Openwrt Router Firmware

[xiaofan]

Some US consumers may start to explore alternatives like OpenWRT/pfSense for the home routers, at least for wired router, if the FCC ban on foreign routers start to show the impact (no immediate impact as existing routers with FCC approval can still be sold, and existing routers already bought can still be used).

 

[xiaofan]

Of the other loopholes is "enterprise router". Not sure Ubiquiti routers count as "enterprise router" by FCC or not.

 

[GlassDoor]

If you're anxious to get an OpenWrt-supported Wi-Fi 7 router, the ASUS ZenWiFi BT8 is also community supported. That's a tri-band Wi-Fi 7 router with one 2.5GBASE-T WAN port, one 2.5GBASE-T LAN port, and two 1000BASE-T ports. It also has a Type A USB 3.0 port, 128MB of onboard flash, and 1GB of RAM. It seems like they're sold in pairs in Singapore for about S$570 (about S$285 per unit), maybe a bit less if you catch a promotion or coupon.

looks like currently w1700k is still the best value tri-band wifi-7 supported by openwrt. But I will only recommend it for the adventurous and technically inclined.

 

[BBCWatcher]

looks like currently w1700k is still the best value tri-band wifi-7 supported by openwrt. But I will only recommend it for the adventurous and technically inclined.

Yes, the Quantum Link W1700K is currently only S$130.59 on Amazon.sg including shipping. That's probably the least hassle way to get one (or a couple), and it's an incredible piece of equipment for even double the price. The community working on the OpenWrt snapshots — and on getting it supported in the mainline releases — is an amazing community.

 

[xiaofan]

The OpenWrt community has released Versions 25.12.1 and 24.10.6. These updates include a couple high severity security fixes, so it's a good idea to upgrade as soon as you reasonably can. If you're still running the 24.10.x branch, try to upgrade to 25.12.1 now. The OpenWrt community will stop updating the 24.10.x branch later this year (2026).

Version 25.12.1 also includes some fixes for the recently supported TP-Link Archer BE450, a dual-band Wi-Fi 7 router sold in Singapore — and one of the very few Wi-Fi 7 routers that OpenWrt currently supports. You can probably find the BE450 for under S$200 on Carousell. Or if you want a local TP-Link warranty you can find it for S$220 on Shopee (price check at this moment). Or you might get one "free" with your Internet service plan. The BE450 has one 10GBASE-T WAN port, one 2.5GBASE-T LAN port, and three 1000BASE-T LAN ports. It also has one USB 3.0 (Type A) port. It has 128MB of onboard flash and 512MB of RAM.

25.12.2 just got released.

Release announcement:
https://forum.openwrt.org/t/openwrt-25-12-2-service-release/248287

Release note:
https://openwrt.org/releases/25.12/notes-25.12.2

Main changes between OpenWrt 25.12.1 and OpenWrt 25.12.2​

Only the main changes are listed below. See changelog-25.12.2 for the full changelog.

Device support​

• airoha: rename kernel module kmod-pwm-an7581 to kmod-pwm-airoha — users with this module explicitly installed need to reinstall under the new name
• apm821xx: fix U-Boot environment definitions for NETGEAR WNDR4700, Western Digital MyBookLive, Meraki MR24 and Meraki MX60; fix PCIe boot failure on Meraki MX60
• ath79: fix initramfs boot for Huawei AP5030DN and AP6010DN
• ath79: fix VLAN CPU port tagging on 2-CPU-port devices (affects several dual-CPU switch configurations)
• ath79: remove incorrectly included WiFi packages from Mikrotik RB750r2 (device has no WiFi hardware)
• ipq40xx: fix ART partition name for Linksys Velop WHW03 V1 — restores correct WiFi calibration data access
• ipq40xx: fix MAC address reading for Linksys devices using eMMC-based NVMEM
• lantiq: xrx200: fix failsafe mode on BT HomeHub 5A — LAN ports 1 & 2 now work correctly in failsafe (#22480)
• mediatek: Bananapi BPI-R4: fix SFP+ electric module support — modules that stopped working after a snapshot upgrade are now functional again (#19878)
• ramips: fix kernel decompress error that bricked ELECOM WRC-X1800GS on 25.12.0 (#22270)
• ramips: fix initramfs kernel load address for TP-Link EAP615-Wall v1
• ramips: fix MAC address assignment for Xiaomi Mi AC2100
• realtek: fix D-Link fan control script

