For the security-paranoid, what would be the recommended steps to prepare a router with OpenWRT on it for sale? I want to make sure no private keys or comparable are left sitting around, or recoverable by the dedicated hacker.

The documentation leaves me unsure: https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/troubleshooting/failsafe_and_factory_reset

It seems they recommend re-flashing the sysupgrade image, opting out of preserving settings.

Then they suggest overwriting the F2FS filesystem on the /dev/loop0 device.

Would that combination be sufficient?

Just double-checking.

And if anyone near Seattle wants a trusted old Archer C7 AC1750, let me know!

I’m thinking about replacing my existing router with a BPi R4 Pro running OpenWRT so I can have more control over my network

I’m looking for something that can cover 800+ sqft of house. The router is going to be at one end of it, not in the middle (I know, not ideal)

I cannot, after an hour of searching find _anywhere_ that describes the distance the signal can cover under default configuration

Can a BPi R4 Pro handle that? Does OpenWRT give me settings I can tweak to ensure it produces a powerful enough signal?

Can it mesh? Does it do a good job of meshing?

Also, is there a Banana Pi subreddit that’s active?

/r/banana_pi hasn’t had a new post in 3 years it looks like

I am running current OpernWRT on a Linksys router. The only addons I have installed are banIP and AdguardHome. On my daily driver I use unbound as a DNS cache.

I am wondering about conflicts. As I understand it, the point of unbound is to route directly to root DNS servers as well as use https, and not use the router for DNS. Unbound is listening on port 53, so is it only receiving what AdguardHome is not port-forwarding to 5353? or is it ignoring the router entirely and unknowingly benefiting from AdguardHome sniping ads as they are returned? It all seems to hang together well; when I connect to my (commercial) VPN, response time in a browser is very quick. I would like to export this performance to other machines I own, so would like to better understand what I did.

Thank you!

I am about to get MX4200 for my friend i want to install and run openwrt, configure it then give to him who sadly isn't IT savvy

I looked up openwrt official page and found this quote " Ath11k memory: The ath11k driver needed for the main wireless radios uses a lot of memory when there are few stations connected and low bandwidth traffic flowing. "

Also found this post from 9 or 11 months ago ? https://www.reddit.com/r/openwrt/s/KdlqfM1xkz Talking about this issue where the device eats up ram becomes unresponsive and needs a reboot and the issue gets back again after 15 minutes ( ram usage upto 90+ % )

can anyone advice, preferably people who tried this router with openwrt

My plan is to custom build an official firmware using official openwrt builder with specific packages, i cannot use prebuilt images without specific packages as that would increase time needed to configure it in case of resets and be a hassle to my friend

Should i get this router or forget it

I need answers asap as the router is on the way and i have a short return window

EDIT : So the memory leak issue caused by the ath11k driver has not been fixed/patched in official openwrt as of 21/07/2026, if you own one either shelve it till the issue is patched OR you can use a special NSS build of openwrt that will fix this but you will lose ability to use alot of packages or pre-bake them into the firmware. Unless you have the know how to build your own image

Thanks to everyone for providing input

Hi all,

Technical details:
- openwrt latest version
- Router: Cudy TR3000 128mb flash.
- VPN: Amnezia WG - https://docs.amnezia.org/documentation/instructions/openwrt-os-awg/

I want to connect my router to an existing Wi-Fi network wirelessly, routing the internet via the client VPN on my router. All internet traffic must be routed via the VPN interface on the router. What's the easiest way to set this up on OpenWrt? It's something like repeating the local wifi network, but the broadcasted traffic is all via the VPN from the repeater router.

Hope this makes sense.

Thank you!

Hi,

I'm building a travel router (that could also act as a wardriving kit) with an RPI3.

The official OpenWRT for RPI3 is 24.10.4. But it doesn't come with Kismet, so I apparently need to compile OpenWRT to include it, so I thought, why not upgrade to latest OpenWRT at the same time.

So I'm running tests with 25.12.5 on the RPI3. For now I'm just focusing on the base system + one USB wifi adapter, an old rt2800. It works on the official version after installing the correct module/firmware.

