@Glitch, should go without saying, but glad you said it!
@pabzter, The “Travel” use case is what makes this such a great product. The lack of the Station Manager tools and VPN in the base OpenWrt\LEDE images make it a real tough tool to use, especially on the small screen. Indeed the Station Manager means not needing to access the device for saved locations, and when one does, the GUI is far ahead of OpenWrt on that same small screen.
As for VPN speed, well I think the world is being suckered into faster is better. Faster is just more revenue for the providers IMHO. I find that anything over 7 Mbps provides a good quality stream for video (single user). I have more trouble finding Hotspots that come close to this speed in many hotels and most coffee shops seem to top out at 5-8 Mbs, though I suspect this will increase.
I will not disagree that faster processors would be ideal, but at the moment this seems to be the standard processor in class. I am also concerned that bumping the CPU’s power requirements will mean that connecting it to a PC Laptop USB port will be problematic. For me an AC connected device is a non-starter. I really like the freedom from cables the MIFI and USB150 offer.
I purchased a GL-AR300M-Ext a few days ago and I just found out that the AR750 is here! I purchased the 750 immediately… but, am I correct in understanding that the performance is nearly identical in comparison?
Performance of what? The CPU, flash and RAM are the same.
On 2.4 Ghz you might expect better performance on your unit, at least in distance, for the same task, due to the antennas.
The AR750 has the 5G radio, so if you put your clients on the 5G and connect the 2.4 G to an AP wirelessly, you probably will see better performance in speed as opposed to running the single radio for both AP and STAtion functions as does the Ar300 and virtually every other product on the market.
If you want to share resources between clients then the AR750 could potentially be almost 50% faster than the 2.4 G.
For either technology, your weakest client will be the speed gate.
I have other experience, in our region there are interesting devices at a lower price. I’m afraid they will not understand me here, but unfortunately I do not see any meaning in the sd card slot because the card will not be more than a hundred Gb and its reliability is less reliable than the integrated ROM or HDD, I do not recommend using it as a system. The model itself is not small and in my opinion is not suitable for travel. Support for the 5ghz range is only a marketing move for development, it requires support for client devices and is needed only when you can not use 2.4ghz band. If you need uncompromising speed, use 1Gbit wired connections. Try to pick up on the parameters of the device for yourself, maybe it will even be cheaper
I own several MT300n v1 with POE modules, I consider them extremely successful, improved, copies of the well-known TP-Link device at a good price. I am sure that this model received good sales. Of course there are many problems, but we will not talk about it. Such a success is not easy to achieve … Killer features: good mobility and integrability (small formfactor, USB POE power), GPIO, switch, USB host, open sourse firmware, low price! The combination of all this leads to the demand for the model in different usage scenarios, someone buys for work in a hotel, someone for integration into DIY projects, some for the anonymity of their devices by TOR or OpenVPN. In the new model, the first two scenarios lose relevance.
Marketologists certainly know better why this variety of products exists (a number of devices which were already removed from production in the most difficult for competition segments). Although the characteristics of the MT750 are quite good, in addition to the lack of 1Gbit ethernet, the CPU is weak for enterprise, apparently the price was not attractive, that is why it wasn’t successful.
Does (or will) this model support management via “inside” wifi SSID even if external WISP connection is down, like the AR300MD?
That would be reason enough to upgrade to this one IMO.
Also, given this is an AR model hopefully MAC changes will be possible? Taking it another step, would be nice to be able to enable “random MAC” for some WISP SSIDs, and have the router partially randomize its outside MAC (say, lowest 16 or 24 or so bits) on each connection.
@mwgli3, this model has two SSIDs, one for 2.4G and one for 5G. If one is down you can connect another. But it has the same repeater manager as our other models and it will try to keep both SSIDs on.
It support changing mac address randomly. But you need to write a script to implement what you have said. You can just update the mac address of the UCI sta part.
Router received yesterday. Initial tests promising. However, ran into some issues I don’t fully understand with the 5ghz. Setting to 80mhz width and certain channels, and I lose the 5ghz all together. More testing to come. I’ll open it up tonight and take some pictures. Going to see how hard adding external antenna will be.
Received my AR750 and also noticed the missing switch configuration from the main screen. I haven’t been able to locate an alternate location for the switch configuration, but still looking… perhaps somewhere under the advanced settings.
Another oddity is the devices is currently running firmware 2.263, yet the Newest Version that it shows as being available is 2.2. I’ve not yet turned on Auto Update for fear of loading an older version of the firmware.
@unlo, the switch config page will be available later. just a bug.
@David, about update, we will put on web later. The reason is that, we sent out some samples before which has different flash layout than the one released. If those people upgrade on line and they their router will not boot. So we need a little time and ask them to change to new firmware manually.
@hardikmehta15, did you select AR750 as the target?
If you compile a firmware you should be able to get a .bin file.
If you didn’t, which is generally means you select too many software packages and it cannot generate a firmware less than 15MB (16MB less uboot and art etc).
@hardikmehta15 I have the same problem. First I cloned the LEDE source, as you stated. But LEDE doesn’t have support for the AR750 yet. So instead I use domino-team’s fork with the AR750 patches.
I compiled the firmware and I ended up with a 3,9MB squashfs.bin. I also created an Image builder to speed up next custom builds. But the router won’t boot with the created firmware. I must start uboot update (192.168.1.1) and reflash the original firmware to get it back to work.
@alzhao Have you used the same git branch to create the working firmware?
