Linksys Velop

I put OpenWrt on my WiFi routers when I can (Linksys Velops, ugh). TP-Link routers usually have a very easy OpenWrt install, and seem to work well afterwards. Are the flaws/problems this article hints at in hardware or software?

> Stop cowboy coding. Look, I'm a cowboy coder, through and through; but I still know better than to close the barn door after the horse bolted. Information security and software processes aren't that closely related. You can be secure and yolo in production. You can run an extensive change management system and a) push mostly unnecessary cloud services, b) not use reasonable precautions to protect information in transit (and at rest) when sending to cloud services. I picked up some of the Linksys Velop wifi 6 routers recently, because OpenWRT works on them, but I figured I'd try the factory firmware first... Woof, it's bad (but I only used the web interface... I wasn't willing to install the app), I lasted a day. Forming a mesh involves the central node using the default password when accessing the other nodes. I guess that's effective, but felt pretty gross to me.

The velop uses bluetooth for setup... you use an application on your phone, that sets up the router. Yes, it's janky too.

I used to have Wi-Fi connection issues that magically went away when I swapped my Linksys Velop network for an eero Pro system. HomeKit works every time now, there are never any unresponsive devices, and all my HomePods work great. I'm not sure this is a HomePod issue based on how immediately the router switch helped.

Over the weekend I setup one of the new consumer mesh products that's available, the Linksys Velop, with 9 nodes covering a good sized area between two homes. One thing I've been noticing though is that there is considerable latency/packet loss at the moment (there is only one wired backhaul at the primary node and all of the other nodes are connected to each other wirelessly). I've been running Ping Plotter against to all of the nodes and there seems to be considerable packet loss (a few percent) and spikes in latency (average for the two closest nodes to my laptop is about 15 ms, the middle ones out a ways are about 30-40 ms, and the furthest ones are at about 60 ms) but the spikes can be in the hundreds or even thousands of ms. The area covered is about a 500 ft by 120 ft rectangle more or less (with my house on the bottom left of that rectangle and the other home on the bottom right of that rectangle). My question would be...would this BBR algorithm help in some way to reduce the latency/packet loss in a situation like this? Or does it only apply for these other situations that Google would normally be encountering/dealing with? Thanks for the input!