MediaTek MT7603E and MT7628/MT7688 Wi-Fi 4 chipsets
A 2.4 GHz, 2x2, 300 Mbps 802.11n (Wi-Fi 4) MediaTek radio used either as a PCIe card (MT7603E) or as the built-in WLAN of the MT7628/MT7688 router-on-a-chip SoCs. It powered a wave of inexpensive consumer routers and access points from roughly the mid-2010s onward and is still common in budget and OpenWrt-friendly hardware like the Linksys E5600 and TP-Link Archer C6 v3.
recommendation
Worth keeping, with a note that it serves legacy low-end 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi 4 gear rather than anything currently sold new. Upstream is still receiving fixes (a 2024 stability workaround and a January 2025 mac.c patch series on linux-wireless), and OpenWrt continues to ship a dedicated kmod-mt7603 package for routers still in active use, so removing it would strand a meaningful installed base.
repository signals
sources
- git.kernel.org
In-tree Kconfig scopes this driver to MediaTek MT7603E PCIe devices and the MT7628/MT7688 SoC WLAN core.
- lore.kernel.org
A 2024 linux-wireless patch adds an mt7603 debugfs control to work around instability under load, showing active bug-fix attention rather than abandonment.
- spinics.net
A January 2025 linux-wireless/net patch series still touched mt7603/mac.c, indicating current upstream maintenance activity.
- mediatek.com
MediaTek still documents MT7603E as a Wi-Fi 4 2.4 GHz 2x2 300 Mbps PCIe part, confirming it is older 802.11n-era silicon.
- openwrt.org
OpenWrt continues to ship a dedicated kmod-mt7603 package, indicating ongoing downstream deployment/support.
- openwrt.org
Recent OpenWrt device documentation still lists MT7603-based hardware, supporting continued field deployments in consumer routers.
- openwrt.org
Another recently maintained OpenWrt device page lists MT7603-based hardware, reinforcing that the chipset remains deployed today.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Not a removal candidate. Shell inspection of local Kconfig/main.c confirmed this is a real driver and its hardware scope; kernel.org tree URL is cited via canonical recall for a stable source. `lei` and lore MCP were unavailable here, so I used lore-targeted web search next: it surfaced the 2024 lore patch for an mt7603 stability fix and a 2025 linux-wireless patch touching mt7603/mac.c, but no removal/deprecation thread. Web search also surfaced current OpenWrt package/device pages showing live downstream use. Conclusion: hardware is old and likely no longer broadly sold new by 2025, but upstream maintenance and present deployments argue to keep it, with annotation that it serves legacy/low-end 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi 4 devices.