Re: [Cerowrt-devel] WNDR3700v4 is out...

[Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Dec 23, 2012 at 11:57 AM, David Lang <david@lang.hm> wrote:
> On Sun, 23 Dec 2012, Dave Taht wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Dec 23, 2012 at 11:14 AM, David Lang <david@lang.hm> wrote:
>>>
>>> In looking at their products, they seem to have almost nothing that's
>>> dual
>>> band, am I missing something?
>>
>>
>> Nope. I went single channel for the yurtlab backbone in part because I
>> wanted "hardware flow control" (the 100Mbit ethernet connected to a
>> 300Mbit radio) to work and to be able to look at what the
>> "microqueues" in the ethernet driver formed by packet de-aggregation
>> did under fq_codel.
>>
>> Doing it all in one box with (nonexistent) software flow control
>> between 2.4ghz, 5ghz, and gigE ethernet in a single unit - seemed
>> likely to do nothing more than pass bursts of packets around. I like
>> the software-fq-on-de-aggregation idea I talked about a week or so
>> back, but haven't done anything about it.
>>
>> I'd thought hard about using the http://www.ubnt.com/rspro rather than
>> the netgears at one point, but thought the BOM would put people off,
>> and at the price tag for a full box, there seemed to be several x86
>> alternatives, and either way, we ended up with no micro queues to
>> break up.
>>
>> A typical configuration at the yurtlab is two nano station M5s and a
>> single omni 2HP.
>
>
> Ok, that makes perfect sense for building a network the way you are, but if
> the project were limited to that sort of hardware you will have a huge
> decrease in users experimenting with it.
>
> users need all three client capabilities (2.4GHz, 5GHz and ethernet), so
> sticking with a relatively cheap device that will do this will keep things
> relevant to many more people.

Yep.

> If this can be done on equipment that they can find in local stores, as
> opposed to having to special order it, that's another big boost.

I completely agree that we need to ensure that whatever product we
hack on is available at office depo, and frys, and so on. Preferably
worldwide. I was happy with the deployment and popularity of the
wndr3700v2 and 3800, I was generally able to find them on retail
shelves no matter where I went until about 6 months back.

> for now I've dropped their equipment off of my vendor list, the only
> dual-band equipment I see from them is in the $250 range

That's why they aren't really on my list for cero's main target,
either. However the yurtlab (which, given funding and time) will
eventually have a few of everything, and I also hope to get some good
numbers back from the next "the gathering" demoscene.

So we're back at switching to the 3700v4, or finding something from a
buffalo or TPlink that still uses the ar71xx and ath9k that's in the
3800. I'd evaluated one of the buffalos (yea! more flash! Boo! lousy
antennas and build quality) about a year back...

or building something from scratch and getting it into wide distribution...

or going in some radical new direction entirely.

>
> David Lang



-- 
Dave Täht

Fixing bufferbloat with cerowrt: http://www.teklibre.com/cerowrt/subscribe.html