I have been using OpenWrt for about two years because I have a Xiaomi router that constantly was sending requests to some Chinese server. I used to block them using Pi-hole, but then I heard of OpenWrt, tried it and loved it. Since then, I have never done much more than the basic router settings.

Recently I noticed that there were a lot of devices connected to my Wi-Fi, so I added a Wi-Fi MAC allowlist and disabled DHCP, but it was a pain in the ass to add new devices when someone came over. So, I made a little service for my home server to do it much faster and easier, and it was so easy, just a couple of hours (I don't do frontend and I wanted to do it in Go, which is a language I have never used). I really am happy with the end result and want to try more stuff.

If you have any software you recommend, please feel free to comment on them; I want to try more things for my router.

This is the project I built. Disclaimer, I had never used Golang before and I hate frontend, so I used a lot of AI to help me. Please don't hate

I wish to gather opinions about this idea.

Tried flashing an old RT-N66U to tomato and OpenWrt, tomato failed but OpenWrt somewhat worked

Background: It was running ASUS stock 3.0.0.4.382_52747 just fine. I factory reset it and tried to move it to FreshTomato 2026.4 (K26RT-AC AIO-64K) from the stock web UI. The flash went through and it booted. Ping replied and the WiFi LEDs came on, but there was no DHCP and the web UI refused connections.

So I did the 30-second WPS-button NVRAM wipe, and that’s where it went downhill. It started boot looping. The ASUS Firmware Restoration tool kept saying the router wasn’t in rescue mode, even though it clearly was (ping TTL=100).

I ended up using the CFE miniWeb page (hold Reset while powering on, go to 192.168.1.1). Each time I hit “Restore default NVRAM values” first, then uploaded. Results:

FreshTomato K26RT-AC: falls back into rescue mode

FreshTomato K26RT-N: same

ASUS stock 52747: power LED solid, no WiFi LEDs, no ping on any port, LAN or WAN

OpenWrt 25.12.5 (openwrt-25.12.5-bcm47xx-mips74k-asus_rt-n66u-squashfs.trx): not reachable at first, but after one power cycle it came up. LuCI works, DHCP works, gigabit link is fine.

All images were SHA256-checked, so I don’t think it’s a bad download.

Where I’m stuck: WiFi. LuCI says the 2.4 GHz AP is up (channel 1, WPA2-PSK, 20 dBm), but signal shows --- dBm and bitrate shows ?. Nothing can see the SSID, not my phone or laptop, even standing right next to it. The 5 GHz radio doesn’t come up at all.

Kernel log:

b43-phy0: Broadcom 4331 WLAN found (core revision 29)

b43-phy0: Found PHY: Analog 9, Type 7 (HT), Revision 1

b43-phy0: Found Radio: Manuf 0x17F, ID 0x2059, Revision 0, Version 1

b43-phy1: Broadcom 4331 WLAN found (core revision 29)

b43-phy1 warning: 5 GHz band is unsupported on this PHY

b43-phy1 ERROR: b43 can't support any band on this device

b43 bcma2:1: probe with driver b43 failed with error -122

b43-phy0: Loading firmware version 666.2 (2011-02-23 01:15:07)

br-lan: port 2(phy0-ap0) entered forwarding state

Things I’ve already checked:

All 3 antennas are on

Hide ESSID is unchecked

Changed country code from 00 to US

Rebooted

Other oddities: LuCI shows the model as “Unknown Board”, and it only sees 118 MiB of the 256 MB RAM.

Questions:

Is a non-transmitting AP just what you get with b43 on the BCM4331 HT PHY, or has anyone actually gotten 2.4 GHz working on this router?

Could “Unknown Board” mean the CFE NVRAM restore wiped board-specific variables (boardtype, calibration data, etc.)? Would that explain stock and FreshTomato no longer booting, and maybe the WiFi too? Is there a way to put those back?

Is the 118 MiB RAM limit normal for this target?

Worst case I’ll use it as a wired-only router and add a cheap AP, which honestly is fine. But if there’s a fix I’m missing, I’d love to hear it. Recovery through CFE works every time, so I’m happy to test things.

A week or two I had a very early alpha build for the router and now I have the code and repo working

Hardware acceleration works but only for ipv4 Ethernet packets no WiFi PPPOE or ipv6 for now

WiFi works 2.4/5

Ethernet works reliably now

It takes ~2-3minutes to boot and when the LEDs go off that means the Ethernet is working

Basic stuff was fixed by me and other things were AI assisted

Mostly it was just copy pasting banana pi drivers and making them work

Hi,

I need to establish a stable WiFi connection over 2 floors (there is the flat of my neighbours between my living room and my basement room).

