OpenWRT for Linksys WRT1900AC

[Mordred]

Belkin just released their first patches for openwrt. Basically this reveals they internals now. It looks like this unit is really going to kick some butt.

As far as I could tell it is based on the marvel armada which means the 1.2Ghz that linksys technical details men mention may not be the maximum cpu clock. With the large heatsink the linksys comes with I bet it will do much more than 1.2Ghz.

Marvells data sheet for the MV78230 says something about 1.6Ghz and 1600Mhz RAM clock.

Although it does not have mu-mimo it will beat asus new unit AC87U badly since you will need special clients to use mu-mimo. Thus the asus may have the better radio, but lacking clients this won't help anyone for years.

With openwrt, dd-wrt or tomato support this unit might be the next star on the router market. With this cpu and ram speed routing speed will probably set new standards even without some closed source hw acceleration.

Can't wait to hold one in my hands.

 

[speedingcheetah]

Belkin just released their first patches for openwrt. Basically this reveals they internals now. It looks like this unit is really going to kick some butt.

As far as I could tell it is based on the marvel armada which means the 1.2Ghz that linksys technical details men mention may not be the maximum cpu clock. With the large heatsink the linksys comes with I bet it will do much more than 1.2Ghz.

Marvells data sheet for the MV78230 says something about 1.6Ghz and 1600Mhz RAM clock.

Although it does not have mu-mimo it will beat asus new unit AC87U badly since you will need special clients to use mu-mimo. Thus the asus may have the better radio, but lacking clients this won't help anyone for years.

With openwrt, dd-wrt or tomato support this unit might be the next star on the router market. With this cpu and ram speed routing speed will probably set new standards even without some closed source hw acceleration.

Can't wait to hold one in my hands.

Yea....does look like a beast....but with many things, hardware can be best in the world, but it can be crippled with poor/sloppy/buggy firmware.

I will be getting one of these WRT's to review...definitely curious to see how it compares to my current routers, and my past experiences with other routers. (though my Asus is staying around for sure, unless the WRT supports Open VPN same as Asus). It will be a bit after release until there is a good stable 3rd party firmware(can't wait for Tomato).

 

[azazel1024]

It may depend on the chipset for the access point...but to the best of my knowledge, MU-MIMO is only required on the access point/base station to support MU-MIMO BC (broadcast, or transmit in this case)...which is often the primary method of WLAN usage. MU-MIMO MAC requires the clients to have MU-MIMO ability as it involves the AP/basestation and all of the clients coordinating with each other (through the base station) on their various rates to determine each clients proper transmit rate to the access point.

Since AP receive is often the lesser used and congested channel compared to transmit, the fact that no clients currently support MU-MIMO and possibly won't for a little while...its not as much of a handicap as you'd think.

Just having MU-MIMO BC ability is HUGE and a huge advantage in most environments of >1 concurrent user over any other access point that is non MU-MIMO.

 

[thiggins]

The WRT1900AC does not support MU-MIMO. Both AP and STA must support standard 802.11ac beamforming for MU-MIMO to work.

 

[speedingcheetah]

The WRT1900AC does not support MU-MIMO. Both AP and STA must support standard 802.11ac beamforming for MU-MIMO to work.

Does any of Asus products support MU-MIMO then?

 

[L&LD]

The Asus RT-AC87U will support MU-MIMO, hopefully by the end of June 2014.

 

[thiggins]

Does any of Asus products support MU-MIMO then?

There are no products from any vendor that support MU-MIMO at this time.

 

[lexist2112]

Hey all!!!!!!!!!!!

I have one of these bad boys on order and have confirmed earlier in the week, that the estimated ship date from Linksys is on 4/13 and I should have mine in hand 2 days later (Tuesday). Can hardly wait to configure this bad boy and see how it works on my network.

In the meantime I have started a thread over on the Linksys forums

 

[sm00thpapa]

Hey all!!!!!!!!!!!

I have one of these bad boys on order and have confirmed earlier in the week, that the estimated ship date from Linksys is on 4/13 and I should have mine in hand 2 days later (Tuesday). Can hardly wait to configure this bad boy and see how it works on my network.

In the meantime I have started a thread over on the Linksys forums

Sup Lexist I'm sm00thpapa on Linksys forum as well. LOL!

 

[thiggins]

OpenWRT Statement: Update on Linksys WRT1900AC support

https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=50173

I am not surprised at the driver issue. Since these drivers contain a lot of proprietary "secret sauce", chipmakers are very reluctant to reveal source code.

 

[jalyst]

Yeah, forgot to post that earlier, this whole cock-up may have been due to an overzealous marketing dep't.
Given Belkin's latest responses in the mail-lists, we should know one way or the other soon hopefully.

