Phicomm K3 (not K3c) Discussion

[gwopman]

Hello,

Surely i must not be the only one around who has one of these. I jumped ship from ASUS recently (sold my AC88u had since 2015, didnt want the radios dying on me).

Weird that the MU-MIMO is turned off by default. I had to turn off Beamforming on the latest firmware or i'd get devices hanging when i went to farther extremities of my apartment.

I think my Edgerouter X is ever so slightly faster on speed tests but this has been a great experience using so far, the screen on top is really cool and helps for basic control. App seems nice too. I left most settings on auto/default and the experience is good so far. I was able to upgrade the firmware via the app without issue as soon as i plugged it in (although a stranger connected to the unsecured wifi in the few minutes i had it upgrading! i was able to see on the built in display someone connected though and i used the phone app to swiftly disconnect them!)

Hope some others chime in. It seems to be a really nice router. Unfortunately, i forgot to do a speeedtest with the AC 88u before getting rid of it ao i can't compare, but it seems they have some work to do at this time with the latest firmware V22.1.23.149 in terms of beamforming performance. My performance on wireless went far up when i switched it off, and certain apps that were hanging (Instagram, Apple News) started working right away and very quickly at that. I actually set TX power to Medium and i still get ideal performance through my whole 650sq ft apartment.

I see this device seems to get more updates than the k3c as this is their flagship. Hope someone else here has a K3 so we can discuss it.

 

[Internet Man]

Weird that the MU-MIMO is turned off by default. I had to turn off Beamforming on the latest firmware or i'd get devices hanging when i went to farther extremities of my apartment.

This is nothing but speculation but perhaps the K3 is using the older Broadcom BCM4366 radios which have a faulty MU-MIMO implementation instead of the C0 revision or updated BCM4366E radios which are assumed to have improved MU-MIMO performance. See here and here.

 

[gwopman]

This is nothing but speculation but perhaps the K3 is using the older Broadcom BCM4366 radios which have a faulty MU-MIMO implementation instead of the C0 revision or updated BCM4366E radios which are assumed to have improved MU-MIMO performance. See here and here.

interesting to note.

I have the B1 hardware revision, probably not surprising since its a non-China unit.

If i look at the latest FCC internal photos for the router we see on the Broadcom chip "BCM4366KMMLWG / UE1723 P30 / 360-26 3"

Assuming but not positive this is the older revision BCM4366.

 

[Internet Man]

interesting to note.

I have the B1 hardware revision, probably not surprising since its a non-China unit.

If i look at the latest FCC internal photos for the router we see on the Broadcom chip "BCM4366KMMLWG / UE1723 P30 / 360-26 3"

Assuming but not positive this is the older revision BCM4366.

The 1723 is usually a date code signifying the 23rd week (early June) of 2017. It is odd for BCM4366 chips to be made in 2017 which was well after the BCM4366E was released but it seems likely that the K3 would have the revised C0 chips at least.

 

[gwopman]

After further testing i get best performance with MU-MIMO and Beamforming turned on.....

 

[gwopman]

This is a bad router and i am returning it.

 

[Above&Beyonder]

This is a bad router and i am returning it.

Hello; are you able to let us know why it is a bad router please? The price has come down quite a bit; it's only $82.39 on amazon right now so I think interest will increase.

 

[Chopel]

Hi all,
First post, but usual reader of the forum. I wanted to chip in in this discussion... Hope this sheds some light on those figuring it out if it makes sense (review in amazon as well).

Just installed this router a couple of days ago. Price, about US$80, but I've seen it as low as US$50 which is quite low given the specs (check camelcamelcamel or Honey).

I installed it in a relatively small two-story 1000 sq. feet apartment. There is quite some interference from other wifis. Installation was straight forward (I'd say less than 5 minutes and most of the time I was trying to tidy up the mess of cables). I configured the same network names and all devices automatically connected flawlessly without any intervention. Wifi performance is good (compared to 2 MB/s I used to get with my internet service provider model/router). USB to 5G wifi of 35-40 MB/s on short distances, 20-25 MB/s when signal starts weakening after hitting a wall. 2.4G wifi transferring at 10MB/s. However, I understand that this is still about 40% of the theoretical speed.

