Review Linksys MR7500 Hydra Pro 6E Reviewed

[thiggins]

Linksys' Hydra Pro 6E is a slightly more affordable Wi-Fi 6E router with good 6 GHz, but disappointing 2.4 and 5 GHz performance.

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[Razor512]

Are there any consumer ISPs currently available now or in the near future before that router becomes outdated that are offering speeds above 2.5Gbps?
The results also make me wonder if there is some other bottleneck, such as a lack of hardware acceleration leading to a WAN port bottleneck, where it can have a 5GbE PHY rate but struggle to go much above 2Gbps. Would it be possible to also connect a few devices to the other LAN ports in addition to the wireless clients to see if more data can be pushed through the WAN port?

 

[sfx2000]

I'm surprised Client and Node Steering are enabled by default; they're useful only for mesh configurations, not standalone routers. These settings are here because the Hydra is part of the Velop product family, which now apparently includes standalone routers like this one that can be used to build mesh networks. So ASUS AiMesh isn't the only game in town anymore for roll-your-own Wi-Fi mesh builders.

QSDK on ath11k supports mesh out of the box - so I'm not surprised here - potential here is that one can mesh up dissimilar vendors in a coherent manner as long as all the right #defines are set in the firmware...

sfx

BTW - ath11k is a fascinating piece of work...

 

[RMerlin]

Are there any consumer ISPs currently available now or in the near future before that router becomes outdated that are offering speeds above 2.5Gbps?
The results also make me wonder if there is some other bottleneck, such as a lack of hardware acceleration leading to a WAN port bottleneck, where it can have a 5GbE PHY rate but struggle to go much above 2Gbps. Would it be possible to also connect a few devices to the other LAN ports in addition to the wireless clients to see if more data can be pushed through the WAN port?

There are ISPs in Asia that offer 10 Gbps Internet service. I know someone who was betatesting such a service. Those speedtest results he shared with me were pretty insane.

 

[thiggins]

QSDK on ath11k supports mesh out of the box - so I'm not surprised here - potential here is that one can mesh up dissimilar vendors in a coherent manner as long as all the right #defines are set in the firmware...

Does it support Wi-Fi EasyMesh? There is no consumer vendor I know of that says they do. AFAIK, EasyMesh is attractive to service providers only. I can't see the consumer guys making it easy to mix and match. Hell, they don't even use common terminology.

 

[sfx2000]

Does it support Wi-Fi EasyMesh? There is no consumer vendor I know of that says they do. AFAIK, EasyMesh is attractive to service providers only. I can't see the consumer guys making it easy to mix and match. Hell, they don't even use common terminology.

It's not a technical challenge, it's the business opportunity with EasyMesh.

There is no commercial incentive for the retail market to support EasyMesh - vendors would rather sell their own stuff rather than open it up.

CSP/ISP's on the other hand, it gives them inventory and device flexibility for their managed services.

Just my take on it - hooks are there, just need to be turned on, IMHO...

 

[Razor512]

Have they developed any improvements for roaming when creating a mesh WiFi network, e.g., dealing with more sticky clients and minimizing down time when switching?

 

[Toink]

As an active BETA tester of Linksys/Belkin routers, (the most recent was for the Linksys Atlas Max 6E Mesh), I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who's scratching their head why Linksys/Belkin would still stick to the slow GUI and the missing OpenVPN features. It's been years, and Linksys/Belkin still does not see any marketing potential for these features. I give them points for the mesh setup, though.

 

[RMerlin]

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who's scratching their head why Linksys/Belkin would still stick to the slow GUI and the missing OpenVPN features.

Probably because Belkin is a hardware developer, and they see software development as an expense, rather than an added value for their products, and they probably outsource most of it. The current software works "well enough" for them to sell new hardware, so they stick with it, spending as little as possible on the software side of things.

This is a fairly common attitude in the hardware market. How often have we seen great hardware that was held back by absolutely horrible software.

 

[thiggins]

Remember, Belkin is now owned by Foxconn. I have no idea who is now developing LInksys products.

 

[RMerlin]

Remember, Belkin is now owned by Foxconn. I have no idea who is now developing LInksys products.

Interestingly enough, there was a time where Foxconn were doing at least some of the Netgear firmware development, if I remember correctly (their name was in some of the commented sections of code within Netgear's firmware).

 

[coxhaus]

Is Foxconn owned by China? I heard Belkin sold to China. But I thought Foxconn does work for Apple.

 

[thiggins]

Is Foxconn owned by China? I heard Belkin sold to China. But I thought Foxconn does work for Apple.

Foxconn - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[coxhaus]

Ok, so Taiwan bought Belkin not China. That makes me feel better.

 

[TheLostSwede]

@thiggins any chance, time permitting and OS permitting, that you could list the Linux kernel version that the routers you test ship with?

 

[TheLostSwede]

Probably because Belkin is a hardware developer, and they see software development as an expense, rather than an added value for their products, and they probably outsource most of it. The current software works "well enough" for them to sell new hardware, so they stick with it, spending as little as possible on the software side of things.

This is a fairly common attitude in the hardware market. How often have we seen great hardware that was held back by absolutely horrible software.

