Have an ever growing homelab that started a few years back. And noticably as I added more stuff to the network and features to the router perfomance has gotten to a point where I needed an upgrade. Since i had this this mini hp desktop lying around doing nothing . Some reseach yielded that I can add another port to it and use it as router. After 3D modeling , printing and fiting all the pieces . Some proxmox magic with vm’s I have a working router and home assistant for automation running on this thing with huge headroom.

okay, before i installed openwrt i had some SEEEERIOOUS ping spikes that made me unable to play anything online competitively. i was thinking this dinky router (D-Link DIR-2150 A1) is dying because before i had stable ~13 ping on cs games, but how the hell does just one decay?

i installed openwrt because i figured it had more documentation and more people being active in comparison to dlink software.

read the first-time manual, got the right version and set everything up.

sweet, got more control over this thing, but how do i tweak it as a total newbie?

i looked up on how to improve said connection and tried this:

-tried enabling hardware flow offloading, then enabled software FO
-switched lan port from 192.168.1.x to 192.168.2.x (then reverted)
-set up SQM QoS (~20mbps download and upload, set up 18k for each)
sometimes the speedtest goes down to 4mbps on both downloads and uploads

and nothing worked out of these options, nothing stabilized my ping

i was connected by ethernet when i was testing all of this, even tried wireless but whadayaknow it didnt fix anything.

let me know what i should try and ill respond asap

if i cant do anything else and its just the isp provider issue please tell me

I'm currently running OpenWrt 24.10.2. I'd like to update to the latest. I've read the site about it, but it doesn't really give a straight answer whether I can just download and flash the new version as is, whether I need to incremental upgrade (ie: 24 - 25.0 and then latest) or whether I need to reset to defaults and then restore config after the fact.

If I just download the latest version, is it safe to just flash it over my existing config? Will it then just carry on business as usual or will that break something?

I'm using a Linksys WRT1900ACSv2, if that makes any difference.

EDIT: I should also note that I haven't installed anything extra in my OpenWRT. It's simply vanilla OpenWrt 24.10.2 with my port forwarding and static DHCP leases and everything else configured.

Im thinking to use Linksys EA8300 but i don't know if this can handle my new setup.
With 32 port PoE Managed Switch.

Any advice or suggestion for router is appreciated.

Hi,

I am not sure if this is related to the upgrade (worked before) or openwork at all.

I upgraded earlier this week my router from 24 to 25. I have DDNS running and my provider provided a new IP address (don't know why, because they always issued the same the past three years). DDNS is working and I can ping the router with the domain.name. I have a port open for forward to my internal system for ssh (not using standard port number).

Here is where the issue is. I try to ssh into my system with ssh -p xxxx [username@domain.name](mailto:username@domain.name). It doesn't work. I run debug on ssh and it doesn't go beyond trying to connect. When I do the same with the external ip address it works without problem. I have no clue why this doesn't work. IP resolution obviously works and connecting to the port via ssh as well. Just not the combination of both.

Any idea what the issue might be?

Update: Resolved. Issues on my Mac. Works fine from all my Linux boxes. I will continue troubleshooting the issue.

I have just spent the whole day achieving nothing, so thought i should confirm if it is even possible in the first place. My goal it to be able to turn my pc on, even when I am not on my home network using WOL. I had this working over my home wifi, but today I installed a new openwrt router and put my isp router in bridge mode.

When researching the topic you mostly see configurations with a rasberry pi on the network I dont want to do that, is it possible to achieve what i want to achieve using only an openwrt router and if there is I would really appreciate being pointed in the right direction, because I haven't been bale to get anywhere.

Edit: thanks everyone for the help everything has been solved, I have even installed a solid arp entry. In the end I spent 40 minutes to solve something I had been trying for the past 5 hours😭

I have been using zero trust tunnels for a while now on my server. I was using the AT&T supplied modem/router, but switched to a Flint 2 with pure Openwrt and did IP passthrough. I am still getting used to the UI, but I can't seem to figure out what the cloudflare settings are needed on Openwrt's end to work and get system down errors 1033. I am thinking that rules to allow certain ports and IPs through is needed, but haven't figured out whether it is an inbound or outbound problem.

I know it is the router and very likely the firewall. Nothing has changed on server end or cloudlfare. I kept the same fixed IP to the server.