WiFi fixes and improvements​

• wifi-scripts: fix 160 MHz channel width configuration — hostapd was not correctly configured for 160 MHz, preventing its use (#22481)
• wifi-scripts: fix SU beamformee antenna count — incorrect count was passed to the driver
• hostapd: fix memory leak in Radio Resource Management (RRM) ubus interface
• mac80211: ath12k: add thermal sensor support for QCA/IPQ devices
• mac80211: ath9k: fix GPIO mask handling from device tree
• mt76: fix severe WiFi latency regression (up to 30+ seconds) on 2.4 GHz introduced in 25.12.1 — affected many MediaTek devices including OpenWrt One, Zyxel EX5601, ASUS RT-AX53U, Xiaomi AX3000T/AX6000, Cudy WR3000/X6, GL Flint 2 and others (#22491)
• mt76: multiple further stability fixes for MediaTek WiFi chipsets (MT7615/MT7915/MT7996/MT7992/MT792x):
  • add per-link beacon monitoring for MLO (Multi-Link Operation)
  • fix MT7996/MT7992 link handling during MLO station add/remove
  • fix scan work requeue race with spinlock

 

[BBCWatcher]

The OpenWrt community has released OpenWrt 25.12.4. (25.12.3 was the latest release for only about 1 week.) The 25.12.4 release notes are available here.

If I didn’t mention it yet, OpenWrt supports the TP-Link Archer BE450 that WhizComms bundles with some of its plans. That’s a basic dual band Wi-Fi 7 wireless router.

 

[xiaofan]

If I didn’t mention it yet, OpenWrt supports the TP-Link Archer BE450 that WhizComms bundles with some of its plans. That’s a basic dual band Wi-Fi 7 wireless router.

Nice to see more WiFi 7 routers are supported by OpenWRT.

Even though the wireless spec is so-so (dual band BE7200), and the RAM is only 512MB, the CPU is pretty strong. And it has one 10Gbe port, one 2.5Gbe port and quad gigabit ports.
https://www.tp-link.com/sg/home-networking/wifi-router/archer-be450/#specifications

https://openwrt.org/toh/hwdata/tp-link/tp-link_be450
Device Type: WiFi Router
Brand: TP-Link
Model: BE450
CPU: MediaTek MT7988D
CPU Cores: 4
CPU MHz: 1800
Flash MB :128 NAND
RAM MB :512

 

[xiaofan]

Let's see when the following PR can be merged to support TP-Link Archer BE805.

mediatek: filogic: add support for TP-Link BE805 v1.20
https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/pull/22460

There are hardware differences between v1 and v1.2.
The other PR is for the v1 version because v1 uses the AQR113C, while 1.2 uses the RTL8261BE.

 

[xiaofan]

More discussions of TP-Link Archer BE805 support
https://forum.openwrt.org/t/adding-support-for-tp-link-archer-be805/163049/36

As of now, the above-mentioned OpenWRT PR only supports HW Rev 1.20.
https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/pull/22460

HW Rev V1.60 may be similar to HW Rev V1 in terms of OpenWRT support (to be confirmed).

Singapore market --> V1 and V1.20 (US V1 FW works for SG)
https://www.tp-link.com/sg/support/download/archer-be805/v1/#Firmware

US market --> V1 and V1.60
https://www.tp-link.com/US/support/download/archer-be805/v1/#Firmware

 

[newfrog]

Anyone using Realtek 8157 5Gbps adapter on Openwrt x86?
The Wavlink USB 5G USB Ethernet adapter is not recognised. System shows new USB device plugged in but not recognised as eth3. Currently using 2.5G usb adapters with rtl8152 drivers and getting speed up to 2300 Mbps.
I noticed Knox-net-usb package was not installed. Didn’t want to install unnecessary packages in case it breaks what I have running now.
There’s no mention of 8157 chip in Openwrt forum. Any suggestions or have to wait for the driver to be released?

 

[xiaofan]

Anyone using Realtek 8157 5Gbps adapter on Openwrt x86?
The Wavlink USB 5G USB Ethernet adapter is not recognised. System shows new USB device plugged in but not recognised as eth3. Currently using 2.5G usb adapters with rtl8152 drivers and getting speed up to 2300 Mbps.
I noticed Knox-net-usb package was not installed. Didn’t want to install unnecessary packages in case it breaks what I have running now.
There’s no mention of 8157 chip in Openwrt forum. Any suggestions or have to wait for the driver to be released?

I think you have to wait for the driver to be available as part of official OpenWRT.

 

[BBCWatcher]

Anyone using Realtek 8157 5Gbps adapter on Openwrt x86?

You could try building and installing the driver from upstream source code. The latest driver version is 2.21.4.

