Router recommendation for OpenWRT?

[raaron773]

Hi,

I own an old TP-Link AC1200 gigabit router and it doesn't support OpenWRT. I am looking for a decent WiFi gigabit router under Rs.3000/- which supports latest stable OpenWRT.
Any recommendations ?
I have checked the forums and all I see is that TP-Link A6 and TP-Link C6 are the most recommended ones.
Can someone explain the difference between these two and if there's any new router in the market which offers better specs and has openwrt support? I would really appreciate it. Thank you!

 

[Kauban]

@MrGordon - Thanks much for your help and finally I was able to get my set up working.
Huawei 5G CPE (Jio 5G) > OpenWRT > UDM Pro (Fail over Port). Now my Failover consistently gets 950 Down and my Primary (Jio Fiber) has 150 down

 

[Kauban]

@MrGordon - My set up with Jio 5G CPE > Xiaomi 4A (464XLAT) > UDM Pro is working fine. Thanks for all your guidance!

The challenge now is the Xiaomi router I feel has its challenges, router would often kick off the network until I restart it, the other one is the throughput most of the time even though the 5G router is receiving close to 1G the router throughout is often reduced to 200 Mbps and stays that way until rebooted.

So, can you suggest me a better Router (WiFi6 is good to have) with OpenWRT compatibility ? In last 2 days, I ordered an Archer A6 and then C6. In both cases, I got A6 version 4 which is not supported same with C6.

 

[MrGordon]

Even if you received the OpenWRT capable Archer A6 or C6, both use exact same hardware as the Mi Router 4A, so you may not see any improvements.

Regarding connectivity loss, I think you might see it even with another device. In my case I’ve set it to restart that interface if connectivity loss is seen. I use the mwan3 package, which does a ping check continuously, if it detects connectivity loss you can set it to restart the interface.
With this I’ve not seen any connectivity drops.

You could also setup a scheduled restart of the OpenWRT device every day during the night and see if it helps.

 

[Kauban]

@MrGordon - Thanks for the insight and let me try the same. Quick question- Do you see a speed reduction with your 5G router ? Not sure why I am getting 250 Mbps whereas directly connecting to the 5G router this is close to 1G almost all the time?

 

[Lolita_Magnum]

DId you enable NAT hardware offloading under firewall?

 

[Kauban]

@Lolita_Magnum yes, enabled for HW & SW offloading not much noticeable difference and still don’t cross 300 Mbps. When I connect the LAN from my CPE directly to laptop jumps to 900-950 Mbps (1G limitation).

Still bothering me how to get the max throughput

 

[ishanjain28]

What is the cpu and mem usage like on the openwrt device when you are maxing out the speed? Are you performing sped test over ipv6 or ipv4? Try doing a test over ipv6.
464xlat is not a totally free operation(compute wise) so some loss on a relatively slow device is expected.

 

[Kauban]

@ishanjain28 - I was out for a week and so the delay to respond. The CPU & Memory does not go beyond 50% through multiple speed tests. If I connect the Mi 4a LAN to my laptop (IPv6) it still does not cross 300 M up/down.

Now when I directly hardwire the LAN of Huawei 5G CPE, this is 950 M, the tower is less than ~ 100meters so my iPhone speeds are consistently 1.2G

My Ubiquity gear does not have CLAT at client side so I cannot directly plug the Huawei CPE out to Ubiquity as Jio is IPv6 only. So, based on suggestions I went with a Mi 4A (OpenWRT) so that I can take advantage of XLAT and get a IPv4 for my Ubiquiti.

Do you any suggestions on how to improve the throughput or any other Hardware I can go with?

P.S - Curious what do you guys use ?