Openwrt Router Firmware

[RLWZ21]

hmmm seems like no support for the usual dlink router in sg, like the 868l but was hoping that there is one for 865l tough

 

[claypot_king]

Anyone has experienced configuring mesh network in openwrt?

 

[xiaofan]

hmmm seems like no support for the usual dlink router in sg, like the 868l but was hoping that there is one for 865l tough

For DIR-868L, you can try DD-WRT.
https://wiki.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/D-Link_DIR-868L

For DIR-865L, there is a port of Tomato.
https://repo.or.cz/tomato/tomato-dir865l.git

 

[yahgoo]

Unfortunately no stable release for EA7500 V2 yet.

And not even official snapshot release for EA8100 yet.

The double protection feature works well for my Linksys WRT1900AC, but I have got rid of stock FW and have two versions of OpenWRT to compare (one 19 and one 18) and I can choose the version to use.

Is the wifi better on WRT1900AC running openWRT v18?

 

[xiaofan]

Is the wifi better on WRT1900AC running openWRT v18?

I have got Asus RT-AX82U which has much better wireless performance so I have not done much on the openwrt side.

But I remember no real difference between v18 or v19.0. The wireless performance is not very good, upload seems to be a bit faster than Linksys FW but download is not good as compared to Linksys FW. So the wireless performance is actually worse than the stock FW since download speed is more important.

 

[yahgoo]

Thank you for your prompt reply. I will install openWRT v18 on WRT1900ac and compare wifi performance vis-a-vis to stock fw v1.1.10.187766

 

[commandowolf]

You are absolutely right. Just tried the snapshot today and it does not boot. Linksys EA7500 v2 is smart enough to revert back to stock FW.

For now I will use it as a wireless bridge. Its wireless coverage is not my good as my Huawei AX3 Pro but it is very good as a wireless bridge in the bedroom.

haiz quite sad that is still snapshot, if not i also want to move it over to openwrt. I am using EA7500v2 as my main router (wifi disabled) with TP-Link Deco X20 as mesh wifi around the house. Starhub and Linksys really screwed up the latest firmware update man, super buggy and they dont want to admit even after calling and escalating the issue.

Never mind, since they dont want to fix, and OpenWRT not yet available as stable, I have managed to rebuild the previous firmware (2.0.8.194281) that was stable and removed functions that allows them to force update. I am currently testing the firmware, see if they can still force update from some other way.

They very sneaky, on surface claim say can turn off "automatic update" but in the code is hard coded to be automatic update even if you uncheck it in the web interface. Guess is part of their agreement with starhub as exclusive router.

 

[weiyang76]

haiz quite sad that is still snapshot, if not i also want to move it over to openwrt. I am using EA7500v2 as my main router (wifi disabled) with TP-Link Deco X20 as mesh wifi around the house. Starhub and Linksys really screwed up the latest firmware update man, super buggy and they dont want to admit even after calling and escalating the issue.

Never mind, since they dont want to fix, and OpenWRT not yet available as stable, I have managed to rebuild the previous firmware (2.0.8.194281) that was stable and removed functions that allows them to force update. I am currently testing the firmware, see if they can still force update from some other way.

They very sneaky, on surface claim say can turn off "automatic update" but in the code is hard coded to be automatic update even if you uncheck it in the web interface. Guess is part of their agreement with starhub as exclusive router.

I stumbled upon your post while searching on google about Deco X20 that i'm using. It's not a pretty setup for us who wants to work it behind a router. If you are doing ethernet backhaul, you will encounter traffic still passing through a hidden wireless backhaul, and this creates a STP or unstable network sometimes.

This is from the debug firmware on Deco X20, you'll see there's a SSID zEQQyZgR+cisYExT create by Deco itself to establish bridging between your nodes, forming a tp-link mesh network. The traffic will still fall back to your main deco node like a router before it goes out to the internet.

I'm running deco as a Access Point mode, and having this wireless backhaul running increases the CPU usage by 30%-50% in all individual nodes since it consumes much more effort to establish connectivity at anytime. Once I turned it off, the ping is much more stable.

You can turn off the wireless backhaul with debug firmware.

Hope this information helps people online who are searching for answers on Deco X20 or any other Deco such as Deco M9, Deco X60, X90, etc.


*before technical geeks comes in a piss around, this is just another finding that even tplink are not willing to share.

 

[xiaofan]

...
You can turn off the wireless backhaul with debug firmware.

Hope this information helps people online who are searching for answers on Deco X20 or any other Deco such as Deco M9, Deco X60, X90, etc.
...

Interesting.

As far as I know Deco creates this hidden SSID even with Ethernet backhaul as a fall back and normally you can not disable it.
https://community.tp-link.com/en/home/forum/topic/178524

As far as I know you need to get debug FW from TP-Link in case of some troubleshooting needs. Just wonderin where you get the debug FW.

Back to the main topic of this thread, none of the Deco Mesh is supported by OpenWRT, even though I read some efforts to get Deco M5 working after gaining the root access.

Deco M5 HW hack:
https://blog.keane.space/tp-link-deco-m5-hardware-hacking.html

Deco M5 Openwrt effort:
https://forum.openwrt.org/t/ipq4019-adding-support-for-tp-link-deco-m5/85061

 

[xiaofan]

Interestingl Asus Lyra triband is supported by OpenWRT. Not so sure if any one tried it.
https://openwrt.org/toh/hwdata/asus/asus_lyra_map-ac2200

Still the easiest for OpenWRT is to have a powerful wired supported router (x86 or ARM) and then add a wireless AP/Mesh.