 

[newfrog]

Tks all for comments. Not tried building from source code but will do some reading up.
Whole household will complain if downtime is too long

 

[keenklee]

Anyone using Realtek 8157 5Gbps adapter on Openwrt x86?
The Wavlink USB 5G USB Ethernet adapter is not recognised. System shows new USB device plugged in but not recognised as eth3. Currently using 2.5G usb adapters with rtl8152 drivers and getting speed up to 2300 Mbps.
I noticed Knox-net-usb package was not installed. Didn’t want to install unnecessary packages in case it breaks what I have running now.
There’s no mention of 8157 chip in Openwrt forum. Any suggestions or have to wait for the driver to be released?

IMHO.
I feel the that the Wavelink 5Gbe USB Ethernet is very fast in Windows - consistently can get 47xx Mbps.

 

[deathblade82]

IMHO.
I feel the that the Wavelink 5Gbe USB Ethernet is very fast in Windows - consistently can get 47xx Mbps.

Can share your config parameters ? Best I can get is about 3G up/down.

 

[keenklee]

Can share your config parameters ? Best I can get is about 3G up/down.

IMHO.
I can't recall if I did any configure of the parameters.
Here are those which I may change.

Energy-Efficient Ethernet - Disabled
Gigabit Lite - Disabled
Green Ethernet - Disabled
Jumbo Frame - Disabled <-- this is the reason why I suspect I never change anything
Receive Buffers - 37
Received URBs - 6
Speed Duplex - Auto Negotiate <-- this is the reason why I suspect I never change anything

Just for information,

Mini PC <--> Type C <--> Wavlink 5GBe <--> 10Gbe Switch <--> D-Link DPN-BE7212GR <--> ONT <--> Eight Broadband

P.S. While I am on Starhub Eight, at times I will do speedtest to Singtel - better performance.

 

[BBCWatcher]

The OpenWrt community has released OpenWrt 25.12.5. There are many security updates in this release, possibly a byproduct of AI-assisted vulnerability assessments. Try to update as soon as you reasonably can.

 

[carrote]

Bought the W1700K from Amazon. Been running it for a few weeks and it has been good so far. It is probably the most popular WiFi 7 router in the OpenWrt project currently. I would say that this is the best value tri-band WiFi 7 capable router you can get for the money as long as you know what you are doing.

Some observations:

• You must access the serial console via pins inside the router in order to flash OpenWrt and at the same time run a TFTP server on a computer connected to the router to deliver the firmware. This is really not easy and I think most here would not bother with the hassle
• Official OpenWrt SNAPSHOT firmware exists but it best works on community builds like OpenWRT-fanboy’s that have newer patches
• MLO doesn’t really work for now
• It comes with a 100-120V power adapter so you need to use a transformer or buy a separate power adapter with 230V input
• There are supposedly Thread and Zigbee radios but it is still not supported yet. GPS (not sure for what) is also present and there seems to be some working reports.

There is still a long way to go for it to get supported by OpenWrt officially (maybe a few months) but it has been making good progress so far.

For a prosumer user like me that runs multiple VLANs, there is no other alternative at this price point. Most people are still better off with ISP routers. I will be running this in my home for the foreseeable future.

 

[BBCWatcher]

The Qualcomm-based Chinese domestic RD03v2 variant of the Xiaomi AX3000T wireless router now has experimental OpenWrt support. Currently you need a USB to UART 3.3v adapter to get this firmware installed, so there's some technical effort involved.

The Xiaomi AX3000T wireless router is quite popular in Singapore, although fortunately most of them are NOT the RD03v2 Qualcomm-based variant. All other known variants of this wireless router were already supported by mainline OpenWrt.

 

[xiaofan]

Recent discussions for Linksys Velop MX4200.

https://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/...dd-a-node-for-isp-using-modem-router.7221884/

I do not recommend switching to stock OpenWRT, specifically for the MX4200. It is widely documented that the Qualcomm ath11k is a memory hog, and on stock OpenWRT, consumes most of the memory (the MX4200 StarHub provides only has 512MB of memory, you need 1GB for ath11k) and causes Out-of-memory (OOM) problems. This means that he would have to manually restart the AP everyday.

This is not a problem on "NSS" builds, but that also has some problems of its own, especially with highly custom setups.

Fair. I think this is a question to test, not necessarily a veto. When you download OpenWrt using the firmware selector it should pick a reasonable driver set for 512MB devices (if you have one). However, you can tweak that further if you wish using the kmod-ath11k-smallbuffers driver.