DD-WRT on the NETGEAR R7000
- Thread starter TonyH
- Start date
You got me, that's what I'm currently using *smile*. Works good.
Razor512
Very Senior Member
For the R7000, currently dd-wrt does not offer full WAN performance, as compared to the stock firmware, you drop from full gigabit WAN performance, to around 450-500mbit/s WAN performance (meaning if you are on google fiber or some other internet connection that will give you more than 450mbit throughput, then you will lose some internet throughput) LAN throughput is not impacted.
The dd-wrt firmware uses generic values for the wifi radio, and it is not clear how the values translate to the wif i radio, but by default, you get a little less than 1/10th the transmit power. By default, the R7000 uses 1 watt transmit power per band, while DD-WRT will use less than 100mw. But on top of that, the default transmit power does not translate directly to true transmit power as from my testing, certain values would cause stability issues, and regardless of setting, I could not get the same range reliably.
For wifi radios, the max transmit power depends on bandwidth where 20MHz can handle nearly 1 watt, but 40MHz will have to be a little lower, and 80MHz, even lower
A,B,G
Maximum Conducted Output Power 11b: 29.15 dBm ; 11g: 29.03 dBm ; 11a: 29.99 dBm
For AC
For 2.4GHz Band:
802.11ac MCS0/Nss1 (20MHz): 29.13 dBm ;
802.11ac MCS0/Nss1 (40MHz): 21.90 dBm
For 5GHz Band:
802.11ac MCS0/Nss1 (20MHz): 29.90 dBm ;
802.11ac MCS0/Nss1 (40MHz): 29.80 dBm ;
802.11ac MCS0/Nss1 (80MHz): 27.78 dBm
DD-WRT does not seem to have this kind of behavior programmed in, so depending on what you set, you may end up with a transmit power that your wifi radio cannot handle in a stable manner, and thus you are stuck with limiting your output to the lowest value that the netgear firmware would use. (which again is difficult when the values in DD-wrt do not translate directly with what the wifi radio is actually pushing out)
The dd-wrt firmware uses generic values for the wifi radio, and it is not clear how the values translate to the wif i radio, but by default, you get a little less than 1/10th the transmit power. By default, the R7000 uses 1 watt transmit power per band, while DD-WRT will use less than 100mw. But on top of that, the default transmit power does not translate directly to true transmit power as from my testing, certain values would cause stability issues, and regardless of setting, I could not get the same range reliably.
For wifi radios, the max transmit power depends on bandwidth where 20MHz can handle nearly 1 watt, but 40MHz will have to be a little lower, and 80MHz, even lower
A,B,G
Maximum Conducted Output Power 11b: 29.15 dBm ; 11g: 29.03 dBm ; 11a: 29.99 dBm
For AC
For 2.4GHz Band:
802.11ac MCS0/Nss1 (20MHz): 29.13 dBm ;
802.11ac MCS0/Nss1 (40MHz): 21.90 dBm
For 5GHz Band:
802.11ac MCS0/Nss1 (20MHz): 29.90 dBm ;
802.11ac MCS0/Nss1 (40MHz): 29.80 dBm ;
802.11ac MCS0/Nss1 (80MHz): 27.78 dBm
DD-WRT does not seem to have this kind of behavior programmed in, so depending on what you set, you may end up with a transmit power that your wifi radio cannot handle in a stable manner, and thus you are stuck with limiting your output to the lowest value that the netgear firmware would use. (which again is difficult when the values in DD-wrt do not translate directly with what the wifi radio is actually pushing out)
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Yeah, I'll be on Google fiber any day now *smile*. I don't expect to see anything over 100Mbps here until maybe 2020 or so. By then, won't have to worry about the R7000 anymore, I'm pretty sure. I won't be missing CTF this decade, unfortunately...Right now I'm on Comcast Blast! A whole 25Mbps!!!
Anyways, yes, if you're worried about degrading your 1Gbps internet speed, then by all means do the right thing for that. If you don't have 1Gbps (or even .5GBps *smile*), then dd-wrt provides nice, stable firmware, great wireless coverage, lots of working features (not promises), and actual humans that you can communicate with doing the support. Problems get fixed, enhancements can be added on request. It isn't perfect, what is, but sure is a whole heck of a lot better than any OEM firmware I've used.