 

[xiaofan]

OpenWRT VLAN setting reference of Singtel ONT users.
https://klseet.com/networking/singtel/singtel-tl-wr1043v18-openwrt

Another reference:
https://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/...wrt1900ac-ver-2-openwrt-firmware-5649693.html

 

[uncle_josh]

Boycott Belkin-Linksys.
Every minute its call home 3 - 4 times

Sent from LG-H930 using GAGT

 

[xiaofan]

https://forum.openwrt.org/t/rpi4-routing-performance-numbers/53996/6
Performance of the Raspberry Pi 4 using OpenWRT seems to be pretty good, if you use the right USB3 to gigabit adapter. It can be used with 500Mbps plan or even 1Gbps plan.

Raspberry Pi 4 2GB version is at US$35 or S$60 from official local distributor.
https://sg.cytron.io/p-raspberry-pi-4-model-b-2gb

I have two RPi 2 (original build) and two RPi 3B+. Today I just installed openwrt on the RPi 3B+ with a Ugreen USB to gigabit Ethernet adapter and 16GB uSD card. But the USB performance of the RPi 3 B+ or earlier version is not good because of USB 2.0 High Speed port (480Mbps max). Anyway, it is good enough for learning.

Tutorial of adding a USB adapter to the RPi 4 under OpenWRT.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsOpO6O4xDE

This channle has quite some tutorial on OpenWRT.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5JxrNgLSnA&list=PL58__w3t_eTbcBQ9oJ8jXCxPtBiac59vC

 

[xiaofan]

This is an interesting video on using TL-SG105E/TL-SG108E smart switch with RPi 4 (not using USB to gigabit Ethernet adapter) using VLAN to create WAN/LAN from the single LAN port of the RPi 4. It can be used with other single LAN port mini PC or ARM development board as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOMr6Wd7e9o

 

[xiaofan]

Just tried out openwrt on EA7500 V2 again and this time seems to be successful.
https://openwrt.org/toh/linksys/linksys_ea7500_v2

First time flashing will fail and then it will boot back to Linksys original FW, then flash the Linksys official FW again, and then flash the OpenWRT snapshot again and it will work.

Hostname: OpenWrt
Model: Linksys EA7500 v2
Architecture: MediaTek MT7621 ver:1 eco:3

Firmware Version: OpenWrt SNAPSHOT r16134-c6652a7c94 / LuCI Master git-21.060.51374-cd06e70

Kernel Version: 5.4.102
Local Time: 2021-03-07 07:18:49
Uptime: 0h 15m 4s
Load Average: 0.40, 0.35, 0.22

 

[xiaofan]

As this is still a snapshot (downloaded today) and the performance may not be as good.

The following test is done with Acer Swift 3 Windows 10 laptop (boutght in Dec 2010, Core i5-8250U), with Ugreen USB to gigabit adapter and Intel AX200 wireless adapter.

1) LAN speed takes a hit. This may still be good for 500Mbps users but not so good for 1Gbps plan. I am testing with my Singtel 1Gbps plan.

2) wireless performance is actually decent for a 2x2 AC client.

 

[hwzlite]

As this is still a snapshot (downloaded today) and the performance may not be as good.

The following test is done with Acer Swift 3 Windows 10 laptop (boutght in Dec 2010, Core i5-8250U), with Ugreen USB to gigabit adapter and Intel AX200 wireless adapter.

1) LAN speed takes a hit. This may still be good for 500Mbps users but not so good for 1Gbps plan. I am testing with my Singtel 1Gbps plan.

2) wireless performance is actually decent for a 2x2 AC client.

Swee!

How is the perf if enable CAKE SQM and Software/Hardware flow offloading?

 

[xiaofan]

Swee!

How is the perf if enable CAKE SQM?

Tested using wireless at 3m range.

Without SQM it will be F or even fail the test during upload because speed went to zero.

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/67599151

With SQM on WAN, download limit of 300Mbps and upload limit of 60Mbps, the bufferbloat grade goes to A (tested twice). But you can see the download will only be less than 150Mbps in this case.

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/67599177

Increase the upload limit to 100Mbps, it will still be "A".

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/67599232

So looks like the practical limit is about 150Mbps/100Mbps with SQM ON.

 

[commandowolf]

As this is still a snapshot (downloaded today) and the performance may not be as good.

The following test is done with Acer Swift 3 Windows 10 laptop (boutght in Dec 2010, Core i5-8250U), with Ugreen USB to gigabit adapter and Intel AX200 wireless adapter.

1) LAN speed takes a hit. This may still be good for 500Mbps users but not so good for 1Gbps plan. I am testing with my Singtel 1Gbps plan.

2) wireless performance is actually decent for a 2x2 AC client.

This is great news, will stick to my modified firmware for now since is more stable, but looking forward to stable release of openwrt. If snapshot can perform like this for wifi, that give high hopes of good performance in stable release.

Wired speed i rmb need to enable hardware/software offloading, my tp link archer c6 required that to hit 1Gbps speed on starhub when i tested

 

[xiaofan]

Swee!

How is the perf if enable CAKE SQM?

Tested using wireless at 3m range.

Without SQM it will be F or even fail the test during upload because speed went to zero.

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/67599151

In fact the upload bufferbloat issue is also obvious in the Ookla Speedtest that it will hit 250Mbps hang for a while and then go down.

With SQM on WAN, download limit of 300Mbps and upload limit of 60Mbps, the bufferbloat grade goes to A (tested twice). But you can see the download will only be less than 170Mbps in this case.

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/67599177

Increase the upload limit to 100Mbps, it will still be "A".

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/67599232

So looks like the practical limit is about 150Mbps/100Mbps with SQM ON.