[Homer_79]

We are due to be upgraded to full fibre in a few months and was looking to upgrade the router in advance. The Netgear R9000 has overheating issues, so I looked at the AX compatible routers and the Linksys MX4200 seems to be pretty cheap. I was wondering if somebody could just verify that this is the right model?


https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/167273750647

[SurprisedItWorks]

I just bought and set one up. Unfortunately, it's not working satisfactorily with current(ish) builds 59093 and 59171, and the new-build threads for newer builds make it look like those won't solve the problems. The issue currently is simply that when any kind of significant load, like downloading a dd-wrt build in a browser, is put on the router, it reboots.

The new-build threads make clear that other newish AX routers, like the much less capable Linksys MR7350, are suffering similarly. It just seems to be a development phase that dd-wrt is going through. I've seen similar phases in the past, and things always evened out eventually. I had crazy issues with the Dynalink DL-WRX36 for a couple of builds also, but it has been rock solid on 58753 for a couple of months.

So, my suggestion is wait and see, watching the new-build threads carefully, because the MX4200 is a great router on paper, and the current V2 version (the listings at Amazon will never say V1 or V2, but I ordered blind and got a V2) really does seem to be an awesome router. (The V2 has twice the RAM of the V1.) If things even out with dd-wrt stability for it, I expect to be getting a couple more.

Keep an eye out for "two pack" and "three pack" listings for buying multiples of this router. It can be cheaper to buy 2 or 3 than to buy one. I was afraid when I bought mine that somehow these N-pack routers were a different model, but I don't think so now. It's just that this router line ("Velop") is very much capable of mesh-router operation, so they expect some people to want several. For mesh operation, they split the 5 GHz wifi band into two. The lower channels are on wlan0 as usual, while the upper channels are on a new wlan2. One of the basic drop-down menus for configuring a wifi interface has an option for making the interface a mesh backhaul link.

For the record, other than dd-wrt stability at the moment, the only other negs I have encountered re the MX4200 are that there are only 3 LAN ports, not the usual 4, and that - this one is a niche interest of mine - my Shutdown code for randomizing wifi MACs during my daily planned reboot does not work on wlan0 and wlan1 (I don't use wlan2). The VAP MACs are randomized correctly, but the wlan0 and wlan1 MACs are reset to their default values during the boot. (I don't see this issue on the Dynalink.)

I have noticed in the new-build threads that the MX4300 seems to have as many or more dd-wrt users as the MX4200 now. I haven't looked closely into the differences, but I would if I were starting this path over.

[kernel-panic69]

Please ensure you read the entire thread:

[SOLVED] SPNMX42 (MX4200 v2) installation