Belkin RT3200 wireless router review

The Belkin RT3200 is a very cheap ($50 on Walmart) WiFi 6 router based on MediaTek's MT7915 + MT7622 solution. It is extremely similar to Linksys E8450. (Foxconn owns Linksys and Belkin.)

Hardware highlights (source):
 - CPU: MT7622BV (2x ARM Cortex-A53 @ 1350 MHz)
 - RAM: 512MB DDR3
 - Flash: 128MB SPI-NAND
 - Ethernet: MT7531BE switch with 5 1000Base-T ports
 - WiFi 2.4 GHz: 802.11bgn 4T4R built-in antennas
                 MT7622VB built-in
 - WiFi   5 GHz: 802.11ac/ax 4T4R built-in antennas
                 MT7915AN chip on-board via PCIe
                 MT7975AN front-end

The router's stock firmware was okay but sluggish. I followed this to install OpenWrt. Just be sure to 1) backup the factory bootrom; 2) use UBI images ending in itb.

Then I enabled beam forming and BSS coloring and ran iperf3. It achieved ~450 Mbps in both direction between my wireless laptop with Intel AX201 and a wired NAS. The laptop was about 8 meters away from the router.

I then switched the bandwidth from 80MHz to 160MHz. But iperf3 did not show improvements. So I reverted the change.

I also connected EA7500 to RT3200. They negotiated a PHY rate of 1733 Mbps. But the iperf3 test was only ~480 Mbps.

I did not enable WED or HW offloading as I configured the router to be an access point.

Conclusion

If you have a decent 802.11ac wave 2 router, replacing it with RT3200 will not increase the throughput much. But it is a good cheap router if you do not have one yet.

MikroTik hAP ax3 WiFi router review

Update in Dec 2023: The router experienced IPv6 connectivity issues. Rebooting would fix for a few hours. I did not find useful logs. I had to backup, reset, restore.

Update in Nov 2023: Mikrotik added station-bridge mode support in v7.12 wifiwave2 package. And the 11ax compatibility issue seems gone.

Update: I do not recommend hAP ax3 until MikroTik fixes the 11ax compatibility issue.

I bought MikroTik hAP ax³ router last week. Here is my review.

the good

• It has a 2.5GbE port.
• It supports WiFi 6 on both bands. Many cheap wireless routers only support WiFi 4 (802.11n) on 2.4GHz.
  
• It has detachable antennas.
  
• It runs the "RouterOS", which supports OSPF, WireGuard, IPSec, etc.

the so-so

• It only supports 2T2R MIMO and 80MHz bandwidth on the 5GHz band.
  
• I ran iperf3 between an iPad Air 5 and a wired NAS via the hAP ax3 and an old Linksys EA7500. I did not notice any increase in throughput on the ax3.
  
• The RouterOS quick setup did not config IPv6. I had to do IPv6 manually.
• The 2.5GbE port defaults to WAN. I changed it to LAN so that the NAS could use it.

the bad

• I encountered several bugs in the RouterOS.
• One of them is this.
• My Linux devices (two laptops and one router) have problem connecting to the 5GHz band AP if it is in 11ax mode. The error is "Unhandled alg: 0xc0400707". I have to set the AP to 11ac mode.
  
• The MikroTik forum does not show attached files (including screenshots) to guests.
• The new wifiwav2 package does not support four address mode or 802.11s. So you cannot deploy a WiFi mesh without tunneling. 
• The wifi interface's MTU cannot be changed.
  

conclusion

hAP ax3 is okay for people who want the RouterOS + 2.5GbE + WiFi 6. You may also consider the $40 cheaper hAP ax2 if you do not need 2.5GbE or external antennas.