Apologies if this isn’t the best community for this question, I wasn’t sure where else to put it.

I am looking to replace my WiFi router. It will only have a few devices on the wireless side, with the majority of my network data going between wired devices. Any gaming or latency-sensitive stuff will be on a wired device as well. The range doesn’t have to be all that much, the total square-footage it needs to cover is pretty small, and there is nothing wifi-blocking to deal with (no metal/brick internal walls, etc). The only part that might be somewhat picky is: I either want good customization/configuration options or the ability to install a custom router OS (last I checked, openwrt is still popular?). Also, there are a couple older devices that I want to be able to connect still that only support up to 802.11n. I am very price sensitive.

From my looking so far, I’ve found

  • TP-Link Archer A7, which supports openwrt, but I don’t think supports WiFi 6
  • TP-Link Archer AX10/AX1500, which does support WiFi 6, but I can’t find info about openwrt support
  • TP-Link AC1200 A6 V3, which is dirt cheap but I can’t find info on openwrt support, and I can’t tell what WiFi version it supports

I don’t think I’ve used a TP-Link router before so any opinions there would be welcome (apologies if I butchered the naming scheme on the routers, it seems they all have several A___ numbers associated with them); they are at the top of my list currently due to their price and having the features I need.

  • TheJack
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    1 year ago

    I have no experience with Open WRT, but I can confirm that, TP-Link Archer A7 is working great with DD WRT.

    I can vouch for TP-Link wireless products in general. So far I’ve used 2 routers and 2 usb adapters (even drivers are working fine with Windows 11 and Ubuntu MATE) from TP-Link, and none of them had any problem whatsoever.

    Regarding performance of Archer A7-V5, I’m getting full 100 Mbps (my ISP connection speed) through this router on my phone, and this is 3rd router in my setup. First being ISP, then ASUS and then Archer A7.

    I’m running Archer A7-V5 for over a year with DD DRT. In fact, I’ve just upgraded it to July 8, r53221 build right after reading your post. Firmware files for r53221.

    • 133arc585OP
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      1 year ago

      Ok good to know! I forgot about ddwrt as well. The Archer A7-V5 seems top of list right now.