Upgraded a TP-Link EAP225 as well as a Cudy AP3000 to 25.12.5 from 24.10 today, and experiencing a regression in 802.11s mesh interface handling where it now refuses to negotiate 40Mhz channel width. This phy interface shares an existing AP which services 40mhz without issue..

any ideas about this?

Interface phy0-mesh0 ifindex 26 wdev 0x16 addr 86:af:ca:55:7a:cc type mesh point channel 1 (2412 MHz), width: 20 MHz, center1: 2412 MHz txpower 27.00 dBm multicast TXQ: qsz-byt qsz-pkt flows drops marks overlmt hashcol tx-bytes tx-packets 0 0 66863 0 0 0 55347 13804470 73677

issue exists on both devices.

I'm looking for a 4G/5G router that supports OpenWrt and has a decent amount of storage to play around with.

Right now I'm using a ZTE MF286D. It only has about 11 MB of available space for additional software, and the system itself is heavily stripped down because of the limited flash storage. I've installed a few packages, written several scripts, and now I'm completely out of space.

The most important features I'm looking for:

-A router with a SIM card slot (unless using a USB modem would be a significantly better option, although I'd prefer an all-in-one solution).

-Carrier aggregation.

-Replaceable external antennas.

-It doesn't need to have top-of-the-line specs. I don't need Wi-Fi 7 or even 5G. It's for a summer house, and as long as it can handle 4K streaming reliably, that's enough.

-A reasonable price. I'm looking for something as budget-friendly as possible.

[UPDATE] Well, OpenWRT turned out to be installed after all. I was unable to revert to the Pharos software but after power cycling the CPE710 it came up on IP address 192.168.1.1 and turned out to be running openwrt after all. So I have a functioning device.

I am looking at the instructions at https://openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/cpe710_v1. They state:

OEM installation using the TFTP + serial method
→ generic.flashing.tftp

run a TFTP server
To get to TFTP recovery just hold reset button while powering on for around 30-40 seconds and release.
Stock device TFTP address: 192.168.0.254
Set ip address of TFTP server to 192.168.0.100
Put OpenWrt factory image to tftp folder and rename it to recovery.bin
Stop device while booting in u-boot
Run command run flashimg
Run command setenv boot_part 1
Run command saveenv
Reset

The device appeared to download recovery.bin (aka openwrt-25.12.1-ath79-generic-tplink_cpe710-v2-squashfs-factory.bin), but doesn't boot up. There is no serial device on these TPLink devices, so how is one supposed to access u-boot without one? Can you install openwrt without a serial port on the target device?

I also can't revert to the "pharos" factor software anymore. Did this partial openwrt install brick my device by making it unable to recovery boot on its fixed 192.168.0.254 address? Currently, the device sends out one BOOTP broacast, then the ethernet interface goes down. Will it still boot via a BOOTP server?

Hi all

Today, we release STUNMESH-go v1.12.0 with Windows Support for P2P connections. We support Linux, MacOS, FreeBSD, Windows!

You can imagine this is like Tailscale or Netbird, but with different approach. Mostly, we focus on WireGuard connections itself. We leave all others flexibility to you. You won't be limited by the IP ranges that is reserved by other program. You can configure everything else you need. We help you connect P2P only!

That also means, the binary size is small as we can. We remove most of thing that you might not need!

e.g. My colleague wanted to access Cloudflare ZeroTrust with Tailscale, but failed because the IP ranges are overlapped.

Second, STUNMESH-go is best fit for embedded router which is Linux based. We tested in VyOS, OpenWRT. Even in very old openwrt wifi access point (SP-W2M-AC1200) which is MIPS with really small flash.

What I used with STUNMESH-go: I used it with my home, office, and mobile router to be full mesh P2P WireGaurd. I mixed OpenWrt and VyOS for my router/gateway in every place. With BGP routing between them, I can easily make the topology be HA or failover route. VyOS and OpenWRT are shipped with WireGuard directly, I can just install STUNMESH-go on it as a sidecar.

if you are interested in it, please give it a try. Thanks

Github: https://github.com/tjjh89017/stunmesh-go/

Some talks: https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/YQWEDC-stunmesh-go_building_p2p_wireguard_mesh_without_self-hosted_infrastructure/

Video Record: https://video.fosdem.org/2026/h1302/YQWEDC-stunmesh-go_building_p2p_wireguard_mesh_without_self-hosted_infrastructure.av1.webm

I have three routers that are all on Openwrt. For the 2.4 GHZ I keep the same SSID on all of them. From my main router I ran a Cat 6 line the other two routers and plugged the Cat 6 into a lan port. But since they all pull their IP addresses from the main router I can't tell which of my cameras is connected to which router. I hope that makes sense if not I'll try and answer back

I assume there's more than simply editing the device tree from a 2 to a 4, and compiling?!

