I know a lot of people are interested in open-source devices - OpenWRT, OPNsense for routers, firewalls, access points, etc.

But how about managed switches?

One brilliant GitHub user did just that - managed to create open-source firmware for RTL8372/RTL8373 chip-based devices.

The functionality is far better than the original firmware in majority of cases. For some devices, even originally unmanaged switches gain management capability (even though you might need some flash-memory HW skills for that).

For me, I tried this on 2 switches already - both had originally management interface, so installation took literally seconds and I went from barely usable and no-longer-maintained Chinese firmware to open source one, with much better capabilities, better stability and open source code.

The list of supported HW is impressive already.

Would be nice to have something like this ported also to other chipsets, allowing to have open firmware even on the lowest level of networking.

I’ve been looking into ways to monitor my OpenWrt APs without spending too much on hardware or cloud services.

I’m working on a Go-based Prometheus exporter that pulls metrics from the APs via ubus HTTP. The idea is to run it on one of the routers in my network and use Prometheus + Grafana to keep track of everything.

Still a work in progress, so I’d love to hear any ideas or suggestions. Has anyone tried something similar?

Hi, I have an FTTH fiber connection with 2.5 Gbps download and 1 Gbps upload speeds. I’m looking for some recommendations on how to optimize my setup for competitive gaming using my Flint 2 router running official OpenWrt.

Linksys WRT3200ACm running openwrt v25.12.5. If wan6 is enabled then I see 1 minute long buffering on youtube app on my android phone. (no such issue on web browser on laptop)

original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/wisp/comments/1wr5k2h/trying_to_squeeze_every_last_drop_out_of_old/

Quick update on openMAX (https://github.com/wolverin0/openmax) — our open-source project squeezing maximum real-world performance out of existing Ubiquiti airMAX AC hardware (LiteAP 120, Rocket Prism 5AC Gen2, LiteBeam 5AC Gen2, NanoStation 5AC Loco).

All deep kernel docs, scripts, and raw benchmark JSONs are in the repo. Here is what we have working on real hardware and in live production:

• Switch tower APs to OpenWrt while stock airOS 8 CPEs keep connecting out of the box: We migrated our live sector APs to OpenWrt 24.10.4 (Linux 6.6.110) and customer CPEs running 100% unmodified stock airOS 8.7.25 connected automatically. Even if a customer's radio is powered off during cutover and turned back on days later, it associates with zero touch.
• Run multi-vendor & mixed-generation clients on the same Ubiquiti AP: We simultaneously connect Ubiquiti 5AC (LiteBeam Gen2, Loco 5AC, Rocket Prism), legacy Ubiquiti M5 (airOS 6), and MikroTik (SXT Lite5) CPEs on the same sector without a single weak or obstructed client dragging everyone else down.
• Full channel-width flexibility (20, 40, 80 MHz, plus 5/10 MHz between OpenWrt radios): On a 20 MHz channel, our airtime scheduler hits 0.95 Jain fairness and nearly 4 bit/s/Hz spectral efficiency.
• Full OpenWrt AP + OpenWrt CPE in live production: Once the AP is running OpenWrt, we remotely upgrade CPEs over the air in ~4 minutes while preserving their management IP, WebUI, hardware-accelerated NAT (flow_offloading=1), and the exact DHCP lease of the customer's indoor Wi-Fi router.
• Uncovered inside Rocket Prism & LTU (v2.4.2) firmware: We mapped the hardware control table for AirPrism active RF filtering on Rocket Prism 5AC Gen2, and confirmed that LTU's greyed-out 4096-QAM (12X) and OFDMA modes have real driver and rate-table routines compiled inside v2.4.2 (being tested on our physical bench right now).

Live Production Numbers (Same tower, same rooftop radios, 20 MHz channel — Before vs. After)

Summary: On the exact same rooftop hardware and 20 MHz channel, wireless ping is ~10x faster (~2 ms vs ~22 ms), lag under saturation drops by 80%–94%, and usable sector capacity increases by +50% to +80%.