 

[m33p]

I just noticed this post recently posted... If an open source driver is provided I don't see any reason why the community won't add support for this device... regardless if its Marvell or not.. Lets just hope what they provide is what is needed by the community..
https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?pid=230954#p230954

If they open up a good driver to the community this will give this router a better advantage over the 68u and even the 87u... The community can then improve and fix issues related to wireless problems... My biggest issue with the 68u was unstable wireless drivers provided by asus...

All we can do is wait and see..

 

[RMerlin]

I just noticed this post recently posted... If an open source driver is provided I don't see any reason why the community won't add support for this device... regardless if its Marvell or not.. Lets just hope what they provide is what is needed by the community..
https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?pid=230954#p230954

If they open up a good driver to the community this will give this router a better advantage over the 68u and even the 87u... The community can then improve and fix issues related to wireless problems... My biggest issue with the 68u was unstable wireless drivers provided by asus...

All we can do is wait and see..

Let's hope it will be a full-featured driver then, and not a cut-down version missing support for some hardware-level optimization (like is the case for OpenWRT's Broadcom support). If Marvell can deliver a COMPLETE solution, this could be a very popular solution for opensource-based firmware users.

 

[jalyst]

If Marvell can deliver a COMPLETE solution, this could be a very popular solution for opensource-based firmware users.

Yep, & that msg needs to be conveyed consistently & clearly to Belkin/Marvel, else it prolly won't sink-in.

 

[jalyst]

Some updates:

Quick update on this subject: Linksys has now posted a GPL source for
the WRT1900AC, and it contains the wifi driver sources.
It appears to me, that this driver was properly licensed under GPL, with
proper license headers in all source files.

This means that work on supporting this device can theoretically
continue, although I expect it to take quite a bit of time. As I
anticipated, the code quality of the driver source code is abysmal.
This looks like rewrite (not cleanup) material, ugly enough to cause eye
cancer or frighten small children

There are also still some pieces missing: Since this driver does not use
standard Linux Wireless APIs, it can only properly function with custom
hostapd/wpa_supplicant hacks. I don't see those in the release.

- Felix

On 2014-04-23 11:31, Felix Fietkau wrote:
> Quick update on this subject: Linksys has now posted a GPL source for
> the WRT1900AC, and it contains the wifi driver sources.
> It appears to me, that this driver was properly licensed under GPL, with
> proper license headers in all source files.
>
> This means that work on supporting this device can theoretically
> continue, although I expect it to take quite a bit of time. As I
> anticipated, the code quality of the driver source code is abysmal.
> This looks like rewrite (not cleanup) material, ugly enough to cause eye
> cancer or frighten small children
>
> There are also still some pieces missing: Since this driver does not use
> standard Linux Wireless APIs, it can only properly function with custom
> hostapd/wpa_supplicant hacks. I don't see those in the release.
Update 2: Those can be found in the OpenWrt SDK for this device on
GitHub. Same comments regarding code quality apply here.

- Felix

 

[lexist2112]

Well, this is some good and bad news. Felix has looked at the source code and it appears to be junk and needs some serious over haul. Can't believe Marvell would write junk and pass it along knowing that the open source community may finally have access to it.

Our only hope is the guys out there smart enough to write in some stable WiFi code. I hope it doesn't take an eternity

 

[jalyst]

Pretty common to obfuscate the code like that via sloppiness...
Most vendors are very reluctant about releasing lowest lvl sw, they usually don't.
The fact that Marvel has* is a surprising/positive 1st step, long way to go but!

*albeit not in the most ideal ways (yet)

 

[rmriggin]

Perhaps the intent was that the OpenSource community would fix/polish the turd they provided to the community? I am currently running the image that was released several days ago and so far it hasn't given me any issues.

 

[lexist2112]

Perhaps the intent was that the OpenSource community would fix/polish the turd they provided to the community? I am currently running the image that was released several days ago and so far it hasn't given me any issues.

Is there any difference between the OpenWRT and the latest Linksys FW???
Secondly can you please post the link of the FW image you used.

 

[RogerSC]

Well, this is a start...last time a router came along that had a Marvell chip set in it and I was interested in it, there was not going to be any third-party or open source firmware support for it (Linksys E4200v2). So I couldn't use it *smile*. Seems as though Marvell now sees the value of having open source firmware available for this one, glad to see it.

It is hard for a company with a history of proprietary software/firmware to swing around to full support of open source. Usually there's a deep-seated cultural belief that their business is based on that proprietary software/firmware. So it also isn't surprising to see them not provide a top-quality open source driver the first time around. But something to start with, and maybe better quality to come when they really start to believe that open source firmware can help sell their hardware. I guess that time will tell, and that Marvell will be keeping an eye on what this does for their bottom line *smile*.

For me, great news!