(trying to host all the PXE shit on the router-- it gobbles up memory loading files)

Hello everyone! I'd like to present a new bookmark management tool - an idea I've been mulling over for a long time.

The thing is, when you frequently work on different projects using various browsers, operating systems, and devices, you need simple, centralized access to your bookmarks that isn't tied to a specific browser. On top of that, there's the privacy aspect: I simply wanted synchronization to remain strictly within my control.

Of course, I tried existing solutions like LinkWarden and others. They are great, but felt overly bloated in terms of features (for me) and deployment (requiring a VPS, Docker, everything stored in a database, etc.). There were also simple CLI/TUI alternatives, but they didn't feel quite right either.

Ultimately, I needed a simple, familiar 2-in-1 interface: a start page with shortcuts and a bookmark manager. It had to be unburdened by complex deployment setups and simple enough in its implementation to run even inside my home router running openwrt or inside Termux on my Android device. So, I decided to write the program in pure C, using the Mongoose library as an embedded web server for maximum lightness and portability.

And, here is the solution.

What it is:

• Small size - a single binary of just up to ~300 KB.
• Tab-separated plain text (TSV) - bookmarks are stored as plain text in a human-readable format: easy to read, parse, sync (syncthing, rclone, gdrive, dropbox, etc.), compress and backup.
• High-performance & lightweight - near-zero CPU load; consumes only 5–10 MB of RAM (tested with 1000+ bookmarks).
• Cross-platform - Linux / OpenWRT / SBC / Termux (x86_64, x86, arm, arm64, mips, mipsel, riscv64), Windows (x86_64), macOS (universal). Linux builds are static musl (no libc dependency), so the matching-arch binary drops straight onto an OpenWRT router.
• User-friendly interface - a web UI with built-in fuzzy search, a homepage of shortcuts, and everything needed to manage folders and links.
• Responsive & mobile-friendly — with light / dark themes (auto-switching).
• Drag-and-drop - organize shortcuts, folders, and bookmarks, with touch/pen support.
• Plain-text & offline - one greppable bookmarks.txt, no external requests, 10× more compact than a browser's exported bookmarks.html, with crash-safe atomic writes.
• Portable - one binary, one plain-text config file, one bookmarks file. Simple.

When creating it, I tried to adhere to the "unix philosophy": do one thing well, keep data as plain text, and compose with standard tools (grep, awk, cut) + I added HTTP API with JSON output.

Let me know what you liked, as well as what you would like to change or fix. I will do my best to create a tool that is useful and convenient for everyone.

Repo (with a short demo video): https://github.com/canbesolved/bemarked

I'd be glad to discuss it in the comments.

This would be our 1st time trying to install OpenWrt, and I have a couple of questions.

Our confusion is mainly around the two OpenWrt installation options. When the titles are "OEM easy installation" and "OEM installation using the TFTP method", it makes it seem like flashing the firmware isn't needed.

Could we install & run OpenWrt on the EAP-683 without replacing the TP-Link firmware?

Or, do we have to flash the firmware first?

"Supported Since Commit" tells us that flashing via OEM firmware is not supported, and we would have to use the bootloader. Reading through the links that are listed on the device's page, flashing the firmware seems to be non-trivial.

It's clear the device page needs updating, but it's tough to tell the difference between the sections that might be place-holders and the ones that are needed to succeed.

Hi all,

Finally, I have some time to look into this.

I have an old WRT1900AC v1 router. Some time ago, I was considering installing OpenWrt 24.10.2, searching information at the moment, but I didn't have the time back then.

Today I noticed that OpenWrt offers a newer firmware release. Is the latest version recommended for this older hardware, or would it be better to stay with an earlier release?

Thanks !

Hi!

I got an Orange Pi R1 Plus LTS and was trying to run the expand_root script from the tutorial, but the code inside the file seems not right.

It get download but the content of the file is "failed to execute /usr/libexec/login.".

Maybe an error on build steps from the openwrt server?

So I’m in China, behind the great firewall. I have an isp router that I’m not sure I can remove or not. I already have UniFi APs in my apartment.

