If you do that I'd be interested in seeing a custom-build done. I started on this myself last year with a Netgear R6050 but due to my inexperience with setting up an OpenWRT toolchain and lack of time, and in particular the low price of other, supported, devices, I never got a "Round Tuit" I did post my findings here:
https://forum.openwrt.org/t/openwrt-support-for-a-netgear-r6050/179491 And it looks to be a very easy port job, just a few mods of the R6020 build. If there's any interest I'd be happy to solder on a serial port to the thing and show up with it and a laptop and tested with nmrpflash ready to go. Unfortunately, while I had asked some specific questions on what to expect from setting up a build system for openwrt on that forum - none of the dev's responded to any of them. Sigh. Since then I've gotten a lot more experience installing OpenWRT builds. In my experience openWRT compliant devices either fall into 1 of 2 camps: You got the ones like the Cisco Meraki MR52, or many of the TP-Link devices, or the 4Mb flash devices like the WNR2000, which require special, long procedures to install - usually a rs232 serial port, etc. or with the tp-links, pulling the factory firmware down to a Linux box, slicing off the uboot header and sticking it on the front of the openwrt firmware. Or finding older versions of openwrt. This can take a lot of time and reading to figure out the secret sauce for the specific device. Many of the custom builds I've seen people do in the openwrt forum for these edge cases involve cutting out extras to get newer firmware releases to fit in 4MB fash devices. I've used a number of these builds people have produced and found them to be all of high quality. Needless to say, I used them on devices that are behind firewalls, and are just being used as client bridges or access points since many of them are of older releases. Then you got everything else in which installing openwrt is a snap - 5 minutes and you are done. Because I use OpenWRT on a LOT of devices (I have probably 50 of them I manage now) I have found it just easier to buy supported devices that are in the "installation is a snap" camp. But it still would be interesting to see a few border case installs, like my R6050 Now, in the SOHO router vein, here are 3 other SOHO router presentation PLUG ideas I've been considering over the years: Packet Per Second speed There's a huge dearth of information out there on just how fast these devices work. With PC-based routers, it's easy. Even a crappy Intel Core i5 generation 4 CPU desktop - the kind of stuff companies today are forklift chucking into the garbage - can run a full ethernet-to-ethernet Internet routing for a 1Gbt Internet connection. And, at least in the United States, very few people still have this fast an Internet connection. Most are asymmectrical. So what tends to happen is that people who need real power, real speed - they go to used 1U rack mounted servers. For example something like this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/235527553078 For $80 you get a Xeon with 2 gigE ports in it ready to rock and roll. You can install pfSense or OPNsense on that and have a router ready to handle a 1000 users on a business Internet connection without even knowing hardly anything about routers. But, the ARM chipsets in these SOHO devices are surprisingly powerful in comparison. However, setting up a test bench with 2 servers on each side of a router that can spew high rates of packets of various sizes at each other through the router isn't that simple. Not a lot of people do it and test these devices, nor do they even do this and test "commercial" routers like various Cisco offerings. It would be really cool to setup a presentation with a collection of devices some with OpenWRT some with manufacturer's firmware and ran them through the gauntlet until they fell down on their faces. I know most people buy these for their wifi chips and wifi just plain old isn't very fast, but they work as ethernet-to-ethernet routers also. Debricking When I first started out playing with alternative router firmware if I made a mistake and bricked a router that I couldn't unbrick with the usual tftp methods, I'd then put it in a box to get to "one of these days" Over time that box got larger and finally, attempting to avoid serial port nonsense, I tried some of the "pin short" methods of debricking. This worked OK for a few models that supported it until one day I fried a router doing that and had to throw it out. So then I finally bit the bullet, bought the proper 3v+ level serial adapter and started in with the soldering iron. And I found that actually soldering on a serial port was not that difficult. There's some tricks to the trade of course - but one weekend I did an unbrickfest and worked through my cardboard box of devices until I