WiFi technology is progressing year on year for the last 2 decades
and has progressed as per following 6 generations (as of April 2022)
:
(1) 802.11a – 5
Ghz band
(2) 802.11b – 2.4 Gband
(3) 802.11g – 2.4
Ghz band
(4) 802.11n – Wifi
4. Both 2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz band
(5) 802.11ac –
Wifi 5 Wave 1 and Wave 2 . Features Triband devices (2.4G + 2x5G)
(6)
802.11ax – Wifi 6, 6e and Wave 2 . Features upto quad band (2.4G +
2x5G + Ghz). This generation can be considered a major
improvement
(7) And yes Wifi 7 is already under development …
As
such it can be expected that every 3-4 years there is a new generation
of WiFi technology introduced in the market. Yet the core purpose and
capabilities of Wifi have remained same I.e share the broadband home
internet bandwidth among an increasing number of internet enabled
devices. It has not progressed to a point where it can challenge or
substitute wired Ethernet (which has also progressed from 1G to 2.5/5
and 10G Ethernet for home use, but still 1G Ethernet is mainstream).
And practically client speeds are nowhere near specification speeds
(both typically are 1/3rd to 1/4th at best). And only now power users
are looking for a subset of enterprise features for the home (VLAN,
VPNs and internet privacy, Link aggregation, Multi-WAN, Multiple
SSIDs, etc).
On
the flip side, a bulk of consumer devices still support the legacy
2.4G band only (uses less power, is battery friendly, cheap and
ubiquitous) and in most cases the best compute/communication device
(PC, laptop, smartphone) supports an older than current state of art
generation and limited to no more than 2x2 MIMO wheras your router
may support 3x3, 4x4, or even 8x8 MIMO. To make matters worse
despite the prevalence of mesh and multiple AP systems, the range of
single wifi device is only reducing (6G < 5G < 2.4G) which is a
big issue for simple home networks where a single device is highly
preferred by consumers ( to some extent this creates a desire to
upgrade)
So
in such a reasonably quick evolution cycle, its very likely that
every 3-5 years, your may be tempted to send your existing home Wifi
Router or AP to a landfill (yes most cannot reuse and most will not
buy it in the seconds market ) and jump to a next best thing in the
market. However as it stands not every device needs high wifi speeds.
Even though home fixed internet speeds typically cap off till 1 Gbps
is most markets, there is rarely a case that one needs a speed in
excess of 25 mbps per device. Its only when the total number of
bandwidth hungry devices increases (like multiple family members
using high speed applications independently at same time), do we
really need high speed connections and high overall capacity wifi
routers.
WiFi
Router OEMS traditionally have focused more on hardware and not
software. Their hardware evolution follows generations and technology
advancements (new SoCs), but software remains same. To make matters
worse on software side, in the last decade few WiFi OEMs have being
caught planting, retaining or ignoring backdoors in their router
software with government agencies rumored to be the driver behind
these indiscretions. In some countries, the laws require OEMs to
cooperate with government agencies in the interest of national
security and this provision is prone to be abused by rogue
governments and secret service agencies. Security also is a
revolving door with hackers finding newer and newer vulnerabilities
to exploit every software, and until an OEM routinely patches
firmware for a router during its life-cycle, the consumer will be
exposed to the risks. Also the all-in-one Home gateway device
provided as operator locked CPE to broadband customers is rarely
updated, is closed source (unknown whether ISPs control it some
lesser known factory), and has unpolished features and therefore
considered a big security and privacy risk by many security-conscious
users.
Their
is potentially a way out of all these problems i.e. to flash a FOSS
firmware (like OpenWRT, DD-WRT, FreshTomato, etc) on COTS hardware
routers and get rid of the proprietary firmware limitations and
security vulnerabilities:
It will typically bring a newer or latest version of Linux kernel
and networking platform software which ensure all known security
vulnerabilities have been addressed from the date the OEM firmware
was released.
As the firmware is based on FOSS, the code has been reviewed by
thousands of developers who will simply not allow a backdoor, or known
defect/vulnerability to slip through or make it possible for any governmental-agency/corporate as
a block to influence.
It will incorporate latest improvements in algorithms and therefore
potentially bring higher performance, coverage etc
Because development and build is a constant process, new features
(including enterprise grade like VLAN, VPN, Multi-WAN or Mesh
algorithms etc) will get added even in entry level hardware greatly
extending the usable lifecycle of the hardware (consider that only a
minority of users actually need an upgrade to latest Wifi generation
gear)
The
only handicap that this may bring is throughput reduction AND higher
CPU use (oinly the former is usually visible to end user) in areas
like hardware acceleration of NAT, encryption, etc which happens due
to the proprietary nature of *most SOC hardware and drivers. This may
increase the operating temperature of hardware device (it has not
being designed to operate at 80-90% CPU usage consistently and
therefore presents new cooling challenges that OEM has not
anticipated/addressed) reducing its life. Apart from this aspect
upgrading to FOSS firmware seems a better option in every way
compared to depending on OEM supplied closed source firmware.
So
unless all you want to do is add to the landfill a few years down the
line, you may consider before purchasing a new Wifi Router whether it
will or can be supported by FOSS firmware like OpenWRT, DD-WRT or
Advanced Tomato. It is one way of extending the shelf life of router.
And almost all these Router firmware use Linux and the software
ecosystem around this OS. And those who are planning to discard their
existing routers, may first consider consider trying out a suitable
FOSS firmware to see if it can extend your router life and continue
meeting your revised need. And for the hyper sensitive, you may
out-rightly buy a device that supports these FOSS firmware and use
the FOSS firmware from day 1 ignoring the warranty.
- Suman Kumar Luthra @ APRC Telecom Special Interest Group