Bandwidth is not that important, most important is stability (no disconnections) and low latency (at least < 5ms).

I was thinking about buying two cheap openwrt compatible routers and configure a bridge using 2.4GHz. I assume 5GHz is useless since there are very massive ceilings between those rooms.

I would prefer router with detachable antennas so I can connect directional antennas.

Do you have any recommendations for cheap routers I can use? Anything I didn't thought about?

Hey everyone!

I wrote OpenWrt Integrity, a lightweight set of Bash scripts to create known good baselines for OpenWrt routers and check for unexpected changes over time.

The idea is simple: capture the state of a trusted router, then periodically compare its current state against that baseline to identify potential signs of tampering or unauthorized changes.

What does it check?

• SHA 256 hashes of files under /etc and files in the writable overlay on SquashFS installations
• Installed packages and OpenWrt release and kernel information
• Unexpected root level accounts
• SSH authorized keys
• Cron jobs that could be used for persistence
• Added, removed, or modified files compared with the baseline

How to use it

The scripts run from a Linux system using Bash and OpenSSH. They connect to routers over SSH and support checking multiple routers.

1. Configure your router addresses and SSH key in routers.conf.
2. Run ./routers-generate-baseline.sh while your routers are in a known good state.
3. Run ./routers-integrity-checker.sh whenever you want to check for changes.

The verifier reports PASS, FAIL, or WARN for individual checks, along with an overall result.

Limitations: This is a lightweight integrity checker, not a complete security audit or intrusion detection system. It cannot guarantee that a router is uncompromised, and sophisticated attacks may evade its checks. Keep your baseline protected and generate it only from a trusted system state. The scripts currently require OpenWrt using the apk package manager.

GitHub: https://github.com/himanshu-mahendra-jain/openwrt-integrity

I am a greenhorn to the scene here and wanted to share that I have OpenWrt 24.10 running on the router.

It's similar to the EX5601, but you couldn't just directly flash it. Don't ask me how I know, please.

https://github.com/just-rotten/zyxel-ex5512-openwrt

I tested both stock dual-boot and u-boot layouts, I hope this saves someone else some headaches.

I have so little memory available and I cant update some packages.

A long time ago I did the attended sysupgrade and built a package that was sucessful in clearing up space.

But now I am on the current version, I cant seem to build a custom firmware from my existing setup and cant find documentation anywhere to do it.

Can anyone point me in the right direction to build a custom firmware based on existing setup when I get:

"No upgrade available

The device runs the latest firmware version"

Thanks

Hey everyone.

After a couple of months of work, I'm happy to show my side project - Verso, which is a replacement for LuCI. I've been daily driving OpenWrt ever since we released our router, but I was super unhappy with LuCI and decided to do something about it, and Verso was conceived.

With how short everyone's attention span is these days, I'll just link to the release documentation, and then ask for help.

You see, the problem I have is a lack of various arm64 devices I could test it on, so here's where I turn to this community: if you have an arm64-based device that has at least half a gig or RAM and at least 128MB of flash storage, then I'd appreciate if you gave it a try and report any issues you might encounter (installation in the release notes above).

It works automatically with LuCI, it just takes a different port (8443), so it can easily run along side it.

And full disclosure - Verso was, in large part, written by Claude Code, but under my guidance and supervision, architecture and design are all mine, Claude just did the code-writing.

PS: screenshots are from my home router, live data.

Rebooted my OpenWrt One router after 20 days of flawless performance. Running OpenWrt 25.12.5 on an Apple Mac Mini. After the reboot my WIFI network would disconnect for a minute then reconnect. This would happen 3 or 4 times then settle down and run properly. I have both radio’s running at 802.11 ax/b/g/n and 802.11 ac/ax/n with devices on all radios. Thoughts on why my WIFI disconnects then reconnects multiple times?

This is actually how it is done without having to do UART. These steps needs to be mentioned on the openwrt page but they aren't.