Nice to have the choice.
Edit: By the way, dd-wrt for the R7000 doesn't use the usual dd-wrt default tx power of 70mw, it uses the maximum that the router can use, most likely about the same tx power as stock uses. When you use the wl -i eth[1|2] txpwr1 commands on both stock and dd-wrt firmware, you see the same 1496mw (which means maximum available, I assume) by default for each. Try it, you'll see. You'll also see very comparable wireless strength/coverage and throughput at distance, at least that's what I see here, except dd-wrt wireless is more stable. I'd venture to say that if you have used dd-wrt firmware on an R7000, it wasn't very recently. I could be wrong, but your assertions (outside of the fact that dd-wrt doesn't support CTF) do not at all map into what I've seen as a matter of experience.
Here you go, default tx power from dd-wrt on the R7000:
root@DD-WRT:~# wl -i eth2 txpwr1
TxPower is 127 qdbm, 31.75 dbm, 1496 mW Override is Off
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Razor512
Very Senior Member
I will try to do a few benchmarks comparing the wifi performance of dd-wrt to the stock firmware.
With dd-wrt, you can Max the transmit power out, and it will self limit to what e er region the wifi radio is set to, but it doesn't seem to self limit to the transmit power needed for various modes as with the transmit set to 999, 80 MHz mode slows down quite a bit, and all attempts to find an optimal distance, does not recover the lost speed.
Overall, the performance is great for most use cases, but in the end, it is usually a little slower than stock netgear.
Depending on the wifi mode used, it takes a little trial and error to find the best transmit power.
Other than that, dd-wrt is getting better, and it will eventually become vital for many users who want to continue to use the router after the company has stopped releasing firmware updates.
With dd-wrt, you can Max the transmit power out, and it will self limit to what e er region the wifi radio is set to, but it doesn't seem to self limit to the transmit power needed for various modes as with the transmit set to 999, 80 MHz mode slows down quite a bit, and all attempts to find an optimal distance, does not recover the lost speed.
Overall, the performance is great for most use cases, but in the end, it is usually a little slower than stock netgear.
Depending on the wifi mode used, it takes a little trial and error to find the best transmit power.
Other than that, dd-wrt is getting better, and it will eventually become vital for many users who want to continue to use the router after the company has stopped releasing firmware updates.
Razor512
Very Senior Member
Please feel free to remove this post if it is too long for a comment in a thread.
All results are from the perspective of what the wifi radio in the R7000 is doing
I order to further show the issue with DD-WRT, I did 2 sets of benchmarks. I do not have a very good testing area so I am exposed to a lot of interference due to every man, woman, child, dog, cat, having their own wifi router, and living in close proximity, and for some reason these wifi radios behave weirdly in this environment (though this issue does not happen with some of the atheros, and older broadcom radios )
To start, here is how the R7000 performs in my noise filled environment when using the stock firmware.
Now here is how it performs using the same settings and channels, and position, with DD-WRT using its default transmit power (by default, 71mw is located in the wifi settings)
Now here is how it performs when DD-WRT is set to 999mw (steps taken, (increase transmit power to 999, then save, then apply, then reboot router, and wait a few minutes to make sure all loading was done).
Overall, I am not sure if it is not adjusting the transmit power properly, but whatever is happening, the wifi radios, are not happy with DD-WRT
edit: forgot this forum does not support tags
Summary: the speeds are highest with the stock firmware. Going from stock to DD-WRT with the default transmit power as seen in the web UI (71), the speed takes a 50-200mbit drop in throughput
Then in increasing the transmit power to 999mw, causes a massive drop in throughput(a drop of nearly 400mbit/s in some cases)
This is all done with the wifi network set to 80MHz mode
All results are from the perspective of what the wifi radio in the R7000 is doing
I order to further show the issue with DD-WRT, I did 2 sets of benchmarks. I do not have a very good testing area so I am exposed to a lot of interference due to every man, woman, child, dog, cat, having their own wifi router, and living in close proximity, and for some reason these wifi radios behave weirdly in this environment (though this issue does not happen with some of the atheros, and older broadcom radios )
To start, here is how the R7000 performs in my noise filled environment when using the stock firmware.
