On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 11:53:56AM -0500, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote: > For a while it has looked as if the C7 v2 was a very good choice if > one wanted to run open firmware. In particular, it uses an Atheros > radio that has open drivers. > > Based on my criteria, OpenWrt is the firmware to run (or something based > on it). DD-WRT and others have problems that make them not open by my > standards. > > I haven't actually run OpenWrt on a C7. But I learned a few things last > night that dismayed me. You can find these in "Note:" entries on the > wiki page but they don't stick out. > <https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/archer-c5-c7-wdr7500> > > 0) It is "OpenWrt", not "OpenWRT". > > 1) Recent stock firmware from TP-Link locks out flashing third-party > firmware. > <http://ml.ninux.org/pipermail/battlemesh/2016-February/004379.html> > If you have a C7 with older stock firmware, don't upgrade it to the > current stock firmware if you ever hope to use OpenWrt. There are > apparently work-arounds but they seem a bit intricate.
It appears to be "Don't upgrade to the current US firmware, use the worldwide one instead". > 2) The C7 (and a number of other routers) have a hardware fast-path to do > NAT. This hardware is undocumented and hacky so OpenWrt will never use > it. Without using it it is impossible to get gigabit wire-speed NATting. > But the stock firmware does use it. > <https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/11779> > > 3) For mysterious reasons OpenWrt is significantly less efficient handling > 5GHz 802.11ac. You won't notice this unless you are using a 3-antenna > client (or, I speculate, multiple 2-antenna clients) > <https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=53703> > This thread is pretty frustrating because the first message very > carefully posts observations and yet most of the following 168 messages > ask questions already answered or veer off-topic. There appears to be > no resolution. > > All this reinforces my decision to build gateways out of small > PCs rather than consumer routers. I do use an off-the-shelf wireless > router as an access point. Yeah the FCC's "That's not what we meant with our directive" is appearing to turn into exactly what people thought it would given I don't think the manufacturers see any other obvious way to obey the directive. -- Len Sorensen --- Talk Mailing List [email protected] https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