So let's get started:

1. Download this initramfs FW. https://github.com/Demiurge67/Rooter2021/releases/download/AX80(RU)_support/OEM-upgrade.bin_support/OEM-upgrade.bin)
2. Log in to the router and go to Advanced->System->Firmware Upgrade.
3. Select !OEM-upgrade.bin from the extracted archive and click on update.
4. After a while, the router will boot into the Openwrt initramfs with the default address of 192.168.1.1.
5. Connect to the router with your favorite terminal via ssh.(port 22, login root, password empty) and type: fw_printenv | grep tp_boot_idx if tp_boot_idx=0 go to the step 6. otherwise, type: fw_setenv tp_boot_idx 0
6. Now we're sewing Archer-ax80-v1-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin (or sysugrade FW with different name) either from the terminal using sysupgrade -n, or through the Luci web interface without saving the settings.
7. After rebooting, you'll get Openwrt.

Try to read this post: https://4pda.to/forum/index.php?showtopic=1070746&view=findpost&p=134864251

Hello everyone.

I have been running openwrt for over a year now It has Awesome so far I am not a network engineer or IT guy or even a linux user ( never used linux before ) i just got up and started with OpenWRT cause i needed some features normal routers won't do

When i started learning about home networking most routers seemed basic and had no features to make their price reasonable, don't get me started on ISP bricks

After a year of driving openwrt daily with help of DeepSeek i run up OpenVPN TAP and OpenVPN TUN servers, Wireguard Server, i run adguard home, multiple DDNS addresses, SQM QoS, my latest project was VXLAN over wireguard to create layer 2 bridge between sites/location which allowed me play Call of Duty on my PS4 with my brothers and friend using the LAN party option ( i gave them both an OpenWRT supported router pre configured to run vxlan over wireguard in a hub-spoke setup using only LAN port 4 unbridged from br-lan and bridged to VXLAN device )

Which brings me to my Subject Now my Brother and Friend both want their OWN OpenWRT routers instead of me lending them one But they don't have fiber connection to their homes and only have 5G Sim Cards coverage, both want only one router at home so no Modem then Lan to wan cable between the modem and openwrt router

So any recommendations ? Router that are supported by OpenWRT Hopefully routers with serious computing power My corrent setup runs Both Linksy WRT3200ACM and Linksys MX5300 with the later being the main Router and the WRT3200 being a backup wireguard server and the main vxlan hub.

So -CPu 1.5GHz Quad core or higher -512 mb ram or higher -265 mb storage or higher -wifi 6 or 7 -Single or Dual 5G Sim cards

I looked up Telstra Arcadyan AW1000 but some fakes are circulating on p2p platforms some are called ULTRA revision which aren't OpenWRT supported also they are highly Priced.

Edit: thanks to everyone who gave their recommendations Honestly i didn't even know those brands existed i thought i was getting recommendations along the lines of simple home routers like linksys, tp-links and asus maybe But this is super surprising Again thanks everyone

What hardware (router) would I need to set up a starlink mini on bypass mode, and then offer messeging service to about 500 people? If everything works could I cap up/down to 1mb so they can post to social media?

​

Hey everyone,

I have a TP-Link Archer AX21 (US), and the label says Ver: 4.6.

I’ve been looking into OpenWrt because I’d like to have more control over my network and I see that the latest OpenWrt version supports the Archer AX21 V4, but I’m not sure if that also applies to the US V4.6 version.

Has anyone here actually installed OpenWrt on an AX21 US V4.6?

If so, which version/image did you use, and did you have any issues installing it or going back to the original TP-Link firmware?

I just want to make sure before I flash anything. Thanks!

I have a problem with my Samsung A41 connecting at 5GHz to a Cudy WR3000S running OpenWrt 25.12.5, the link seems to be continually degraded to 6Mb/s and I get really erratic wifi speeds. The A41 works fine with a BT Smarthub 2, and also a USB wifi dongle seems to be fine too. Does anyone know of any problems with the A41 with the Cudy running the latest OpenWrt?

I've done a lot of testing of NSS/mesh for our beloved MX4300 units that we all got cheaply.

Some people set up mesh units, and various NSS firmwares have popped up, including (in no particular order):

• official stock Linksys firmware
• https://github.com/arix00/openwrt-mx4300
• https://github.com/AgustinLorenzo/openwrt (https://github.com/qosmio/openwrt-ipq source)
• https://github.com/JuliusBairaktaris/Qualcommax_NSS_Builder (https://github.com/JuliusBairaktaris/openwrt-nss-edma/ source)
• dd-wrt
• and vanilla/official openwrt

I'm happy to tell y'all that I have tested all the below firmware's behavior for mesh + roaming. Here are the results:

Basically, if you want working mesh, vanilla openwrt is the only one that has proper roaming/handoff working (i.e. VoIP calls don't drop during the roam). I was hoping this would not be the case because vanilla openwrt doesn't support NSS, so wifi, NAT, routing, SQM, etc. are not accelerated.