Now here is how it performs using the same settings and channels, and position, with DD-WRT using its default transmit power (by default, 71mw is located in the wifi settings)
Now here is how it performs when DD-WRT is set to 999mw (steps taken, (increase transmit power to 999, then save, then apply, then reboot router, and wait a few minutes to make sure all loading was done).
Overall, I am not sure if it is not adjusting the transmit power properly, but whatever is happening, the wifi radios, are not happy with DD-WRT
edit: forgot this forum does not support tags
Summary: the speeds are highest with the stock firmware. Going from stock to DD-WRT with the default transmit power as seen in the web UI (71), the speed takes a 50-200mbit drop in throughput
Then in increasing the transmit power to 999mw, causes a massive drop in throughput(a drop of nearly 400mbit/s in some cases)
This is all done with the wifi network set to 80MHz mode
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Yes, the dd-wrt default tx power setting says 71mw, but if you look at the wl0/wl1 tx power in wireless status in the web interface, you'll see "Auto". "Auto" is essentially the same tx power setting used by the stock firmware...I gave the output of "wl -i eth[0|1] txpwr1" from a router telnet session in my previous posting. That shows 1496mw, same as the what the stock firmware shows, you can confirm that for yourself if you choose to. However, if you actually set a value, you are no longer using that default, you're using whatever power you set.
I've had much better results with the "Auto" setting, than I have setting any power like 999mw manually. This was confirmed by other users, and was why Kong made "Auto" the default...I wish that he had changed the default power setting in the wireless settings web interface to "Auto" as well instead of leaving it as "71", but he didn't for whatever reason. I don't know why "Auto" works as well as it does, it may correspond to some kind of self-limiting mode in the hardware. I actually experienced lower speeds when I set the power higher manually, as opposed to using the default "Auto" for tx power. I wouldn't bother wasting my time with any setting other than "Auto", there's really no point. That's been my experience, and I played with the tx power settings a lot. As soon as Kong changed the default to "Auto", there really was no reason to play with tx power any more.
As far as the charts go, they don't really affect me, my download speeds are well below even 100Mbps, so the lack of CTF is irrelevant. What I do see here is stable behavior over time, a nice web interface, and whole house wireless coverage *smile*. My experience with the stock firmware wasn't exactly what I'd call stable. Which is why I have ended up back on dd-wrt after each stock firmware release, including the current stock firmware release.
I've had much better results with the "Auto" setting, than I have setting any power like 999mw manually. This was confirmed by other users, and was why Kong made "Auto" the default...I wish that he had changed the default power setting in the wireless settings web interface to "Auto" as well instead of leaving it as "71", but he didn't for whatever reason. I don't know why "Auto" works as well as it does, it may correspond to some kind of self-limiting mode in the hardware. I actually experienced lower speeds when I set the power higher manually, as opposed to using the default "Auto" for tx power. I wouldn't bother wasting my time with any setting other than "Auto", there's really no point. That's been my experience, and I played with the tx power settings a lot. As soon as Kong changed the default to "Auto", there really was no reason to play with tx power any more.
As far as the charts go, they don't really affect me, my download speeds are well below even 100Mbps, so the lack of CTF is irrelevant. What I do see here is stable behavior over time, a nice web interface, and whole house wireless coverage *smile*. My experience with the stock firmware wasn't exactly what I'd call stable. Which is why I have ended up back on dd-wrt after each stock firmware release, including the current stock firmware release.
Hi,
Years of using various routers, I never had to fiddle with TX power. Right now I am on dd-wrt latest firmware and it works very well. When I can get hold of V1.0.3.39 stock
beta f/w by any luck, I'll revert back and see what it is like. dd-wrt is very popular world wide. One thing on stock f/w,
no Telnet access.
Years of using various routers, I never had to fiddle with TX power. Right now I am on dd-wrt latest firmware and it works very well. When I can get hold of V1.0.3.39 stock
beta f/w by any luck, I'll revert back and see what it is like. dd-wrt is very popular world wide. One thing on stock f/w,
no Telnet access.
