Openwrt Router Firmware

[hk7310]

Have not test done a speed test, but wifi on 5ghz is real good. At my furthest end of my place, I am still able to connect at over 200 Mbps.

Good to know that. Thanks

 

[xiaofan]

OpenWRT is not bad on Linksys EA7500 V2. Tested with my Dell laptop with Intel AC9560 wifi card (2*2 AC 160MHz) in master room and door closed, router in living room.

Speedtest with Viewquest SpeedTest server

Comparison with my Asus RT-AX82U China version. It has 160MHz support so the speed is faster.

 

[xiaofan]

I would not say the wireless speed is great but at least it is decent.

Close range Huawei P20 (2*2 AC).

P20 in master room with door closed

 

[xiaofan]

BTW, I am running the latest snapshot as of 10 Sept 2021 (since this is not my main router, so just run the latest version) but it seems to be pretty stable.

Hostname	OpenWrt
Model	Linksys EA7500 v2
Architecture	MediaTek MT7621 ver:1 eco:3
Firmware Version	OpenWrt SNAPSHOT r17495-66db87fc78 / LuCI Master git-21.226.86205-376af36
Kernel Version	5.4.143
Local Time	2021-09-11 10:12:08
Uptime	11h 57m 48s

 

[xiaofan]

DSL Reports SpeedTest shows that Bufferbload is rated A. This is without any QoS/SQM since SW/HW NAT Offloading is not compatible with QoS/SQM. Tested with a Linux computer with a USB wifi adapter.

But sometimes it is B, which is expected without QoS/SQM and with the bad ZTE ONT for Singtel.

 

[xiaofan]

My TP-Link RE350 seems to stuck in the following version as I can not upload new FW (either new version of OpenWRT or Factory TP-Link FW). But never mind, at least it still works as a wireless media bridge (using 5GHz as the up link to my RT-AX82U).

Last time I was using relayd but it seems to be troublesome, so I use the simpler method.
https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wifi/relay_configuration#using_nat
During the process, I messed up a bit and need to carry out factory reset.
https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/troubleshooting/failsafe_and_factory_reset
Hostname: OpenWrt
Model: TP-LINK RE350 v1
Architecture: MediaTek MT7621 ver:1 eco:3
Firmware Version: OpenWrt 18.06.2 r7676-cddd7b4c77 / LuCI openwrt-18.06 branch (git-19.020.41695-6f6641d)
Kernel Version: 4.14.95

 

[xiaofan]

https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/ipv6_ipv4_transitioningNot so sure if the following is exactly right, but I am able to get Singtel 6rd to work with openwrt (Singtel ONT user).

WAN6 property
Protocol: 6rd
IPv4 address: Leave empty to use the current WAN address
Remote IPv4 address: 202.166.127.6 (IP address of 6rd.singnet.com.sg)
IPv6 prefix: 2400:d803::
IPv6 prefix length: 32
IPv4 prefix length: 0

 

[xiaofan]

As for my WRT1900AC, I decided to keep it as the previous version as it works fine. I have not used its more advance features like VLAN Switches. It is an aging router (I got it in April 2014) and the wireless coverage is pretty limited now.

Hostname: OpenWrt
Model: Linksys WRT1900AC
Architecture: ARMv7 Processor rev 2 (v7l)
Firmware Version: OpenWrt 19.07.7 r11306-c4a6851c72 / LuCI openwrt-19.07 branch git-21.044.30835-34e0d65
Kernel Version: 4.14.221

Latest version is only 19.07.8 so the updates should be very minor.
https://openwrt.org/toh/linksys/wrt1900ac
Those who have Linksys WRT1200AC (v1 or v2), WRT1900ACS (v1 or v2), WRT3200ACM and WRT32X can upgrade to the latest 21.02 version.

 

[xiaofan]

HW NAT Offloading

 

[xiaofan]

HW NAT Offloading as well as well as VPN performance for Beryl GL-MT1300 openwrt portable router

 

[xiaofan]

As mentioned before, relayd based wifi repeater or media bridge is not easy to configure for openwrt. Here is a good video tutorial.

 

[xiaofan]

Nice tutorial for the new DSA switch feature in 21.02. It is supported by the EA7500 V2 and EA8100, as well as the Linksys WRT series. It covers common use cases like the following.
1) Bridging all LAN ports
2) Multiple bridged networks
3) Multiple networks using VLANs
4) Multiple networks using VLAN tagging

https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/dsa/dsa-mini-tutorial

 

[xiaofan]

I have decided to deploy the EA7500 v2 (revert from snapshot version to 21.02 release version) for family use. The wireless coverage seems to be worst than the Singtel Mesh Router so I have disabled its wifi.