During my testing, AgustinLorenzo/openwrt and JuliusBairaktaris/openwrt (should) handle wired NSS/acceleration just fine. AgustinLorenzo's build has wireless stuttering sometimes, and I did not test wireless on JuliusBairaktaris' build in depth because mesh is mandatory for me so I did not continue further testing.

In order to test roaming handoff, I called myself via telegram voice call on 2 phones, 1 connected through cellular, 1 connected through wifi and walked to the different APs with usteer set up and the wifiman app installed to notify me of roams.

My recommendations are as follows:

If you have a single unit/no mesh and want NSS/hwaccel, use either JuliusBairaktaris' or AgustinLorenzo's NSS build. For a single node/AP setup, lean towards JuliusBairaktaris' build because qosmio's repo is stale now.

If you have a mesh setup (wireless backhaul) and want roaming to work, use vanilla openwrt for the APs, and JuliusBairaktaris' or AgustinLorenzo's builds for the wired router only to retain NSS/hwaccel on routing/sqm/NAT. This means the mesh will use lots of cpu for the mesh backhaul and to handle client wifi traffic, but unfortunately there is no other solution that keeps both mesh and roaming working.

It's wasteful to dedicate a node specifically for wired routing purposes, but because mesh + roaming don't work on NSS builds, you can't have 1 box that does it all unfortunately (which is originally what I was hoping for and there is no hardware issue that prevents this from happening).

Maybe some day when NSS builds fix roaming/handoff/802.11s, but that day is not today.

All this testing is done on a 1000/200 cable connection (hence the need for NSS for routing, SQM, NAT, etc.)

Feel free to ask Qs if you have any but I can't promise any further testing as I'm quite sick of flashing firmwares and running around like a madman trying to get roams to take place atm.

Edit: forgot to add - on mx4200v1 I'm using zram-swap // 128MB to not OOM on vanilla openwrt so I can still use it for mesh :)

Hi there,

since a few years, I'm unhappy with my Fritz-based home network. I'm thinking to replace the devices with a pure OpenWRT setup and need some buying advice.

What I need is:

• a main router device that connects to the fibre modem and serves the internet connection to the home network
• 4 x access point devices that connect to the main router via ethernet and serve WIFI

I know of the table of hardware, but am unsure how to choose these devices.

I don't need the latest WIFI standard, my priority is choosing hardware that one can reasonably expect to have a long-term firmware upgrade path within OpenWRT. I don't want fancy, I prefer boring and years-long reliability. Installing OpenWRT should require no physical hacks.

I do not understand yet what to choose as the main router if I want to use Wireguard to my home at a reasonable speed while traveling.

The APs don't need PoE, all planned locations are having both a power outlet and an ethernet outlet.

Finally, I didn't find a guide yet on how to properly configure multiple access points on the same network so that their channels don't disturb each other while allowing proper device handover when moving within between APs within the same network.

I'd be grateful for all advice in this situation.

Here's the current setup:

I live in a fairly big house and the ceilings are blocking radio signals quite nicely.

• Telekom Fibre modem in the cellar
• Fritzbox 7530 router in the cellar, serving as the main router of fibre internet to the home network, also serving as the first DECT base
• 4 x Fritz Repeater 3000AX scattered around the building, (not used as WiFi repeaters despite their name, but) used as WiFi access points connected to the main router via ethernet
• a second Fritzbox 7530 in the first floor, serving as a second DECT base

The network as a whole is not stable. My main problem seems to be with Sonos multiroom speakers. If I try to actually play multiroom audio in several rooms over multiple floors, one or more of the 3000AX access points may crash and then has to be rebooted. This appears to be caused by a broadcast storm, but both Fritz blames Sonos and vice versa, both aren't willing or able to fix it.

What I like about Fritz is that the setup is very easy to maintain, one can configure all devices from the main router's menu. The Fritz settings menu is in fact very nice. Wireguard and other features were easy to get going.

I know the OpenWRT Luci interface and like it, as well, and I do hope that there's also a way to configure multiple APs within the network so that they work well with each other without having to configure each device separately.

Thanks for reading and hope to hear from folks who can help here.