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The only reason that I fiddled with it in the first place was because I wasn't getting as good of wireless coverage with 71mw default with dd-wrt as I was getting with stock, not quite good enough in my living room. So I fiddled with it some until the "Auto" default was added, which made the wireless coverage with dd-wrt as good as stock here. Haven't fiddled with it since *smile*.
First time I've played with tx power as well.
The DD-WRT transmit power graphical user interface, for years, has been know to be a joke.
The low level firmware in any product's radio is set for a max TX power versus data rate. Higher speeds of OFDM, lower power. Has to be, to maintain the Rho (transmitted signal phase/amplitude "error vector magnitude". Bad Rho = higher bit error rate = lower throughput.
The low level firmware simply ignores too-high user selections that would destroy the Rho, and ones that the amplifier just cannot do at all.
The amplifiers simply aren't capable of more than about 30 or so mW in the highest OFDM data rates, and this can increase in some products to about 100mW in the lower data rates, esp. when not using OFDM modes in the low speeds.
DD-WRT and others could just as well put up a 100 watt choice in the GUI and sucker-in more people.
The low level firmware in any product's radio is set for a max TX power versus data rate. Higher speeds of OFDM, lower power. Has to be, to maintain the Rho (transmitted signal phase/amplitude "error vector magnitude". Bad Rho = higher bit error rate = lower throughput.
The low level firmware simply ignores too-high user selections that would destroy the Rho, and ones that the amplifier just cannot do at all.
The amplifiers simply aren't capable of more than about 30 or so mW in the highest OFDM data rates, and this can increase in some products to about 100mW in the lower data rates, esp. when not using OFDM modes in the low speeds.
DD-WRT and others could just as well put up a 100 watt choice in the GUI and sucker-in more people.
Razor512
Very Senior Member
for me in the telnet ui, with the default dd-wrt settings, the txpower command shows
root@DD-WRT:~# wl -i eth2 txpwr1
TxPower is 74 qdbm, 18.50 dbm, 71 mW Override is On
root@DD-WRT:~#
If the transmit power is set to 999
the telnet shows
root@DD-WRT:~# wl -i eth2 txpwr1
TxPower is 120 qdbm, 30.0 dbm, 1000 mW Override is On
root@DD-WRT:~#
I am using the DD-WRT K3 for NETGEAR R7000 Nighthawk WiFi Router Kong build
root@DD-WRT:~# wl -i eth2 txpwr1
TxPower is 74 qdbm, 18.50 dbm, 71 mW Override is On
root@DD-WRT:~#
If the transmit power is set to 999
the telnet shows
root@DD-WRT:~# wl -i eth2 txpwr1
TxPower is 120 qdbm, 30.0 dbm, 1000 mW Override is On
root@DD-WRT:~#
I am using the DD-WRT K3 for NETGEAR R7000 Nighthawk WiFi Router Kong build
Hmmm...can't account for the above results. I'm using the latest dd-wrt build, r23655 (3/1/2014), and this is what I see:
root@DD-WRT:~# wl -i eth2 txpwr1
TxPower is 127 qdbm, 31.75 dbm, 1496 mW Override is Off
The only guess I can make on this is that you're using an earlier build of dd-wrt, since I've been seeing the above results of this command for several builds now. In fact, it looks a lot like you have an old Kong build from here:
http://www.myopenrouter.com/download/52625/DD-WRT-K3-for-NETGEAR-R7000-Nighthawk-WiFi-Router-Kong-build/
rather than the newest build from Kong's firmware repository:
http://desipro.de/ddwrt/K3-AC-Arm
I'm guessing that you have the old Kong build since the name that you give it above matches the URL that is the old Kong build from before he modified the default tx power. This accounts for the discrepancy between what you quote from dd-wrt and what I see here.
Note that you can also overclock the R7000 with no apparent ill affects. This is a quote from the Changelog at Kong's repository, overclocking by 20% raises the ceiling on routing by about 20% (oddly enough *smile*):
Benchmark results NAT Routing performance on R7000 with standard CPU clk=1000,800:
Download: 360Mbps
Upload: 330Mbps
Benchmark results NAT Routing performance on R7000 with overclocked CPU clk=1200,800:
Download: 425Mbps
Upload: 385Mbps
I assume that you could overclock the stock firmware as well, if you could just telnet into it (the latest stock release seems to have broken telnet).