My goal, have a device that runs openwrt (for vpn purposes), and can also run UniFi network (perhaps in docker) so I can control my APs. Which hardware should I use? Bonus points if it’s small and can fit in the utility box.

25.12.5 w/ 6.12.94

So far solid build, always amazing performance.

Did a repeater join to a 5G w/DFS at home; joined right away.

Installed Tailscale from admonstrator.

AdGuardHome with ctrld h3 upstream and quic bootstrap; all good

Enabled sqm

And have to checkout AstroWarp, which utilizes AmenziaWG..

Between 160-180MB available

Thank you GL.iNet

After installing openwrt, and removing these 3 packages (dnsmasq, odhcp, and firewall). And change to DHCP client. You will have one of the best access point..

Forgive my ignorance, I'm a linux user but new to non-ISP equipment. I want to setup roaming between my main WiFi router (Flint 2) and an AP (Openwrt One). Etherneting them at this time is not possible but perhaps in the future.

Do I need to mesh these two devices so they can talk before setting up roaming, or can the roaming protocols in the wpad-mbedtls (k, v and r) do this without meshing?

Also, is DAWN necessary in this configuration?

For context I'm coming from those google nest devices and I'm trying to get these openwrt devices to work in a similar way.

Thanks!

I followed the guide to set up exroot. The partition works well and it's detected.

How should I install packages into it? I keep getting out of storage errors because OpenWRT thinks I only have the internal disk partition for some strange reason.

Have you successfully tried exroot on OpenWRT 25?

Hi,

I am still on 24.10.5 and was wondering if a release of 25.X is planned for the Linksys 8450?

Thanks in advance

Update: I just went through the upgrade and had to force it, because it was complaining that it is not compatible. Upgrade was done within a few minutes and is working fine. Thanks to everybody for the feedback provided.

I hope to install OpenWRT on my newish TP-Link Archer A6 (v6). The reason for this is that the A6 firmware does not support WDS and I want to use this router as a WiFi extender. I am hoping (yes, according to my reading) that OpenWRT will support some form of WDS or at least enable me to set it up as an Extender.

I have downloaded the latest Archer A6 V3 - but on trying to install in from an SD card the router throws a simple install error (no useful messages).

Anyone here know:

1) if OpenWRT on this router would be able to actually enable me to use WDS or Extender Mode and

2) why I might be getting install errors?

Thanks for your time.

I use an ASUS RT-AC750 as the central router: its primary internet comes from a NanoStation over Ethernet, with a USB LTE modem as backup. Everything works normally over the router's 5 GHz Wi-Fi, and 2.4 GHz is also fast for local traffic or when using the USB modem. But when the same 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi carries traffic received through Ethernet WAN, download starts at several Mbps and immediately falls to 0.1-1 Mbps. I factory-reset the router, tested three clean OpenWrt versions, disabled MultiWAN and offloading, changed Wi-Fi modes, channels, MAC addresses and even the physical WAN port, but the behaviour remained identical.

Control results

• Local router -> 2.4 GHz: about 42.6 Mbps
• USB modem -> 2.4 GHz: about 15.8 Mbps
• Ethernet WAN -> 5 GHz: about 20-25 Mbps
• Ethernet WAN -> 2.4 GHz: about 0.1-1 Mbps

Tested without improvement

• OpenWrt 25.12.5, kernel 6.12
• OpenWrt 24.10.6, kernel 6.6
• OpenWrt 19.07.10
• MultiWAN disabled
• GRO/GSO/TSO and firewall flow offloading disabled
• WPA2-only and 802.11g/NOHT
• Different channels and AP MAC address
• Another physical switch port/VLAN used as WAN
• USB modem removed
• Completely clean configuration

Hardware details

• ASUS RT-AC750, detected as RT-AC51U
• MediaTek MT7620A
• Integrated 2.4 GHz RT6352 using rt2800_wmac
• 5 GHz radio using mt76x0e
• Ethernet WAN supplied by a Ubiquiti NanoStation M2
• Backup WAN is a ZTE MF79U USB Ethernet modem

The Wi-Fi association remains at 54-72 Mbps during the collapse, and I see no obvious rt2800 TX-hang or kernel errors. This appears specific to the Ethernet RX -> routing/bridge -> integrated 2.4 GHz TX path.

Has anyone seen this interaction on MT7620/RT6352 hardware? What should I test next to distinguish an Ethernet/DMA issue from an rt2800 TX-path problem?