Also, fwiw, I just bought a couple Extreme Networks WS-AP3825i for $16+change each (shipping included) to try out. Thanks for the pointer!
-- Russell Senior [email protected] On Mon, Feb 26, 2024 at 1:53 PM Russell Senior <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On Mon, Feb 26, 2024 at 11:56 AM Eldo Varghese <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hey yall >> During the openwrt talk may folks spoke about what hardware they used >> and ofcourse Ted's great talk itself was about graphing data from the >> individual APs. I had a few thoughts about this that I want to share, if >> you will indulge me: >> >> 1) hardware: Folks mentioned only paying $15 for their AP/home routers >> and others were incredulous at this point. I wanted to show my method of >> finding such deals: >> a) First start at the table of hardware [0] to find a currently >> supported enterprise grade hardware that requires some sort of >> proprietary system for command and control, where most offices want to >> get rid of the hardware once they stop paying annual fees. >> > > We (Personal Telco) did this with Meraki MR24's. They are getting old > these days with dual-band 3x3 802.11n radios. We bought several "lots" as > the decommissions stacked up in consultants offices and their ebay prices > plummeted. We got one batch, iirc, for under $10 per piece. There was a > substantial gyration involved with reflashing them (initially about 20 > minutes per device, including screwdrivers and serial consoles), but in the > end I had a setup that let me plow through them with no screw drivers. > > Despite being old, the Atheros 802.11n radios still have a warm place in > my heart as the zenith in FOSSness in drivers. Ever since, 802.11ac and > 802.11ax (aka wifi6) have universally involved closed-source firmware > blobs. The impact has been that edge-case driver support has been wobbly in > the newer hardware. Lots of people don't care about the edge cases (like > adhoc mode for mesh networking), but I do. > > Personally, for indoor 802.11ac devices, I have had pretty good luck with > OpenWrt on the tp-link archer c7 (which I used from 2015 until last summer > as my primary AP at home). A year or so I accumulated a decent stack of > them from ebay for around $25 each. More recently, I have liked the Linksys > E8450 for indoor 802.11ax devices. If you can justify 4 of them at once, > you can find them brand new on the Bezone for $70, or $100-ish for onesies. > If you are looking for good wifi6 OpenWrt support, apparently the MediaTek > radios are the ones right now. My E8450's iwinfo command reports my > 802.11ac-equipped laptop has a modulation rate, from 8 feet away: > > RX: 650.0 MBit/s, VHT-MCS 7, 80MHz, VHT-NSS 2 654848 Pkts. > TX: 780.0 MBit/s, VHT-MCS 8, 80MHz, VHT-NSS 2 2449489 Pkts. > > My more modern, presumably wifi6 cell phone has a modulation rate over a > gigabit: > > TX: 1134.2 MBit/s, HE-MCS 11, 80MHz, HE-NSS 2, HE-GI 1, HE-DCM 0 > 15402 Pkts. > > Fwiw. > > -- > Russell Senior > [email protected] > >
