Netgear D7800, first impressions

[doc octopus]

I open this discussion on the modem / router in question, to write the first impressions after two days of use.

It's OK:

DFS channels immediately available
UPnP function working perfectly with Xbox
Transmission speed good and good coverage of 5 GHz, discreet but improved in the 2.4 GHz

Not good:

Ping inconstant between router and client wifi
QoS menu messed up and confusing
Frequent disconnections with Asus MemoPad 8

What is missing:

Schedule for each connected device

Regards

 

[NETGEAR Guy]

Thank you for the feedback.

Can you confirm whether both 2.4GHz and 5GHz client connections (or both) are intermittent?

Is Dynamic QoS not reporting all connected applications once enabled?

We will also look at testing with an Asus MemoPad 8 to help replicate the issue.

 

[doc octopus]

I currently have problems only with the MemoPad 8 and only on frequency 2,4ghz. I have not tested 5 Ghz.
In the "Attached Devices" does not display devices connected via a wireless bridge

 

[NETGEAR Guy]

Thank you.....do you have any details on the wireless bridge, ie., extender or AP using WDS?

 

[doc octopus]

The wireless bridge is the Asus EA-AC87 in media bridge mode, updated to the latest beta firmware available on the support forums of singapore.

 

[raven-au]

The wireless bridge is the Asus EA-AC87 in media bridge mode, updated to the latest beta firmware available on the support forums of singapore.

I don't think that's a D7800 issue.

AFAIK only routers based a Broadcom chipset provide the transparent bridging you are looking for and I suspect the wireless in the EA-AC87 is the Quantenna chipset.

You can easily verify transparent bridging doesn't function with that chipset by setting an RT-AC87U into media bridge mode. You will quickly see that, if you use the Broadcom 2.4 GHz wireless transparent bridging works while it doesn't if you use the Quantenna 5GHz.

The Qualcomm chipset behaves similarly except that the devices I've seen don't have Broadcom 2.4GHz and so transparent bridging doesn't work with them at all.

The only exception to that I'm aware of is the EX7000 Wireless Extender which munges the MAC address of devices behind it. But I don't know what wireless chipset it uses.

The wireless chipset driver developers don't seem interested in providing this function but it has it's own set of problems so they are probably justified in not implementing it.

Note also that OpenWRT doesn't provide transparent bridging at all, unless your using the much older custom Broadcom drivers.

Ian

 

[doc octopus]

If I use EA-AC87 coupled with RT-AC87U not have that problem, all devices connected to the media bridge are regularly listed in the Asus router

 

[raven-au]

If I use EA-AC87 coupled with RT-AC87U not have that problem, all devices connected to the media bridge are regularly listed in the Asus router

That's interesting to hear and TBH I'm a bit surprised.

But I still don't think that makes it a D7800 problem because the EA-AC87 is responsible for sending and receiving the network packets that are used to construct the list of devices by the main router.

The D7800, as a router (and I think that was the case here), has no control over the packets coming out of the EA-AC87 wireless, and nor can it possibly determine what is behind it without seeing network packets that contain the MAC address of the devices that are behind it, and wireless drivers must be specially modified to make that happen.

The section "Bridged Client Mode Issues" of this page describes why that is so:
http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/clientmode

Don't get me wrong, I would be very happy if router wireless drivers (other than Broadcom) did implement this as it is something I really like to see in devices I use, but I haven't seen any.

Ian

 

[doc octopus]

I report others problems encountered during use:

QoS does not indicate the correct bandwidth consumption by connected devices

WPS can not connect with Zyxel WAP5605 (Celeno chipset)

 

[avtella]

doc octopus, are you sure about the bandwidth being incorrect? There is a small time delay between actual usage and the bandwidth bar on the Router UI though, the last time I checked.