additional overhead of handling it's specific input/output.

We can only imagine what quality looks like in close-source software. Seriously, what the f*ck?
I imagine comments like "// the last intern messed this part up, but I don't care since those stupid customers will never use this feature anyway. Morons.".

bdherouville wrote:

Haters gonna hate.

You got it.

6 Aug 2014, 01:44

Hi,

I recently purchased the wrt1900ac as opposed to the asus rt68u after reading that wrt1900ac would support openwrt. My mistake was not fully reading. Given the development of openwrt and wrt1900ac...would it be in my interest to exchange it to the asus?

I really want VPN, dnsmasq and host file mod feature. Given the fw that has been release thus far, is it safe to assume that the fw are alpha quality? Or is it actually useable and that stable will never be achieved because of the marvel driver?

Thanks

6 Aug 2014, 03:08

canucks wrote:

Hi,
I recently purchased the wrt1900ac as opposed to the asus rt68u after reading that wrt1900ac would support openwrt. My mistake was not fully reading. Given the development of openwrt and wrt1900ac...would it be in my interest to exchange it to the asus?
I really want VPN, dnsmasq and host file mod feature. Given the fw that has been release thus far, is it safe to assume that the fw are alpha quality? Or is it actually useable and that stable will never be achieved because of the marvel driver?
Thanks

The Asus is Broadcom-based and therefore also lacks source code, so you won't be better off. I suppose there is probably a DD-WRT build for it, so maybe you're slightly better off. For OpenWrt, get a TP-Link Archer C7, which seems to be the best supported 802.11ac router on OpenWrt at this time. It's not as powerful as some of the others, but it's pretty darn good as a wireless router.

6 Aug 2014, 06:38

canucks wrote:

Or is it actually useable and that stable will never be achieved because of the marvel driver?

Read http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/linksys/wrt1900ac

6 Aug 2014, 07:15

bdherouville wrote:

I am just posting a reminder for those who does not know how to wait few days/weeks.
Haters gonna hate.

JC what's wrong with people's reading comprehension, read the post(s) he made "after" that one.

(Last edited by jalyst on 6 Aug 2014, 07:15)

6 Aug 2014, 07:18

drawz wrote:

There is an open-source Broadcom wireless driver, but it is not as full featured as the closed-source version. See here:
http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/hardware/soc/soc.broadcom.bcm47xx#wifi.drivers
DD-WRT devs have access to the full Broadcom wireless driver source, but must have signed an non-disclosure agreement. This only helps DD-WRT, but not other projects like OpenWrt, Tomato, etc.

Correct, I never said anything about full-blown support for OWRT & derivatives.
And, I see we STILL have radio silence on the "final word" from Belkin... >.>

P.S.
Any idea when email notifications for this forum sw is going to be fixed?

(Last edited by jalyst on 6 Aug 2014, 07:27)

6 Aug 2014, 09:57

drawz wrote:

For OpenWrt, get a TP-Link Archer C7, which seems to be the best supported 802.11ac router on OpenWrt at this time. It's not as powerful as some of the others, but it's pretty darn good as a wireless router.

Strangely enough I am not that much into TP-Link (and all Chinese routers for that matter). This is not the same build quality, a processor twice slower preventing high-speed DPI, 30% bandwidth loss, twice less Flash.........
The Linksys WRT1900AC would have been a great update in the available hardware. Such a pity.

6 Aug 2014, 10:00

jalyst wrote:

Any idea when email notifications for this forum sw is going to be fixed?

There is no problem with the forum notifications. It sends you a notification once for the next message after the last time you accessed the topic while logged in.