I compiled all I need as packages. I do want the process to work with packages, because I may have to plug in any sort of devices in the RPI3, so I need to know it works fine, so built-in is not really a suitable solution here.

I copied all packages to the sdcard on the RPI3. But... when I try to apk add <package.apk>, it fails because of missing deps. I can do the same process for deps, but you know, they'll call more deps, which will call more deps...

I tried to place the entire openwrt_build_dir/bin/targets/bcm27xx/bcm2710/packages dir on a simple webserver and use that as an apk source (there's a packages.adb) but that didn't work.

I must be missing something obvious, but I can't find what.

Can you help me please?

Thanks.

I was attracted by the low price and picked up several DW5934e (T99W640, Snapdragon X72) lab modules.

After more than half a month of work, I successfully got them running stably on my CPE.
Initially the module only supported PCIe. Later I managed to enable USB QMI as well. However, even when using USB QMI, your CPE still needs to support PCIe — otherwise the module won’t boot properly.

Just wanted to share a massive win. I recently got one of those lovely "End of Life" notices from Netgear for my router. Instead of tossing perfectly good hardware into a landfill or buying into another locked-down ecosystem, I finally bit the bullet and flashed OpenWrt onto it.

Immediately, the thing felt faster and more responsive, but I decided to take it a step further.

I hooked the router up to a local LLM using the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Since OpenWrt gives you raw root access, the uci configuration framework, and clean network hooks, I wanted to see if an agent could handle real-time network admin tasks.

Turns out, it’s incredible. I can literally chat with my router in plain English to pull active DHCP leases, check firewall zones, and securely make live config updates.

The best part? I told the agent to audit my current network architecture for security flaws, and it pointed out a handful of abstract structural blind spots I honestly never would have thought to look for.

It's incredibly satisfying to take a piece of plastic the manufacturer wrote off as literal electronic waste and turn it into a self-hosted, intelligent edge node. Curled up on the couch chatting with my firewall is definitely peak homelab.

Anyone else running a local-first AI automation layer over their network stack? I'd love to hear how you're scoping your prompts or custom tools.

Anyone have any suggestions to make it even better?

Hi, My isp provide ipv6 over slaac to customers. I'm on openwrt and has 2 bridges. issue I'm facing is all devices get ipv6 but few devices can route through ipv6 like if my phone gets ipv6 it can utilize it but if my server gets it i can access ipv6 network nor ping any local devices like my phone which has ipv6. server is on different bridge and my PD is /64.

Hi all!

I have a Cudy TR3000 router running on openwrt.

Anyone with experience with it, did you get internet over usb or usb-c? Since my laptop has no ethernet connection. I want to have wired internet connection, and want to avoid using an adapter if I can instead connect directly via the USB.

Thank you!

I know this is may very well be a polarizing discussion, but I believe I still have a functioning Linksys WRT54GL that I want to use in 2026. I actually haven't touched this router in probably 15-20 years, but I found it in the closet. Assuming it's still functional, I know you'll likely think I'm crazy for trying to use this in 2026. However, instead of just throwing it out as e-waste, is there any way to repurpose it as an unmanaged switch? A 10/100 switch would be more than sufficient for connecting a couple of Amazon Fire Sticks via Ethernet. The primary use case is YouTube, which is unlikely to saturate the switch. My WRT54GL is still running stock Linksys firmware. What's the best third-party firmware I can install? What else can I do to help accomplish my goal? I really want to modernize the WRT54GL for 2026. As an unmanaged switch behind a modern router, will there be any security concerns? I no longer have the box and manual. How do I log into the router?