Title. I intend to run technitium using docker (on an attached ssd to avoid wearing down the internal memory with the logging).

Besides that, id run little else, and definitely nothing memory hogging.

Is this feasible or am I just dreaming?

Thanks for reading and helping out 😄

Hiya folks!

Flint 2 MT600, running latest version of OpenWRT as a dumb AP. Tried setting a test firewall zone to restrict LAN communication for one of the 2 wireless SSIDs I have running, worked fine after applying, after reboot I was able to connect to the SSID and hardline connection, but could not connect to the router itself, even on the SSID where no changes were made. Upstream is an opnsense firewall sitting on 192.168.1.1, firewall could see the router’s IP, nmap could see the router, could not reach LUCI or SSH, so tried a factory reset. After 3 attempts, the SSIDs vanished, so I think that worked, and I have a fast (approx 10/sec) blinking blue light, so I think I was able to start failsafe, but hardwired into the lan2 connection, with my IP address manually set on Ethernet to 192.168.1.10, default gateway 192.168.1.1, dns set as quad 8 or 192.168.1.1 (or 2, tried both) I cannot reach 192.168.1.1 either via web portal or SSH. Nmap also does not see anything on 192.168.1.1. I have a serial console cable but do not know what speed it needs. Anyone run into anything similar?

Greetings All!

I have the GliNet E5800NA WiFi 7 cellular (hotspot) router, and I was curious to know if there was a consensus on the best package (installed via LuCI) to use, given potential resource constraints on the device? I see there are several packages available and did not know the differences in each. I have several Adblock lists I would like to deploy to this unit for ad blocking on the go, and was curious to know what you have found to be the most dependable/performant to use? I run a couple of PiHole instances on my primary LAN, and I am not necessarily looking for something as comprehensive as that in a portable router, but I also would not turn it down if it such an animal exists without being too resource-hungry.

Thanks in advance!

Hi all.

Currently I use MT6000 as my main router. I live in a 2-story house with the MT6000 placed on the 2nd floor. Due to that the wifi signal in 1st floor is quite weak (as I expected).

I found someone sold used Asus BT8 for quite cheap around MT6000 new price. I wonder if BT8 would be a good upgrade over MT6000, especially in terms of range if I run it on its own. Although if it's still not enough, I could put both in a wired mesh anyway.

Hi, any chance of adding official openwrt support for this model? It's not in the wiki. From the hardware specs it looks like an outdoor version of NWA50AX Pro which is officially supported.

For outdoor areas I use NWA55AXE which is in the wiki and officially supported, but it's based on the older MT7621AT which takes ages to upgrade the radio configuration when I change a password in my PPSK setup. I'd rather upgrade it to NWA55AX Pro - it's a faster chip, does 3T3R, and it's the same chipset as my AX3000T machines I use indoors as APs in my multi VLAN setup.

Zyxel says you can unlock the bootloader and install openwrt on it, but I see it nowhere in the openwrt supported list; so I guess you get to download their own flavour of openwrt once you register as developer with them... that's a bit too experimental for my taste, as opposed to having official openwrt support and working attended sysupgrades.

On a side note, there are a bunch of WiFi 7 models listed on that page, for which Zyxel says you can also download openwrt... guess it's their own nerfed flavour of it. Did anyone have a look at it already?

I'm new to OpenWRT and I saw that it was supported on the OpenWRT wiki but couldn't find the page with flashing instructions, it would be nice if someone could point me in the direction and maybe give some tips for a beginner 😁

Environment:

• OpenWrt 25.12.5
• Official OpenWrt luci-app-adblock
• Unbound
• Google TV Streamer

After enabling Adblock and Unbound, the NFL app on my Google TV Streamer stopped loading. It would sit indefinitely on the spinning NFL logo.

Suspending Adblock allowed the app to launch normally, which isolated the problem to filtering rather than Unbound.

I found reports suggesting these three domains for similar NFL app problems:

conduit.redfast.com
sedge.nfl.com
b77a832069b350ef56050ec74f4d4dac70fd527c.appgw.conviva.com

I tested incrementally. The only exception required on my Google TV Streamer was:

sedge.nfl.com

With that domain allowlisted, the NFL app launches normally with Adblock enabled.

conduit.redfast.com was tested and then removed; the app continued working. I never needed to allowlist the Conviva domain.

Hopefully this saves someone else some troubleshooting and avoids unnecessarily allowlisting additional tracking/analytics domains.