ran out of them. Now I'm slowly building that box up again and one of these days I'll do another. It's actually quite easy to do these once you get the hang of it and a procedure worked out. I even built, years ago, a jtag adapter out of a parallel port and used that with the handmaid software on a wrt54g, but never did it for debricking, only just to see how to do it. Doing it taught me that if the router is so scotched that you have to jtag it - your time is better spent tossing it in the garbage and buying a replacement. Big 3 overview: The last idea I had concerned a huge giant hole in OpenWRT: it's support for Broadcom-based chips. IT STINKS. And in some cases it's downright evil. There are devices where you install OpenWRT and it boots, you enable the 2.4Ghz radio, everything works fine, you enable the 5Ghz radio and you brick the device since it goes into a bootloop. And there is no warning on the hardware page for that device that this will happen. Love them or hate them, Broadcom-chap based wifi routers probably have close to 50% of the market. So there are tons and tons of older yet very good router hardware gear out there that is Broadcom. For example I picked up a nice Netgear R6700v3 AC1750 yesterday for all of $7.50 from Goodwill. This has a 1Ghz CPU, hardware address translation that will allow the device to get to 95% throughput of an ethernet-to-ethernet routing of a 1Gbit Internet connection, and can source or terminate a wireguard or OpenVPN vpn. The catch is it's Broadcom based. Happily, there's 2 alternative firmwares out there FreshTomato and dd-wrt. FreshTomato uses the original K2.6 linux kernel. Dd-wrt uses the newer K3.0 kernel. And these firmwares are all completely patched for the latest vulnerabilities just like OpenWRT. While it is true that using OpenWRT allows you to run newer kernels, is it really worthwhile to be constantly chasing the latest kernel that the embedded Linux project releases? These devices are toasters and who cares what the kernel version is as long as the firmware of the device isn't vulnerable. Possibly a presentation on "the big 3" alternative router firmwares might be of interest? Something along the lines of: FreshTomato: Limited set of features but extremely stable since the developer uses the manufacturers binary blob hardware drivers that are released with their OSS source. Developer did not sign an NDA with Broadcom. Compilation process for firmware is easy. dd-wrt: Much more full featured including support for the Broadcom hardware NAT that allows for high speed packet routing however requires more lengthy testing periods for firmware used in production since the developer is using newer kernels with binary blobs released by Broadcom rather than vetted by the router manufacturer. Developer did sign an NDA with Broadcom. (note that dd-wrt also supports open chipsets like Atheros/Qualcomm with much newer kernels however this is a separate dev branch) Compilation process for firmware is complicated requiring oddball toolchains and so on but instructions are available on how to set it up. The very best wiki and forum support of all the three (my opinion obviously) OpenWRT Probably the most full featured but support is spotty on the wiki and forums particularly for newbies and particularly for the oddball hardware/corner cases (Like I cited above) Easier to load binaries since the flash isn't in read-only mode like the other 2. Compilation is probably in between the other 2 in level of difficulty. Definitely easier to produce custom-builds of OpenWRT with embedded programs that aren't in the default OpenWRT since by cutting off all the proprietary wifi chipsets out there, Possibly a presentation with a demo of 3 of these devices with the 3 major alternative firmwares and their web interfaces, along with some common scenarios (static IP's assigned via DHCP, special DHCP options used for phones, VLAN routing, multiple secondary IP assignments to the same interface, subnetting different interfaces, etc.) Anyway, just some random thoughts. Ted -----Original Message----- From: PLUG <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Russell Senior Sent: Friday, October 11, 2024 3:17 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [PLUG] Next meeting topic? I think I mentioned this at the last meeting, but I don't have a speaker or prospect for November yet. So, a) Does anyone have a topic they want to do a presentation on or a plausible lead on a speaker? If not, then: b) I am thinking about doing a kind of OpenWrt clinic at the November meeting. That is, I/we bring some devices, lay them out on a table, show what installing OpenWrt looks like, show what building OpenWrt looks like, maybe people can bring devices they want help with. That sort of thing. Thoughts? -- Russell Senior PLUG Volunteer [email protected]