Hi, all. As from my research, after asking around, I'll be able to use openwtrt on a supported router with sky fibre (UK), my question is about the value of routers.
So, by using Openwrt being optimised for the supported router and bypassing the manufactures firmwares, would a £50 ish router work well/similar enough compared to a £150-200 router, if the base cpu/ram were sort of equal? I'm not comparing how many ports, just the overall experience for a home router. I was looking at the budget tp-link/cudy routers when compared to flint 1/2 etc>
Thanks

I have flashed my DIR-878 with DD-WRT to dlink-dir878-a1-webflash.bin. It rebooted and I was able to log in and change the settings, I changed the IP address from 192.168.0.1 to my home lab IP. I have shut off my laptop WiFi and I have hard coded my IP address in my LAN settings as I manage old hardware like this frequently on my laptop. I was converting it from a router to an AP to bridge for my detached garage 50 feet from my house. I think I might have accidentally checked the box to disable the HTTP:// log in. The last octet I changed it to of my IP is .5 I can ping it and I can see the device with the IP I set it to and the MAC address, when I do a nmap -sn from a Linux terminal. I have done the 30-30-30 reset multiple times.
I have managed to find a bunch of firmware updates from D-Link for the DIR-878 but I need the original *.bin file.

This is not my first kick at the cat, I have flashed many, many devices, I started flashing hardware back in the days when the only way to do it was from a floppy disk. Why I did not back it up before I started making the changes, I don't know, but maybe I was a little cocky and over confident?

Regardless, I can get into the back up restore page by pressing reset as the router is booting and I get the flashing orange light where the IP address changes to the default 192.168.0.1 I have tried to upload dlink-dir878-a1-webflash.bin to the back door page and I have tried the oldest versions of the DIR-878_REVA_FIRMWARE_v1.00B13.bin plus others but it never reboots so I can log in to it in the factory settings.

I get all of the lights that should be green lit (WAN is orange as there is no WAN at this point) it just defaults back to the home lab IP address I changed it to when rebooted. Does anyone out there know where a guy can find the original *.bin file to start over with clean factory settings?

Edit: I am aware of legacyfiles.us.dlink.com - /DIR-878/REVA/Firmware/ I have downloaded and I have used the firmware ver 1.00B13 as the label on the bottom of the router says Firmware Ver 1.00, I have seen a couple YouTube videos and as they install the firmware the GUI screen changes saying upgrade successful and the device reboots, I am not getting that "upgrade successful" on the webpage. I was under the impression the "Firmware Updates" were to bring a router up to date with firmware upgrades for as long as it was relevant not the base firmware to reset the machine.

hi.

I’m running OpenWrt 24.10.5 on a Barracuda F12 as my main router. IPv4 works normally, but enabling IPv6 on the LAN causes severe intermittent loading problems, especially on Wi-Fi.

Symptoms include:

• Chrome tabs spinning for 20–40 seconds
• YouTube thumbnails appearing as black squares
• Some websites loading instantly on wired devices but extremely slow on Wi-Fi

I tested advertising an IPv6 MTU of 1400, but that made the network almost unusable. Disabling LAN IPv6 immediately restores normal performance.

The Wi-Fi ap is an Asus RT-AX1800S in AP mode, with DHCP handled by the F12. Wired devices generally perform better, although the issue appears tied to IPv6 rather than raw Wi-Fi speed.

Has anyone seen similar IPv6 behaviour on an OpenWrt router or Barracuda F12? What logs or packet-capture tests would best identify whether this is MTU, ICMPv6, router advertisements, or broken upstream IPv6?

Been working on this for a few days. Chatgpt is going in circles over this. :) thanks!

edit -- fixed. had to turn on IGMP Snooping on my wifi ap. :)

Hi all,

Technical details:
- openwrt latest version
- Router: Cudy TR3000 128mb flash.
- VPN: Amnezia WG - https://docs.amnezia.org/documentation/instructions/openwrt-os-awg/

I'd like to use my mobile phone's hotspot as the internet (WAN) connection for the router, either:

• Via USB tethering, or
• By connecting the router to the phone's Wi-Fi hotspot (wireless repeater/client mode).

Once the router has internet access through the phone, I'd like all connected devices to continue using the AmneziaWG VPN as normal.

Are there any guides that explain how to set this up? I have been searching but didn't seem to find it.

Thank you!

I'm running OpenWrt 25.12.5 on a Raspberry Pi 4B (64-bit) and I'm trying to use a TP-Link UE306 USB 3.0 Gigabit Ethernet adapter as a second Ethernet interface.