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Hi,
It's OT but as a long time HAM I never had a TX power more than 100W. My favorite radio is 5W QRP digital brick radio. My idea was rather I'd spend money on antennas and use my skills gained over the years for DXing. My accomplishment ONE was using 0.5W CW, I worked South Africa via long path using coherent CW method. That was very exciting. In pro days I used to play with TX power in the hundreds KW range. Reducing power half did not yield much difference in most cases. That was in tropo-scatter, microwave links, and long range HF broadcasting. I am always energy conscious, my house is custom built on R2000 specs. All my lighting is switched to LED resulting in
80% Wattage saving.
It's OT but as a long time HAM I never had a TX power more than 100W. My favorite radio is 5W QRP digital brick radio. My idea was rather I'd spend money on antennas and use my skills gained over the years for DXing. My accomplishment ONE was using 0.5W CW, I worked South Africa via long path using coherent CW method. That was very exciting. In pro days I used to play with TX power in the hundreds KW range. Reducing power half did not yield much difference in most cases. That was in tropo-scatter, microwave links, and long range HF broadcasting. I am always energy conscious, my house is custom built on R2000 specs. All my lighting is switched to LED resulting in
80% Wattage saving.
Razor512
Very Senior Member
Just tested, WAN performance is improved, but wifi performance remained largely unchanged, though it does seem to be using a better transmit power (makes a similar noise to the stock firmware, so I can only assume that it is using higher transmit powers, but it does not have the major performance drop in 80MHz mode.
I also tested and the overclock works with the stock firmware, telnet is messed up but serial still works fine.
I also tested and the overclock works with the stock firmware, telnet is messed up but serial still works fine.
Sounds like you've had a lot of fun with amateur radio...I really had fun with it for a lot of years, as well. Built various pieces of equipment, and got by on a shoestring as a kid, taking parts out of old TV's, radios, etc. Haven't done much with it since I had kids *smile*, spare time became more difficult to find between family and working a lot of hours. Keep wanting to get back to it and see what's going on now, but haven't done that yet. Someday.
Hi,
Came across a R7000 f/w V1.0.3.49 dated March 14. Huge file size increase to ~29MB.
I flashed it, seems fine. Seems like some thing done to WiFi on both bands. Also something
to do with Clound. No release note. Just the f/w. If interested, go here,
www.station-drivers.com. At your own risk....
Came across a R7000 f/w V1.0.3.49 dated March 14. Huge file size increase to ~29MB.
I flashed it, seems fine. Seems like some thing done to WiFi on both bands. Also something
to do with Clound. No release note. Just the f/w. If interested, go here,
www.station-drivers.com. At your own risk....
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JohnNadeau
New Around Here
Thanks Tony!
It's on Netgear's FTP site too: ftp://downloads.netgear.com/temp/
We'll be curious to hear your experience as you go along !
New dd-wrt firmware today, too (23745). Newer Broadcom wireless drivers with some problems from the last release fixed. It's also working well so far.
Haven't compared the dd-wrt Broadcom wireless driver versions between the new dd-wrt release and today's found Netgear (Beta) firmware version yet. The Netgear build seems to be labeled 3/14/2014, so it's hard to say which has newer wireless drivers (or if newer is necessarily better *smile*).
Haven't compared the dd-wrt Broadcom wireless driver versions between the new dd-wrt release and today's found Netgear (Beta) firmware version yet. The Netgear build seems to be labeled 3/14/2014, so it's hard to say which has newer wireless drivers (or if newer is necessarily better *smile*).
Hi,
At the end of the day running R7000 on new beta, IPV6 issue, No Telnet access, WiFi
5GHz band is different now. When I set mode to upto 1300Mbps, I couldn't connect
from Intel WiFi link 5100 card in -N. Now it connects fine. When I did ping test to known
server time improved(shorter) noticeably on both band.
At the end of the day running R7000 on new beta, IPV6 issue, No Telnet access, WiFi
5GHz band is different now. When I set mode to upto 1300Mbps, I couldn't connect
from Intel WiFi link 5100 card in -N. Now it connects fine. When I did ping test to known
server time improved(shorter) noticeably on both band.
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