[LaMarMôt]

Hey,

It seems I could be able to get my hands on some "cheap" XR500 or MR7350.

Maybe one would be in use running a commercial VPN client (wireguard), with moderate load I guess...

Others could be part of a mesh network, or just as repeaters... well, moderate load too probably... WiFi kind of important on those...

Should I prefer one model over the other? Would speeds, stability, be a lot different?

Would they be inter-compatible (i.e. in the mesh network)?

Could one be used as a main router in a home network (everything going throw a VPN running on it) with maybe a bit more load then...?

Your recommendations (other models known to be cheap maybe, or other outstanding models... WiFi 6 would be nice, but probably not mandatory) would be much appreciated !!!

Cheers!


...maybe important point: R9000, XR500 and WRT3200ACM would already be available as part of those networks. (and maybe some available to sell after everything is settled...)

[egc]

About the MR7350 just have a look at the threads concerning this router both at DDWRT and OpenWRT.

Ergo it is not on my recommended list

XR500 is old and "only" AC wifi but stil very well supported, if you want WireGuard VPN it will do 300 Mb/s if you can get it cheap still a good router

My latest routers are
Dynalink DL-WRX36 modern AX router and supported by DDWRT and a GL.iNET 6000 (flint 2) but not supported by DDWRT but supported by OpenWRT

Linksys MX routers like MX4300 also a viable option.
Make sure a modern router has at least 1 GB RAM and 256 MB flash (when dual boot preferably 512 MB)

[LaMarMôt]

Thx a lot for your sound advice, much appreciated.

DL-WRX36 doesn't seem to be available in my region, even 2nd hand...

Could MR7500 be considered ? (not at all the same range of price though)

I could probably get a couple of R9000, but already had bad experience with those and their radios... but wireguard definitely capable of 1Gb/s on those...

[egc]

[Alozaros]

XR500 still has it...i got 1 and few R7800 (practically the same)..and they both perform very well under heavy local load and 200/200 Mbit WAN...
any of those will perform very well for 500Mbit+ (WAN), may be up to 900Mbit depends from the set up/vpn and ect.....and radio's are still robust...

I also considered to get one of Linksys, consider: MX4300, or MX5300, or MX8500 line...but got one Dynalink instead...all those are...hard to find...

[egc]

👍

[bushant]

[gitto]

I use MR7350 without problems.
Don't have complicated setups so that is probably why.
Depends on what you need out of it.

Quite happy with the functionality.
Don't know why people are so down on the MR7350.

[Zyxx]

I wanted to have AX WiFi too, so I put my R7800 in the shelves for now.

Bought MR7350 and MR7500 first, wanted to help development.
The MR7350 tends to often forget ipv6 and or ipv4 routes for some clients, sometimes clients connect but cannot transmit anything. SNR then shows 0db, same for RX and TX.
The 0db problem happened so often I stopped automatic reboot, only to find this thing not being usable after roughly 30-48 hours.
MR7500 has different problems, it tends to implode on some settings and gets stuck on bootloop then, due to memory leaks. Overall its RAM is filled to the brim, even with nothing enabled.
So I got the mentioned Dynalink.
Wireless works way more reliable, the 0db problem happens like once a week with autoreboot enabled. IPv6 hiccup also only once a while, way less than with the 7350/7500 before.
But its wireless region domain settings are borked.
E.g "Germany" setting allows 20dBm transmit power for 2.4 and even more for 5GHz wireless.
Selecting this in the Dynalink allows for 14 dbm on 2.4 and 18(? not sure) for 5GHz.
Selecting Panama circumvents this.

It is slightly slower in wireless throughput than my 7350 or 7500 (iperf3).
Also its 160Mhz Channel width settings for 5Ghz seemingly wont work with manual settings, resulting in 2.4Ghz to fail and 5 to never come up.
Automatic settings let it come up, but no device can connect.
All other channel widths work.

My advice: Go get the R7800/X500 for now, the newer AX QCA devices need some more time

[gitto]

If you tell me the exact page/settings that you are having problems with - I will be more than happy to compare what I have as the same.
That is why we are all here on this forum.

Maybe I do have problems and don't realise it!



Or, maybe the problems are because of hardware issues.
For instance.... on my first MR7350 (purchased off an auction site) the temps showed -255C and 2.4GHz didn't work. I used my powers of deduction and a ouija board to ascertain that there may have been a hardware issue somewhere.

[egc]

To begin with ATH11K drivers are using a lot of memory also per connected wifi clients, 512 KB RAM is simply not enough if you do more than basic operation with a few clients.

The Qualcomm IPQ6028 with accompanying wifi is not as good supported as the IPQ8XXX targets (MX series)

But if you are happy with it that is of course fine but the MR series is not on my recommended list, which does not mean it cannot work under select circumstances, but if you have a choice what to purchase I would buy something else

[raidsm]

I have mx4200 and mr7350 both on openwrt. Will try DDWRT on my mx4200 v1 to test the nss engine. Did built the nss openwrt qosmio firmware for it and wasn't sure if the nss was working right so but otherwise everything is great and no problems. Like I said I will try mx4200 on ddwrt to take advantage ot the NSS and the fact you can turn it off or on (you can't on custom built on openwrt) to see if moonlight / sunshine) would take advantage of the offloading cores both great routers.

Also interested to try wireguard, smartddns, and the speed of the usb3 storage. I'm using openwrt with ksmbd on both and the speed is a bit deceiving as the CPU isn't bottlenecked (I got around 50mB/s ) so it must be the usb hardware that is not so fast... Never had memory problems as I'm also running block filter list and other stuff.

[LaMarMôt]

Thank you all very much for your views and help so far, very informative, much appreciated!