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R7800 LEDE community builds by hnyman

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avtella

Very Senior Member
For those of you who don't like the stock firmware and/or are getting bad buffer bloat scores (I get B-C with streamboost) you can try hnyman's LEDE builds for the R7800. I am getting A grades on the DSL Reports bufferbloat test with the Piece of Cake option in SQM settings and file transfer speeds in some cases are actually slightly better than stock. My Dell E6230 with a 3x3 "n" Intel 6300 adapter gets around 28MB/s one floor directly below the router (~10-12ft) on 1GB test file transfers to my NAS on stock firmware while I get around 32-34MB/s on the 17.01 LEDE build. I have used it for over a week without any issues.

Be warned, it may not be for everyone as it's not as user friendly as stock and some features available on stock (ie monthly data usage) need to be installed manually via the software packages section.

hnyman's R7800 LEDE community builds thread on LEDE Forums:
https://forum.lede-project.org/t/build-for-netgear-r7800/316 (posted with permission from hnyman)

Install the 17.01 builds rather than master (bleeding edge) for stability.

hnyman also has builds for the WNDR3800 as well.
 
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Can you post a video on the actual firmware view is it good and fast like the Tomato series. I liked tomato especially Advanced tomato.

The GUI is fluidy one and never giveup. Hardly i need a reboot as it even went for 40+ days without a reboot and never hangup or broke on my R7000.

I seen LDE video. Its alternate to OPENWRT. Was wondering if it will come out of testing and will have full fledged firmware.

it seems the firmware size itself is less than 10 MB. Not sure if the size has anything to do unless the GUI is feature rich with icons of high res image.
 
Can you give an idea of how stable the current 17.01 LEDE builds for the R7800 are? I'm interested, but don't want to jump into something that's unstable and has a good probability of requiring me to recover my router. I've used both OpenWRT and LEDE builds on a Linksys WRT1900AC v1 and they were pretty stable, but that was a while ago.

Also, what's the procedure for getting back to stock or Voxel firmware? Just flash the stock firmware from the LEDE web admin GUI?

Thanks for sharing this one, hadn't heard yet that LEDE firmware builds were being done for the R7800. That's good news!
 
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The 17.01 builds are pretty stable no reboots or slowdowns for me so far. To go to stock simply do a tftp flash to stock image or voxel's firmware.
 
Can you give an idea of how stable the current 17.01 LEDE builds for the R7800 are? I'm interested, but don't want to jump into something that's unstable and has a good probability of requiring me to recover my router. I've used both OpenWRT and LEDE builds on a Linksys WRT1900AC v1 and they were pretty stable, but that was a while ago.

Also, what's the procedure for getting back to stock or Voxel firmware? Just flash the stock firmware from the LEDE web admin GUI?

Thanks for sharing this one, hadn't heard yet that LEDE firmware builds were being done for the R7800. That's good news!

You can put the r7800 in recovery mode by unplugging it, holding the reset button,while plugging it in, for about 15 seconds, till the power led flashes, then tftp netgear or voxel firmware.
 
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You can put the r7800 in recovery mode by unplugging it, holding the reset button in for about 15 seconds, till the power led flashes, then tftp netgear or voxel firmware.

You don't even need to unplug, you can use the power button. Wait for it to blink white before releasing the reset button then tftp.
 
After my bad experiences with broken power buttons on the rt-n66/rt-ac66, I tend to stay away from using the button. I'd rather unplug and plug in.
 
I managed to compile my own firmware using hnyman's build environment and made changes to the DTS file (hnyman's idea) giving me 76.42 MB of usable space versus the ~19MB. I also added Samba, MiniDLNA, OpenVPN as well. Never compiled anything before but it went well with all the documentation and going over discussions at the LEDE Forums. I encourage others to try it as well. Once you create the build environment and launch the build menu/UI, you can add or remove packages and modules.

Discussion on DTS file changes necessary to get additional user space, refer to the second post:
https://forum.lede-project.org/t/netgear-r7800-only-19mb-flash-available/1115

You can still get back to stock by tftp flashing even after those changes but make a partition backup just in case as they mention in the thread.
 
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Why dont you then setup a video about hnyman's R7800 LEDE flashing so ppl cn se the process an GUI?
And do the FW use full power of CPU and FPU of the IPQ806x processor, that is limited in official firmware?
 
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If I have time in the future I may make a video but the instructions in hnyman's thread are pretty clear.

In addition, you can also look here, for general build instructions, just copy and paste the commmands as described below:
https://lede-project.org/docs/guide-developer/quickstart-build-images

I don't think there is hardware NAT acceleration. Some did try using the Qualcomm SSDK to try and enable for other models:
https://forum.lede-project.org/t/hardware-nat-for-lede/1094/130

I believe IPQ8065 crypto acceleration is there though.

