For people Wanting a cheep router to run OpenWrt look on ebay for TP-Link C7 or ...

bmurphy1976 · on Feb 2, 2019

I'm not sold on the C7. I bought one, ran openwrt on it for a couple months and my children and their i-devices routinely swamped the wireless. I upgraded to a WRT3200ACM and am much happier with how it handles a large number of connections and I have no more issues. I think the C7 is a bit underpowered these days.

whalesalad · on Feb 3, 2019

I’m not too sure about my Archer C7 (v2). My internet connection is 400/20 and I only ever see 250-265 max down, via Ethernet.

I need to disconnect everything and go direct to the modem but I really think the C7 just can’t handle it. Running DD-WRT with a modern cable modem.

tapper82 · on Feb 3, 2019

Hi your c7 will not do thoes speeds with SQM the cpu is not fast enough. If you are running OpenWrt 18.06.2 you can use softwair off loading. Go to firewall and tick the box for it, but make shure you disable SQM first and it will get full speeds.

mtarnovan · on Feb 2, 2019

I have a C7 with OpenWrt, but: If your internet is fast, OpenWrt is not good on the TP-Link C7, see this issue: https://forum.archive.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=53703. I downgraded my internet from 1gbps to 500mbps because of this issue (still plenty fast, not complaining :D)

tapper82 · on Feb 2, 2019

Hi in the new build of openwrt you can use Software flow offloading.

mtarnovan · on Feb 3, 2019

Thanks, I tried this build: https://github.com/gwlim/openwrt-sfe-flowoffload and speeds are much improved (more than 2x, I'm getting 893.1Mbps downloads now).