Aren't you supposed to get roughly only 1/3 of the marketing (theoretical maximum) speed in real world usage?
well if with archer c7 v1 (draft AC) i can have 70MB/s what i should have with Dir860l?? i think the ideal should be 100MB/s (i think this is the theoretical maximum for the 866Mbps) but i know this is unreachable, but an achievement of about 70% of maximum is normal, 1/3 of maximum is a good reason to send the router back for refund.At least with my network topography i can achieve a good througput , Router is the weak point!
From experience I found that putting wireless AP and routing responsibility on different machine yield superior network performance.
If you have both archer c7 and dir 860l available, then the best network topology would be to use archer c7 as a dumb wireless access point with NAT disabled, and use dir 860l as the modem facing router (with wireless disabled) with SQM on.
On one of my cheap router I found that using the wireless interface vs wired interface causes dramatic difference in the max throughput the router can handle (hostapd consume quite a lot of cpu cycles). Say if over wired lan interface I can do 70 mbps with SQM on, I would see the router struggle to get 3X mbps with a high sirq% in top (the router can pull more than 7xmbps over wireless without SQM)
Of course you can also enable the 860l 5ghz network on a different channel and use it exclusively for low bandwidth requirement devices to free up airtime for the archer c7...
well this is the topography i am using mostly, i am using only the 2.4 Ghz interface on 860l to connect it from parents home with my cpe 210 in client mode that provides internet in my house and then wired connected archer c7 provides internet wireless everywhere,, with factory FW 860l works fine, but with lede loses connection after 1-2 minutes with cpe 210, to be honest havent tried this particular FW with this setup, but official lede fails there!
Do you mean
internet ---wired-> 860l ---2.4ghz-> cpe210 ---wired-> archer c7?
Did you check the SNR at 860l and cpe210? cpe210 is a long range AP, I would think if your application requires one you usually use a pair otherwise you end up with a asymmetrical channel with SNR on one end being a lot worse than the other.
I too notice weaker WiFi performance from the 860L compared to an Archer C7. In my topology, I have the 860L connected directly to cable modem (with WiFi on) and Archer in another area acting as dumb AP. With both routers, my Google Pixel connects at 866Mbps. However, I never match wired LAN Speedtests (~100mbps down, 10mbps up) from the 860L (~80-90mbps down, 8mbps up), but with the Archer I do match that (~100mbps down, 8mbps up).
In fact, I can be further away from the Archer (~3 meters away through a wall) and still get those speeds, but with the 860L (~1 meter away, no obstructions), I still don't get that throughput.
This may be a hardware limitation, as Archer does have 3 external antennas, which the DLink does not.
connection is stable, snr -100 throughtout full 100Mbps (cpe has 100Mbps lan) because of the hot weather every few days i change cpe 210 with tl-wa7210n with 24DB ext antenna, with same results, full throughtout and just +1 ms in ping.As main router i use either d-link 860l b1 with factory FW or tl-wr1043nd v3 with latest lede or tl-wdr3600 v1.5 with lede too, d-link with lede fails after 1-2 mins. 
d-link factory FW can reach 50MB/s , i think Hardware is not the issue here, as d-link has 2 cores@880 and archer c7 has just 1@770,and both can fully support a 866Mbps adapter!!
From what is worth, I moved my D-link from one appartmnet where it would reach speeds of about 85 mbits downstream (I have a cable 100/10 mbit here) to another appartment, where it would only got to something like 50/80mbits (yes, upstream was faster).
There is a 100/100 mbit LAN connection there and when I plugged my computer into it, I indeed got exactly that. Already, when I plugged my computer to D-link via LAN, it dropped to something like 85 mbits both ways (seems like NAT was taking its toll, but I thought that shold hit in only around 300mbits) and over wifi I saw that huge drop in downloading speeds. I tried variously turning SQM off and on at different speed but it did not make much difference. However, I was using the Dlink with stock release firmware in the 100/10 appartment and I did not test it with the build from the OP there - and in the 100/100 appartment, I only tested the build from OP.
Unfortunately there are still issues with the MT76 driver. if you would do your windows-samba-copy test in two directions, you would see that when the router is "receiving" e.g. Wifi laptop to wired server, you are getting the expected speeds. The other way around is shitty at best. So server (wired) to wifi laptop is still an issue. Hopefully the guys developing the MT76 driver will soon fix the "transition" problems.
As a work around I got the MT76x2 ralink driver functional (7612 at least, don't have the 7602) on Lede kernel 4.4.70. This is still a work in progress since at this point time it still uses the WEXT. Getting a full working CFG80211/NL80211 driver proves more work then expected. (It was suppose to work on an older kernel, but even on 3.18.x I didn't manage sofar).
With the proprietary driver I'm getting 350+ mbps both ways (or 45+ peaking to 60 MB/s) wlan to lan and visa versa. This speeds cuts to around 25-30 MB/s wlan to wlan transfer as expected.
Reorganizing my patches and I will upload the proof of concept soon.
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So, if I understand it correctly, these lower speeds are a regression due to the recent fixes to get rid of the reboots due to SQM being enabled? Because I remember I was able to get 85/85mbit wireless speeds with stock LEDE 17.0.2.
For me the wireless more or less remained the same. However, since I am on vacation I cannot test if it's the case.
2.4 or 5 Ghz?
5 ghz. I never really experimented with 2,4 Ghz, that one is for my printer to use:-).
With 2.4 GHz I have disconnections every 10 minutes with all clients (8) and speed is very slow.
No problems with 5 GHz
Compiled LEDE Reboot 17.01-SNAPSHOT r3482
Please try a recent build to see if your problems persist. The wireless driver has been updated multiple times.
85Mbps for the 5Ghz interface are not something we must be proud of, even my 941nd v3 at 2.4Ghz has 98Mbps!!!
i was on holidays for 7 days and when i came back i tried channel 100 and its works as it should do, ....wifi to lan 38-40MB/s and lan to wifi 30-35MB/sec....channel 100, connection goes from 400 to 780Mbps, a b it unstable!!! but works better than official lede! ,latest FW
Any chance the LUCI UI for 802.11r (Fast Transition) will be integrated into this build? Thanks for all the work on this fantastic build.
You can install wpad instead of wpad-mini to get 802.11r support.
@All, new build incoming!
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