Same for most router makers imho and it's really sad, but not all blame lies with the router makers, as often the chipset vendors are just as guilty.
As you might remember, I used to work for Securifi and the SoC we picked for the Almond+ was on kernel 2.6.x (can't remember the exact version) and the chipset vendor released a 3.x kernel, which we asked for. The answer we were given was that they don't allow for kernel updates as they hadn't designed their software in such a way it would be possible to upgrade to 3.x.
This is the kind of crap that has to stop in the industry as a whole, as a lot of hardware becomes obsolete before it truly is, because the software side isn't updated and the products become insecure. It's really quite sad.
So thanks for the effort you put in to keep old products alive and likewise thanks to Voxel.

 

[thiggins]

@thiggins any chance, time permitting and OS permitting, that you could list the Linux kernel version that the routers you test ship with?

Unlikely. I don't get that far into the design. I don't know of any besides ASUS that allow SSH access.

 

[Piticli]

Linksys' Hydra Pro 6E is a slightly more affordable Wi-Fi 6E router with good 6 GHz, but disappointing 2.4 and 5 GHz performance.

Continue reading on SmallNetBuilder

Great review.
The reality is that upload speeds with the gtaxe11000 are absolutely terrible. Super slow, and super unreliable, as many users including me mention.
Another very important thing. For how long have you owned and how much have you used the gtaxe11000?
I owned one AX router, the raxe500 and this GTAXE11000, all of them with the BCM4908. All three failed the same exact way. At some point they stop giving you proper speeds over Wi-Fi, as simple as that. I used to get 1.4gb down over 5 and 6ghz with the gtaxe11000 and the other two, and now is capped at about 600mbps, as the other two... Nothing you can do to fix it. At least the gtaxe11000 lasted 5 months, the other two raxe500 and archer ax11000 didn't even made it to the return period...
I should have followed my gut after the first two.
The thing people fail to understand is the BCM4908 is an ancient processor, never meant to be used with AX. Those with crappy internet at home will never notice, but anyone with gigabyte speeds will see these routers are total absolute trash and will eventually fail. Am I unlucky? No, it can't be bad luck.
Imagine making an adjustment to fit an 8700k with a motherboard with all the new stuff. DDR5, PCIe 5.0 etc. A total monstrosity. That's what they literally did to these routers.
I'm sure this Networking Pro 810 Platform is not free of faults, but at least is not the Frankenstein they did using that ancient Broadcom chip.
I just got the Linksys today at BestBuy for $312.96 after tax and after trading and old $5 craigslist router, let see how it goes...

 

[TheLostSwede]

Great review.
The reality is that upload speeds with the gtaxe11000 are absolutely terrible. Super slow, and super unreliable, as many users including me mention.
Another very important thing. For how long have you owned and how much have you used the gtaxe11000?
I owned one AX router, the raxe500 and this GTAXE11000, all of them with the BCM4908. All three failed the same exact way. At some point they stop giving you proper speeds over Wi-Fi, as simple as that. I used to get 1.4gb down over 5 and 6ghz with the gtaxe11000 and the other two, and now is capped at about 600mbps, as the other two... Nothing you can do to fix it. At least the gtaxe11000 lasted 5 months, the other two raxe500 and archer ax11000 didn't even made it to the return period...
I should have followed my gut after the first two.
The thing people fail to understand is the BCM4908 is an ancient processor, never meant to be used with AX. Those with crappy internet at home will never notice, but anyone with gigabyte speeds will see these routers are total absolute trash and will eventually fail. Am I unlucky? No, it can't be bad luck.
Imagine making an adjustment to fit an 8700k with a motherboard with all the new stuff. DDR5, PCIe 5.0 etc. A total monstrosity. That's what they literally did to these routers.
I'm sure this Networking Pro 810 Platform is not free of faults, but at least is not the Frankenstein they did using that ancient Broadcom chip.
I just got the Linksys today at BestBuy for $312.96 after tax and after trading and old $5 craigslist router, let see how it goes...

Sorry, but you clearly have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to router SoCs and it's highly unlikely that your issue has anything to do with the actual SoC.
The BCM4908 is the most high-end consumer router SoC that Broadcom offers, as it's based on what they call quad core B53, which is a Cortex-A53.
Most routers have Cortex-A7, Cortex-A9 and even MIPS based SoCs that are more basic than what you're calling ancient here. Take the higher model name BCM6755, it's based on four Cortex-A7 cores, which also run at a 300MHz lower frequency, there's no way they'll be any better for 802.11ax than the BCM4908, it just happens to have 2x2 802.11ax radios built in, instead of a switch.
Yes, it's almost five years since it was announced, but your issue is more likely related to the WiFi radio chips in your router, since this is where Broadcom does their "offload" processing, since each of their WiFi radio has a built in SoC as well.
As such, I would say the issues lies with the BCM43684, as that's the other common denominator between the three routers you've had issues with.
Sadly there's very little information publicly available about this WiFi chip, but it has a single core Cortex-A7 CPU core, plus "3+1" DSPs for Zero Wait DFS.

The Qualcomm SoCs aren't using anything faster than a Cortex-A53 either, so your PC comparison simply doesn't any logical sense here, as the actual CPU cores are identical.

I suggest you do some research in the future, before coming up with some random conspiracy theory where it shows that you have little understanding about what you're writing about. That said, I'm not saying that there isn't a real issue here, but your conclusion as to what is causing the issue is unlikely to be correct.

 

[Tech9]

but anyone with gigabyte speeds

if you want gigabyte speeds

I want Gigabyte speeds.