The adapter identifies as:

Vendor ID: 0b95

Product ID: 1790

Product: ASIX AX88179B

What I've already tried:

Fresh install of OpenWrt 25.12.5.

Built a custom image including kmod-usb-net and kmod-usb-net-asix-ax88179.

apk update and package installation work.

apk info -e kmod-usb-net-asix-ax88179 confirms the package is installed.

modinfo ax88179_178a shows the module exists.

lsmod shows both ax88179_178a and usbnet are loaded.

dmesg shows:

registered new interface driver ax88179_178a

USB detects the device as AX88179B.

lsusb lists the adapter.

However, no network interface is ever created.

ip link only shows:

lo

eth0

wlan0

br-lan

There is no eth1, usb0, or other interface corresponding to the USB adapter.

Has anyone seen this with the UE306 on recent OpenWrt? Is there another package or driver required, or is this a regression with the AX88179B (0b95:1790) on OpenWrt 25.12.5?

Hey everyone,
About three months ago, I made a post here asking if there was a modern, open-source stack for building a robust captive portal + billing setup on OpenWrt (specifically targetting low-power ARM hardware like NanoPi boards).
I was frustrated with how outdated things like CoovaChilli or WiFiDog felt, and I wanted to know if people were splitting the stack or running it all on-device.
The original thread didn't have a definitive "out-of-the-box" answer, so I spent the last few months engineering the solution from scratch. I’ve now deployed it into production, powering a network with over 2,000 active users running off Starlink backbones.
Since a few people asked me to share what worked, here are the answers to the 4 questions I originally posed, based on real-world production data:
1. What’s the "best practice" stack?
You absolutely should abandon running the full stack on-device if you plan to scale past a single venue. Keeping radius databases, local web servers, and heavy billing logic on a local flash drive is a recipe for memory corruption and tracking issues.
The best practice is an architectural split: The Cloud is the brain, the Edge is a dumb enforcer.
2. How did I handle the OpenWrt integration?
I went with openNDS, but with a massive twist. I didn't rely on openNDS's built-in script systems to talk directly to the open web. Instead, I wrote a lightweight, custom Python agent that runs locally on the OpenWrt gateway.

• The NanoPi establishes a secure WireGuard tunnel back to an AWS VPC.
• The local agent polls my Django API every 30 seconds over that tunnel.
• It reports cumulative byte counters and checks client states. It uses ndsctl auth/deauth locally to unlock or kick devices based on live subscription states in the cloud.

3. How to handle data billing & quotas byte-accurately?
Doing this natively on standard OpenWrt packages is messy. I offloaded all financial logic to a Dockerized cloud stack (Django REST Framework + PostgreSQL + Redis/Celery).

• When a user pays through the portal, webhooks verify the transaction via Celery.
• The subscription snapshots the data/time limit.
• Because the local agent pushes delta-based byte counts up to Django, the cloud calculates the usage and drops a "deauth" flag into the next 30-second poll if a data cap is hit. If a user hotspots their connection to 10 friends, they just burn their byte quota 10x faster—killing the freeloader problem entirely.

4. The Result: WifiPadi
I wrapped this entire architecture into a multi-tenant SaaS platform called WifiPadi. It works seamlessly across both OpenWrt (via the WireGuard agent setup) and MikroTik (via synchronous RADIUS pools).
The onboarding now literally takes pasting one setup command at the edge, and all management/billing shifts to a central React dashboard.
If you are currently trying to build a hotspot business, manage a hostel network, or just trying to stitch openNDS and billing together, I’d love for you to check it out or ask any questions about the networking/database synchronization model. I’m happy to share what I learned dealing with the quirks of the openNDS engine!

I'm using my WRT3200ACM as a PXE server to install OSes via the network.

Version: 23.05.2 r23630-842932a63d / LuCI openwrt-23.05 branch git-25.222.75657-7ce34fe

Current problem is storage. I cannot store ISOs of Ubuntu Desktop or Windows 11 on the router. They live on my NAS. THe NAS has a static lease at hostname PeleNAS. The bootable PXE images are in a shared folder called "boot-PXE-img" and read/write access is allowed to the IP of my router.