Do understand, I am also pretty new to this stuff, learning as I go along the LEDE Project forums and documentation :).
 
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While I'm interested in trying this firmware, I'm going to wait until I don't need tftp to get back to stock. If that never happens, well, I don't need to try every firmware version that floats by *smile*.

Thanks for the straight answers, I appreciate it very much. This one is not ready for prime time for me *smile*.
 
Yeah its not for everyone, I just felt like tinkering around to be honest but found it to be pretty stable and it fixed my bufferbloat issues. I think Voxel's firmware, which is stock based is probably good for those who don't want to dive into/experiment with LEDE/OpenWrt.
 
Voxel FW use the full power of CPU and FPU of the IPQ806x processor.
 
Yeah, use what suits you best. :)

Here's my absolutely non professional view on Netgear Stock vs LEDE

Stock
Advantages

Hardware NAT
MU-MIMO
Easier to Use
ReadyCloud
Disadvantages
2.4 Ghz Channel auto switching is not optimal.
Older codebase (Voxel updated a lot of packages, in his version)
CPU capabilities not fully realized (Voxel's version takes care of that)
Not very customizable ( Voxel has somewhat addressed this with entware)
Bufferbloat is pretty bad even with QoS.

LEDE
Advantages

Better Wireless performance
Much much better Bufferbloat mitigation - SQM Piece of Cake is amazing.
More customizable, i.e. Adblock etc.
Can make better use of CPU capabilities minus NAT acceleration.
Newer codebase with less vulnerabilities.
Disadvantages
Need to compile yourself as community builds are based off posters' own needs.
Missing proprietary features like NAT acceleration and working MU-MIMO
Not as user friendly.

I think the issue for NAT acceleration is that the QCA SSDK uses an older kernel requiring a lot of patching to use.
 
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Is there a better way to test bufferbloat? With Streamboost on Voxel's firmware, I'm getting an A across the board. Not A+ since I didn't go very aggressively on the bandwidth settings (about 10% lower). Is there a test you guys do besides dslreports?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk
 
No I used the same DSL Reports one, I get B-C and sometimes F with stock. But if you are getting an A you should be good.

Stock QoS uses FQ_Codel. Cake is a newer development over Codel. I think it will be a while before Cake carries over to stock firmwares.

Netgear stock firmware is based on an older release of OpenWRT/LEDE but with proprietary stuff added on like NAT acceleration and more end user friendly of course.
 
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Interesting…

Of course LEDE is a nice project. Requires some involvement of user to build own version of firmware, what I like :). I started my builds with R7500v1, because there were NO alternatives to stock firmware, no LEDE, no OpenWRT, no DD-WRT with workable 5GHz. Then I continued with R7800.

Everybody decides himself. For me hardware NAT and MU-MIMO are key advantages and I do not want to lose them. But someone can use alternative with own primary preferences of course.

Regarding bufferbloat and DSL Reports. I always have A or A+ scores there, in general it depends on concrete type of connection and I tuned my settings basing on my concrete connection I have. I know that some people with xDSL often have bufferbloat. If somebody is interested in testing, he/she can try to do fine tuning for his concrete connection type (with my build):

1. Congestion control. I use “yeah” in my build. It is set in /etc/sysctl.conf. But there are other types in my build:

Code:
net.ipv4.tcp_available_congestion_control = yeah vegas reno cubic westwood highspeed illinois

2. Buffers. Init file /etc/init.d/optware has such lines:
Code:
start() {
               # Socket buffers
               echo 1048576 > /proc/sys/net/core/rmem_max
               echo 1048576 > /proc/sys/net/core/wmem_max
               . . .

You can try to decrease these values. Say, to 524288 or even to 212992.

It would be interesting for me if somebody will be able to increase his scores in DSL Reports after such tuning.


Voxel.
 
Personally, not being a gamer, or doing much of anything that requires the lowest network latency, I'm okay with a "C" grade in bufferbloat class *smile*. I really don't see any effect of not getting an "A" in bufferbloat in the media streaming that I do, which is the most important thing to me. I've always gone for "A"'s in academics, but don't feel that I need an "A" in bufferbloat for how I use my LAN. It's always nice, but that's not what I'm looking for personally. I do feel it's important to spend one's time solving the problems that most affect what you're doing, so each to their own.
 
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I'm on bonded VDSL2 40/2 officially but get 36.5/1.8 actual. Thanks for the info on congestion control Voxel. I'll give those settings a try in your firmware. With stock, latency occasionally jumps to 200-1k or above, that ruins the occasional gaming session lol and VoIP, but you're right for the most part you don't necessarily need an A, RogerSC.

FYI there is an official LEDE build for the R7500v1 if you feel like experimenting, not sure about how the 5Ghz works if at all. Quantenna really screwed over both ASUS and Netgear.
 
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