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OpenWrt 18.06.4

openwrt.org

81–90 of 97 posts

Re: OpenWrt 18.06.4

#81

How is the UX story on OpenWRT these days? I have an Archer C7 running stock FW in my basement that keeps acting up, and my default would be just to flash DD-WRT. I'm not opposed to a little bit of CLI fiddling, but I definitely also like my router to be a set and forget type of device. As far as what to do with it, I could picture house-wide ad/tracker blocking, sending traffic analytics to elastic, potentially some…

> my default would be just to flash DD-WRT I have openwrt on all my 3 Archer C7s. I much prefer it to dd-wrt.

Did you have any drama getting it flashed? I'm trying now and consistently getting "Error code: 18005" from the stock web UI's firmware uploader, coming both from 160719 and also from 180114 (the most recent version from the vendor: https://www.tp-link.com/us/support/download/archer-c7/v2)

Curiously, neither one lets me flash 180305, which is listed as the current version on the Canadian support portal: https://www.tp-link.com/ca/support/download/archer-c7/v2/

This kind of thing is why I stuck with the stock FW so long, le sigh.

----

Oh fun, so there's a note on this page about there being separate versions for US and rest-of-world: https://openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/archer-c5-c7-wdr7500

I grabbed the archer-c7-v2-squashfs-factory-us.bin file and we seem to be in business now!

Re: OpenWrt 18.06.4

#82
post #34

How is the UX story on OpenWRT these days? I have an Archer C7 running stock FW in my basement that keeps acting up, and my default would be just to flash DD-WRT. I'm not opposed to a little bit of CLI fiddling, but I definitely also like my router to be a set and forget type of device. As far as what to do with it, I could picture house-wide ad/tracker blocking, sending traffic analytics to elastic, potentially some…

It's good these days. Slightly less logical than DD-wrt, but pretty great overall. See other people's comments on running Openwrt on the C7, seems to have issues with 5ghz WiFi?

That's great to hear; my last OpenWRT experiences are from almost ten years ago at this point, doing multi-stage flash processes to get it onto Mikrotik boards. Not surprised it's been made more sane in the years since.

Re: OpenWrt 18.06.4

#83
post #28

I choose my routers based on if they are supported or not by OpenWrt. And for everybody that asks my opinion, too. Because they might not need/want/know/have a desire to install OpenWrt now, but it's good to have the door open for the future.

Ubiquiti routers don't support OpenWrt. They're still excellent. You could also install OPNSense/PfSense on a PC Engines machine (they apparently also run on OpenWrt).

OpenWrt can be installed on Ubiquiti routers.

Re: OpenWrt 18.06.4

#84
post #20

This week due a wifi network intrusion I bought a Linksys Wrt3200acm. It looks good on paper and it has two boot partitions so it doesn't brick. I installed a device specific distribution recommended on the forums. Well, the 5ghz wifi range is total crap with Openwrt because the wifi driver is not as advanced as the one shipped by default and with the open source driver it can't transmit at full power. I ditched Open…

Zyxel NBG6817. It's what I use with OpenWrt installed and it is rock solid and performance is excellent.

Re: OpenWrt 18.06.4

#86
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubiquiti routers don't support OpenWrt. They're still excellent. You could also install OPNSense/PfSense on a PC Engines machine (they apparently also run on OpenWrt).

But I think their bridges firmware is based on it..

The Unifi AP firmware is definitely OpenWRT based.

Re: OpenWrt 18.06.4

#87
post #50
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a Wisp user for some time so I know the brand and it was a solid device overall. I looked into the UniFi products and the AP plus a controller is almost 100 euros more expensive than the Linksys device. I will look in the future for Ubiquiti devices but I think I am going to use a standard WiFi device (after all it is a one story flat not too big) and perhaps in the future I will buy a barebones so I can run pf…

You can run controller in the cloud, or on a Raspberry Pi, or on a VM, or ...

Or just on your laptop. The controller is only required for setup, the AP's can run in standalone mode just fine after being setup (they just don't have any user interface to speak of on their own).

Re: OpenWrt 18.06.4

#88
post #15

I choose my routers based on if they are supported or not by OpenWrt. And for everybody that asks my opinion, too. Because they might not need/want/know/have a desire to install OpenWrt now, but it's good to have the door open for the future.

This policy has worked well for me, for home use. After the original WRT54G series, I tended to go with whatever was very popular among OpenWrt developers. I still have a few WNDR3700v2 and related later models that I got due that policy, and they still work great, including (so far) with today's update. I've fairly recently gotten some PC hardware to let me build a much more powerful router, perhaps atop Debian or A…

VyOS is a great distro for x86* routers. Built on top of Debian, with free range routing preinstalled and configured.

Re: OpenWrt 18.06.4

#89
post #50
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a Wisp user for some time so I know the brand and it was a solid device overall. I looked into the UniFi products and the AP plus a controller is almost 100 euros more expensive than the Linksys device. I will look in the future for Ubiquiti devices but I think I am going to use a standard WiFi device (after all it is a one story flat not too big) and perhaps in the future I will buy a barebones so I can run pf…

You can run controller in the cloud, or on a Raspberry Pi, or on a VM, or ...

If you've got just one AP then you don't even need a controller. I just used their iOS app to set up my UniFi AP.

Re: OpenWrt 18.06.4

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my default would be just to flash DD-WRT I have openwrt on all my 3 Archer C7s. I much prefer it to dd-wrt.

Did you have any drama getting it flashed? I'm trying now and consistently getting "Error code: 18005" from the stock web UI's firmware uploader, coming both from 160719 and also from 180114 (the most recent version from the vendor: https://www.tp-link.com/us/support/download/archer-c7/v2 ) Curiously, neither one lets me flash 180305, which is listed as the current version on the Canadian support portal: https://www.…

Blame the FCC dicks!
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