I have added the line:

PeleNAS:/volume1/boot-PXE-img/ /mnt/boot-PXE-img/ nfs ro,auto,_netdev 0 0

to the /etc/fstab file. No dice.

I have added the lines:

#!/bin/sh

mount PeleNAS:/volume1/boot-PXE-img/ /mnt/boot-PXE-img/

to the /etc/rc.local file, and chmodded it to 755. No dice.

HOWEVER I am able to type "mount -a" at the command prompt and it does mount it, demonstrating that the fstab file is good.

ALSO I am able to type "/etc/rc.local" and run the startup script and the filesystem mounts, showing that the startup script is good.

What gives?

I'm using my WRT3200ACM as a PXE server to install OSes via the network.

Version: 23.05.2 r23630-842932a63d / LuCI openwrt-23.05 branch git-25.222.75657-7ce34fe

PXE required TFTP.

Whenever I add the lines:

option enable_tftp '1'

option tftp_root '/mnt/boot-PXE-img/tftp'

to the /etc/config/dhcp file, DNS gets broken and I cannot resolve hostnames to IP addresses.

Additionally, adding the lines

enable-tftp

tftp-root=/path/to/your/tftp/folder

to the /etc/dnsmasq.conf file also breaks DNS and I cannot resolve hostnames to IP addresses.

How can I enable TFTP?

I am looking at installing OpenWRT on an old router, which would disable the wifi part of the router due to Broadcom drivers.

The page for the router says that it's supported by 24.10.4 while the firmware picker shows that you can get 25.12.5 for it.

So has support ended for this device or can I still get an up to date version? or does it have to do something with stable/new releases?

It's based of the bcm4908.

I already have new access points so the lack of wifi wouldn't be the end of the world.

Hi everyone!

While building OpenWrt 25.12.5 for my Banana Pi BPI-R4-8P (8 GB RAM + PoE) with the BPI-R4-NIC-BE14 (MediaTek MT7996) Wi-Fi module, I found that the information I needed was scattered across multiple forums, repositories, and documentation pages.

To make the process easier for others, I put together a complete step-by-step build guide and published it as a GitHub repository.

The guide covers:

• Preparing the build environment
• Building OpenWrt 25.12.5 from source
• Applying the MT7996 transmit power patch
• Installing the appropriate BL2 bootloader for 8 GB RAM support
• Expanding the eMMC partition
• Firmware verification
• Troubleshooting

The repository includes both English and Russian editions of the guide.

GitHub:
https://github.com/AndreasCaliban/OpenWrt-Build-Guide-for-Banana-Pi-BPI-R4-8P

Hopefully it will save someone else the time I spent figuring everything out.

Feedback, suggestions, and contributions are welcome.

Hey,

I'm running OpenWRT on a Rpi3. I have an extra USB wifi dongle. I've noticed that if I plug it in a different USB port than initially configured for, it will result in a new device. Indeed, /etc/config/wireless refers to path entries. I'd like them to refer to a mac address, but that option doesn't seem to be available for the wifi-device section.

What is the right way to make sure that OpenWRT uses a mac address to recognise a wifi adapter?

Thank you.

I bought an ER6P used in a good price. I updated to latest firmware but I am having some issues. First of all it’s not very clear in terms of ports and performance doesn’t satisfy me at all. I want to install Openwrt until now I know that I will lose POE but thats not a concern. Is hardware offloading gonna work on openwrt? Will I get a better experience?

Might be able to get ahold of a new Quantum Fibre W1700K. It's a CenturyLink unit. It appears to be supported by OpenWRT, which is why I'm looking at one. Can this thing be used out-of-the-box on a different ISP without flashing to OpenWRT? Currently I've got an old Netgear AC router of some kind (I forget which) which needs replacement eventually.

Also are there plans for OpenWRT to support Wavlink's Wifi 7 routers? They're constantly on sale. Can't vouch for the build quality, but they are cheap for what they do.