Upgrading to OpenWrt 24.10

I would have written this post a month earlier but I had to restrain myself, and for a valid reason. I will get to that in a minute but let's see what happened earlier first.

Back in February when the first stable release of OpenWrt 24.10 came out, I was super excited. Not because of mere version upgrade rather the inclusion of initial support for WiFi 7 (802.11BE). This also meant that some WiFi 7 module will be supported on this version and the list will continue to grow on future releases. This a big step moving forward from WiFi 6 era.

I was using MediaTek MT7922 WiFi 6E module in AP mode already on one of my OpenWrt based router which is working just fine and I am super happy with that. However, after learning about the upcoming OpenWrt release, I was already in the market looking for a WiFi 7 module to adopt the latest and greatest feature. Since I am already using Intel BE200 320MHz module on my workstation, I thought it would be a great combo.

After spending couple of days looking for a suitable module for my router, I eventually ordered MediaTek MT7925 which seemed to be a bit more reasonable than other Qualcomm modules since they are still quite expensive from pricing point of view. I also came across some git repositories and discussion in some forum that MT7925 will be supported on the newest release. So, it made even more sense to get it than waiting for other modules.

It took few weeks for me to get my hands on this module and yesterday I decided to go ahead and install the new module. Within few minutes, I was able to upgrade the OpenWrt and download the necessary packages to get this module recognized by the system. I configured the wireless access point with necessary settings and I was able to connect to my router from all the devices at home with one little yet serious caveat.

I simply couldn't get the module running at BE mode with 160 MHz width which suppose to be the WiFi 7 standard. In fact, I couldn't get it running at 160 MHz width on AX mode either. However, it worked just fine on 80 MHz width on both AX and BE mode which was definitely not my intention to begin with. Changing channel from auto to different frequencies didn't help either.

One important note to remember here is that WiFi 7 does support 320 MHz width but MT7925 module itself does not support above 160 MHz. So, I knew from the get go that this is not the last WiFi 7 module I will be using on this router. WiFi 7 is still fairly new and we need to wait a bit more for more advanced module to show up for the consumer market before we can have a lot more stable support from OpenWrt. I will be looking forward to the future updates and check out the newer packages for better support for this module. Apart from that, it's all good, at least for now.