Range wise, the 2.4 G band reaches spots of my home with a 50% signal that my prior router didn't reach. Range of the 5G band is, as usual, heavily impacted by walls.

I don't have the technical expertise to assess or comment if the router has life of its own. Some people claimed it was connecting to Phicomm's server without their intervention. This seems plausible (and acceptable) since as soon as the WAN port was connected, the router offered to update the firmware with a new version. I was very pleased about it! Also, the good news is that Intel allied with Phicomm on another model (K3C), so hopefully they are serious (and honest?) about their intentions.

I won't be able to comment much on beamforming and MU-MIMO since I don't have more than two MU-MIMO capable devices (and one is a kindle TV stick so won't be able to test much with that one).

The display is useful, showing all the connected devices, active networks, and passwords if desired. Software is quite complete for even for intermediate users. Technical options cannot be changed through the standard interface (unsure if through any other interface) which seems reasonable for a consumer-level router.

Cons: Size. It you are used to the standard, box-of-chocolates sized internet provider routers, be advised: IT IS BIG. The fact that it doesn't have external antennas attached makes it a little bit more comfortable to the eye... Software wise, they should definitively include the option for a VPN server. The router has the processor and memory capacity to handle it. Hoping for a firmware update that takes this recommendation! Granted, this is a powerful but consumer level (and priced) router, so probably few people would use this feature.

On the USB, I've seen some unstable behavior. I'll try to update this post once I get a clearer picture. For the time being, the USB hard drive randomly disconnects. In addition, Wind10 won't allow to connect easily since it uses SMB1 - there are workarounds though.

I wasn't able to access a terminal via SSH or any other way other than via http/web. Anyone knows if it is accessible?

Best,
Francisco

 

[jyxent]

I got this recently when it was on sale, and have successfully flashed OpenWrt on it. The process is a little involved, but I'm satisfied with the results.

There are two pages that I found with the needed instructions (They're in Chinese. I just used Google Translate.).

https://tbvv.net/posts/0101-k3.html
https://www.right.com.cn/forum/thread-262218-1-1.html

The first link has a file called us.dat, which you can restore settings from. It will change the password to tbvv.net and then you can go set a user name and password in the usb storage menu. After you do that, you can telnet into the router (Possibly ssh too, through I didn't try it). It may have been unnecessary, but I ended up finding the K3_V21.6.8.46_tb.bin image and flashing it, which does have ssh.

With ssh access, you can copy /dev/mtdblock0 to a file. This is the CFE partition. The tool in the second link will downgrade the CFE, which will allow you to run the flash command which doesn't work in the up to date version. I downgraded to 212, which produced a file called new212.bin. After overwriting /dev/mtdblock0 with that file, you can reboot into the downgraded CFE (hold reset button down while turning on). With static networking setup (I used 192.168.2.2 for an IP), you can access the CFE in a browser at 192.168.2.1.

To flash the image, you must have a tftp server running on your machine. You must have the phicomm k3 image in the shared directory (openwrt has snapshot images for it).

If you used 192.168.2.2 as your static ip, the following link will run a command to flash the image.

http://192.168.2.1/do.htm?cmd=flash...rt-bcm53xx-phicomm-k3-squashfs.trx+flash0.trx

I performed a nvram erase after the command finished and rebooted into openwrt.

For some reason, the firmware for the 4366 wireless modules that is included in the openwrt image performs terribly (it's the firmware from the linux-firmware repo). I got very bad signal strength and constant disconnects, even for devices in the same room. I replaced /lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac4366c-pcie.bin with the ac88u firmware from here:

https://github.com/Hill-98/phicommk3-firmware

With that change, it is working well now.