[mindslight]

I switched to generic amd64 machines for my main router and 2 access points and haven't looked back. Each machine has a Mikrotik R11e-2HnD for 2.4GHz (AR958x), and a Compex card (WLE900VX?) for 5Ghz (QCA986x/988x, surplus). I think the 2.4GHz cards are fine with libre software out of the box, but the 5GHz cards want a firmware blob (which I consider the same freedom/security concerns as if the blob were loaded from flash, like the 2.4GHz cards).

I use the 2.4GHz extensively for phones/tablets/NoT devices and haven't noticed any problems with it. I don't actually use the 5GHz too much it but it seems to work. As far as newer technologies, I've never felt the need to squeeze as much bandwidth as possible out of wireless.

The main router has extensive firewall rules (nftables) and VPN links that would be an unmaintainable low-performance mess on a born-to-be-ewaste consumer router. The distro used to be Debian but I've moved them all to NixOS for easier admin.

[dtaht]

I hope you use sqm-scripts also. It works on any linux.

I have worked hard to make the ath10k work well on everything.

mt76 is pretty good now, the mt79, coming along. The wifi stack we developed for openwrt is now the default in linux for all these cards. https://www.cs.kau.se/tohojo/airtime-fairness/

[mindslight]

Ath10k does seem to work well out of the box with no fussing. Thank you for making it work so well I can take it for granted! Otherwise I wouldn't really want to be in the business of tinkering with my own access points - one of the main goals of my setup is to get away from tinkering.

I haven't found a need for traffic shaping, with a symmetric Gbit fibre uplink. And if I had wireless contention, the first thing I would do is put a third card in each machine to use an additional channel.

Do you have any pointers to pcie (m.2/mini) cards that use chips supported by m76/m79?

The main thing I'm missing is clients being steered to the best AP. From what I understand this feature is really only found on enterprise gear (with patched hostapd and the like) and isn't readily available in the libre world.

[dtaht]

I am better at email.

Oh, the ath10k used to suck! :/ https://forum.openwrt.org/t/aql-and-the-ath10k-is-lovely/590...

A sore point for me, is that yes you do need FQ+AQM on your fiber link, and if you are running linux - you probably already are running the no-fuss-no-muss BQL + fq_codel combination on that uplink at that line rate. No knobs, it just works. These days you might want to try cake with no bandwidth setting as a default instead, there. No explicit shaping required, just the native backpressure from BQL.

It is unfortunately highly likely that your ISP is using something like a policer or tail drop on your downlink instead of preseem or libreqos, so believe it or not, shaping the downlink can help a bit more, in some cases. I am a big believer in actual measurements using the flent tool: https://blog.cerowrt.org

I find it weird that mt76/mt79 pcie or m2 cards are so rare. I would like it if they penetrated the laptop market where intel presently dominates with that.

Cynically the "best" AP may often not be the actual one you want. Too many best algorithms depend just on RSSI rather than (for example) sporadic interference on the same channel, causing jitter. A narrower channel width with less folk on it is sometimes better than a wide one duking it out with everyone else.