On Fri, 2015-09-11 at 18:56 +0300, Vladimir wrote: > This router is widely available, looks powerful for its money, and > could be a potential candidate for support by OpenWRT project: > especially because Bob has a LibreCMC build for it that works really > well (for board revision v1.7 , which is also the latest available at > the moment) > > For a start of discussion I have a couple of questions to Bob, with > quotes from the last message: > > > > > I have not looked at / flashed u-boot yet > > > > Sorry for misunderstanding, but does it mean that "free-as-in > -freedom" u-boot has not been tested on this router yet? (that right > now your LibreCMC build works, but with a proprietary u-boot)
So, the router does ship with u-boot and the u-boot project is free software (with some blobs thrown in). I have not reviewed the manufacture sources,compiled and flashed u-boot on these routers (yet). Until that is done, we can't be sure on the status of the switch or other potential issues (see below). > > > > and I still have concerns about the switch in this and the TL > -WR1043ND > > (those concerns being that it has a managed switch and what I > believe to be > > a different flash chip for it) > > > > What is that "managed switch" ? Could it be a hardware level > backdoor? Most routers these days (most anything with gigabit switch) has a managed switch. This is usually a separate controller (sometimes not) from the SoC. In the case of the TL-WDR4300 and TL-WR1043ND, they have a separate controller for the switch. Generally, these controllers have their own flash, a blob in the main flash ROM or a built-in ROM. At this point, it is still not fully clear (to me) which category this switch falls into. If the controller has a true ROM (can't be flashed), then it might be OK. If we find a blob in the main flash ROM or in u -boot, it could be game over. In terms of having a backdoor, I personally try to avoid managed switches, but that is kind of hard to avoid these days. There still lots of other potential issues with any piece of hardware you buy, so the risk is about the same. If anyone on the mailing list has additional information to add, that would be great. -- Robert Call (Bob) b...@librecmc.org https://librecmc.org _______________________________________________ Librecmc-dev mailing list Librecmc-dev@lists.librecmc.org https://librecmc.org/mailman/listinfo/librecmc-dev
