Disclaimer: This is what’s possible with my current setup; your results will vary.
Hardware:
- 2x SXTsq-5axD (International model)
Current setup:
0. Early adopter pain
As of writing (08. 08. 2024), the hardware is pretty new, so software support is questionable at best.
One of the first things you will notice is that Quick Set only offers Home AP. Not really a problem if you know how to configure P2P mode manually.
But there is a slight catch: some of the features/limitations aren’t documented on the wiki or forum.
For example, the hardware supports 80+80 MHz, and while other devices can connect to it, my other SXTsq 5 ax can’t see it at all!
Ping is also all over the place. My old OpenWrt P2P bridge setup (SXT Lite5 + SXT5 HPnD) could get 1-3 ms reliably.
Here, it’s anywhere between 2-10 ms, sometimes 100 ms, even worse while under load.
1. AP setup
The configs on both APs are pretty much the same:
STP is disabled on all interfaces, due to performance issues (see below).
Hardware offloading looks to be nonfunctional at the moment.
At least for my range of around 430m LoS, there isn’t a difference between 80/160MHz, signal quality stays the same, as does the iperf3 speed test.
Since there weren’t any drawbacks to using 160MHz, I stuck with that, hoping that a future firmware update will make better use of it.
I’m also forced to use WPA2 because WPA3 uses too much CPU power.
2. CPU bottleneck
In my preliminary testing (close range), I couldn’t get iperf3 to go above 450 Mbit/sec.
Checking the profiler, wireless was taking up 50% of the CPU.
Switching from WPA3 to WPA2, managed to get me to around 520 Mbit/sec.
Disabling all unused services, STP, .. pretty much everything I won’t use use, 550 Mbit/sec.
The final boost came from disabling IPv6, to around 600 Mbit/sec.
Take these numbers with your monthly intake of salt.
Pretty bad performance for brand new hardware, but you get what you pay for.
3. Range issues
By default, the device maxes out at the regulatory 30dBm limit, which results in pretty horrible performance (70-100 Mbits/s in iperf3 at 430m LoS).
Please note that I live in the middle of nowhere, so there is pretty much zero interference on the 5GHz band, as good as it gets.
The rest is on you to figure out.