Thanks to the special feature of Singtel ONT, I have now two separate networks.
1) Singtel ONT -- TP-Link TL-SG105E smart switch -- Asus RT-AX82U -- Singtel TV box
2) Singtel ONT -- TP-Link TL-SG105E smart switch -- EA7500 v2 Openwrt router without wifi (used to be pfSense mini PC router) -- Singtel Mesh Router as AP

I have not done much with OpenWRT though -- I have just set up DoH (DNS over https) and Adblock.
1) DoH: https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/services/dns/doh_dnsmasq_https-dns-proxy
2) Adblock: https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/services/ad-blocking

 

[xiaofan]

I have decided to deploy the EA7500 v2 (revert from snapshot version to 21.02 release version) for family use. The wireless coverage seems to be worst than the Singtel Mesh Router so I have disabled its wifi.

Thanks to the special feature of Singtel ONT, I have now two separate networks.
1) Singtel ONT -- TP-Link TL-SG105E smart switch -- Asus RT-AX82U -- Singtel TV box
2) Singtel ONT -- TP-Link TL-SG105E smart switch -- EA7500 v2 Openwrt router without wifi (used to be pfSense mini PC router) -- Singtel Mesh Router as AP

I have not done much with OpenWRT though -- I have just set up DoH (DNS over https) and Adblock.
1) DoH: https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/services/dns/doh_dnsmasq_https-dns-proxy
2) Adblock: https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/services/ad-blocking

I have to use the latest snapshot version (OpenWrt SNAPSHOT r17530-0be4dea48e) again because of major issues with the 21.02 release -- the settings are not persistent with reboot (very strange issue) and 6rd (Singtel IPv6) does not work.

But there is a major disadvantage when using snapshot version -- many packages are not available.

 

[xiaofan]

There are lots of good OpenWRT guide here (many simple guides):
https://www.youtube.com/c/VanTechCorner/videos
And here (including more advanced stuff):
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG5Ph9Mm6UEQLJJ-kGIC2AQ/videos

 

[xiaofan]

Not sure if anyone want to do this but you can flash openwrt on your MikroTik routers.

 

[xiaofan]

I have decided to deploy the EA7500 v2 (revert from snapshot version to 21.02 release version) for family use. The wireless coverage seems to be worst than the Singtel Mesh Router so I have disabled its wifi.

Thanks to the special feature of Singtel ONT, I have now two separate networks.
1) Singtel ONT -- TP-Link TL-SG105E smart switch -- Asus RT-AX82U -- Singtel TV box

2) Singtel ONT -- TP-Link TL-SG105E smart switch -- EA7500 v2 Openwrt router without wifi (used to be pfSense mini PC router) -- Singtel Mesh Router as AP

I have not done much with OpenWRT though -- I have just set up DoH (DNS over https) and Adblock.

One week passed and it is working pretty stable. I have purposefully steered many clients (10-15) to the Openwrt side (Asus side only about 5-8) and I did not hear the negative feedbacks from family members.

 

[xiaofan]

As for my WRT1900AC, I decided to keep it as the previous version as it works fine. I have not used its more advance features like VLAN Switches. It is an aging router (I got it in April 2014) and the wireless coverage is pretty limited now.

I feel itchy and upgraded to 21.02. It seems to work fine. But I have decided to disable wifi and use the Singtel Mesh Router AP instead. Now I will use it for one week (replacing the EA7500 v2) to see how stable it is. Again, not much has been done, enable 6rd IPv6 for Singtel, enable DoH (DNS over https with Cloudflare) and then enable adblock. That is good enough for the family members. But I may want to give wireguard VPN server and DDNS a try to be able to access the router GUI from outside.

With this Linksys WRT1900AC, I can actually choose to boot between 19.07 or 21.02 because of dual partition and the advance-reboot luci app. Somehow the advance-reboot packages does not support EA7500 v2 (and probably EA8100 v1).

 

[xiaofan]

SW/HW routing/NAT flow offloading are important for WRT1900AC as well. Without them it will not be able to handle 1Gbps plan, only around 500 Mbps (my test shows 471Mbps down and 400Mbps up).

With both SW/HW flow offloading turning on, I get the following result, which is not as near as good as the usual 900Mbps-930Mbps speed I got but pretty decent.

Good thing is that bufferbloat is much better at A+ (tested two times).
http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/69618663
Comparison with Asus RT-AX82U. SpeedTest result of RT-AX82U is better.

But then bufferbloat of RT-AX82U is not good at B (tested two times)
http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/69618403

 

[i1magic]

SW/HW routing/NAT flow offloading are important for WRT1900AC as well. Without them it will not be able to handle 1Gbps plan, only around 500 Mbps (my test shows 471Mbps down and 400Mbps up).

With both SW/HW flow offloading turning on, I get the following result, which is not as near as good as the usual 900Mbps-930Mbps speed I got but pretty decent.

Good thing is that bufferbloat is much better at A+ (tested two times).
http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/69618663
Comparison with Asus RT-AX82U. SpeedTest result of RT-AX82U is better.

But then bufferbloat of RT-AX82U is not good at B (tested two times)
http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/69618403

Wah! This is Wifi? Almost near Gigabit liao.