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Netgear X4S OpenWRT Range and Cake vs AC86U Merlin

Carnagerover

Senior Member
Hi all,

I am in the market for a router to provide QOS and good wireless range for my networking devices and users in my house. It has over 30 connected devices. I bought both the AC86U and the X4S, the AC86U has OpenWRT on there and the AC86U has Merlin with the FreshJR QOS script.

First thing that I noticed is that in my house the AC86U offers more range and throughput which is strange to me as everywhere states that the X4S should win out on both these categories. In my main dead zone room the X4S shows less bars in general and in my bedroom where I get 500Mbps on my iPad Pro I will get 780Mbps with the AC86U. Even on stock I noticed the range and throughput wasn't as good on the X4S.

QOS

Netgear X4S

I have Cake installed for the QOS with the Piece of cake script running, I have also enabled Per-Host Isolation.

This works well and will make sure that all devices get good bandwidth and latency, however say if someone on a PC is downloading and then also wants to watch a video stream due to the fairness they are throttled more so the video won't play.

Asus AC86U

Adaptive QOS fq_codel with FreshJR script.

After some tinkering this will allow me to watch multiple streams and also if that same user is downloading on the PC and then watches a stream due to the Adaptive QOS the video stream comes in higher than the download so it also works without buffering. However if something occurs on the network that FreshJR QOS doesn't set to the correct category then it will actually make the situation worse without further QOS tweaking.

I thought I would post this hear in case any Netgear users have any ideas why my range throughput isn't as good as expected? As far as which one I am going to keep I'm torn, I like all the other features that I get with the AC86U and the X4S does have a good set and forget QOS with Cake although it seems less flexible than the Asus AC86U it does for the most part work fine.

Anyone else got some pros and cons that I'm missing between the two, I really want to make sure than I am choosing the best option going forward. What would be the best way to test the wirelss on the two routers, Iperf?
 
The nice thing about SQM with cake (or fq_codel) is that it doesn't rely on categorization to get it right. It doesn't really throttle bandwidth signficantly, but rather ensures that latency stays low. This keeps your web browsing, VOIP, and other interactive things snappy, without significantly slowing down larger bandwidth consumers like downloads or video streaming. I'm surprised you're seeing issues with video playback. Are you sure you have the bandwidth numbers set up correctly in SQM? Should be set to about 90% of your stable bandwidth. Maybe back them off a little more? If you haven't already, test with a wired connection in case it's a wireless issue.
 
The nice thing about SQM with cake (or fq_codel) is that it doesn't rely on categorization to get it right. It doesn't really throttle bandwidth signficantly, but rather ensures that latency stays low. This keeps your web browsing, VOIP, and other interactive things snappy, without significantly slowing down larger bandwidth consumers like downloads or video streaming. I'm surprised you're seeing issues with video playback. Are you sure you have the bandwidth numbers set up correctly in SQM? Should be set to about 90% of your stable bandwidth. Maybe back them off a little more? If you haven't already, test with a wired connection in case it's a wireless issue.

Hi, I have it sorted now with a fresh config, like you say it is nice to have a fluid working QOS that doesn't need much of any input to do a good job, I have it setup with th Per-Host Isolation option now set so that every host gets a share so when things like Usenet is running with multiple connections everything remains fair. That is also a downside though as with FreshJR QOS on the AC86U I can potentially get more out of the internet.

4 Twitch streams then a Usenet + Twitch stream on the PC causes the PC's twitch stream to lag on the X4S with Cake as the PC is hogging to much bandwidth the twitch stream on there gets buffered.

4 Twitch streams then a Usenet + Twitch stream on the PC with the AC86U works as the QOS categories sort out the traffic and this works really well for the most part with the custom script, if it gets anything new wrong though and puts it in the wrong category then it makes the situation worse though.

I need to do some testing with the Wifi to see which one is the best because at the moment the AC86U seems to offer more in 2.4 and 5ghz, my Ring doorbell goes from -53db on the AC86U to -62db on the X4S.
 
If you fall back to standard qos-scripts (luci-app-qos), which uses hsfc+fq_codel, you can do prioritization by TCP port. This may or may not work better in your situation. You would give up the per host fairness of cake, you might win by lowering the priority of your usenet . If you try this, you have to uninstall SQM.

Alternatively, you could go with a separate download box (e.g. raspberry pi or similar). That would be my approach.

Going to post this on the openwrt forum too in case someone else has the same issue.
 
I’ve been having a lot of fun with both routers, need to send one back but I still haven’t decided which one, I’m currently running the X4S, which apart from one weird WiFi blackout has been working really well, the range/throughput seems worse than the AC86U which surprised me but there’s just something about cake QOS that I really like. It does a really great job and I like how it isolates out and provides fair bandwidth for devices by default.
 

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