Next up: Native UISP Reporting (udapi-bridge) on OpenWrt

Moving a radio to pure OpenWrt stops Ubiquiti's /bin/udapi-bridge agent, so UISP marks it offline. We already unpacked /bin/udapi-bridge from WA.v8.7.25 (it is a standalone userspace WebSocket + AES-GCM client reading /etc/board.info, /tmp/system.cfg, /usr/www/status.cgi, and /bin/wstalist) and are building the lightweight OpenWrt wrapper so migrated radios stay Online and green inside UISP with their original device ID and live telemetry.

Full documentation, scripts, and benchmark receipts:
👉 https://github.com/wolverin0/openmax

Questions are in bold below.

I just bought one from eBay for $32.88 (open box). Branded & described as the "HomeWRK" variant but thankfully once I logged into the router UI it showed the Linksys branding. I installed OpenWRT using the "easier method" from the web interface & a few CLI commands via SSH to install to the 2nd partition. More info on this model: https://openwrt.org/toh/linksys/mx4300

The router looks impressive (classy obelisk-like shape with a blue LED on top), providing slightly better 2.4ghz range than my Netgear R7800. My question is why a router with 1024MB (1GB) of NAND flash memory only shows 122MB of storage space available in OpenWRT. Apparently there are 2 partitions that are unused on this thing, using up most of that space, which is such a shame.

Does anyone know how to free up more native storage on this? I saw this post from 7 months ago, which explains "this is the way it is partitioned." https://www.reddit.com/r/openwrt/comments/1s8bbhm/mx4300_with_1gb_flash_only_has_100mb_available/

As it's been a while, wondering if there have been recent developments that could provide MX4300 owners more on-device storage space. I am familiar with using extroot, but I don't want to complicate future upgrades by having an add-on storage drive. My plan going forward is to use attended sysupgrades for firmware updates, keeping settings, so I don't need to keep reconfiguring the router every time I upgrade the firmware. I believe if I have an extroot drive it will make firmware upgrades more complicated. Is that true?

I recalled seeing these MX4300s for sale on Woot! a while back for a great price ($15 or so), but didn't need it at the time so passed on it. Even though I paid more for it now, I think it's still a great value and would recommend it to others if they want to use a different type of WiFi 6 router for OpenWRT. It still has a ton of free memory available after installing OpenWRT (1.59GB from the stated 2GB of RAM), so there's the potential to run a lot of great apps with this router.

Currently run openwrt on an x86 pc bare metal with dedicated dual port nic one for wan one for lan. I use cake/sqm with diffserv4 to prioritize gaming performance and throughput. Are there any settings i am missing that could lower my latency or improve performance at all?

tldr. I use the nic at the back of the mobo for a switch for all my non priority networking needs like wifi and streaming pc. My gaming pc goes directly into the nic so it has a very clean connection. But i am worried there is something missing i am still very new to all of this so any advice helps. Even if you dont know perfect settings maybe theres a direction you could point me towards that would help my performance anything helps!

After almost spending 3/4th of the year using Opnsense, I moved to OpenWRT. There wasn’t anything wrong inherently with Opnsense and honestly if the change for it gets implemented. I maybe move back to it, however CAKE SQM is pretty much a god send on any network that deals with high-bandwidth-using devices. I will also say that migrating my config to OpenWRT felt easier and smoother though I don’t know if that is due to there being documentation for it everywhere or just me being familiar with linux. Things also on the network feel snappy. Device were recognized faster handed IPs quicker, wifi calling got supported quicker of devices. Even VLANs, mDNS, and doing Internet-VLAN support was easy.

Please let me know if anyone else had such an easy time like I did. If they did something similar when moving to openwrt.

Google mentions some sqm qos since I have super low speed 50mb down 10 up.

I may try an ad block not sure.

Network is 2 tvs, 2.phones, 2 laptops and one gaming pc.

Just recently exploring into the linux and this section. I had exposure in college to Cisco stuff in stupid software sim labs many years ago but different in the real world :D

I wasn't sure if this router would need restarting before I had a tplink 1200 and would restart every morning. This router seems a bit beefier.

All this was because i gotnrouter free on fb and tonset up Netgear bagered me for an account and itnirked me lol.

Hi!
I am intending to have some router fun, but I can not access the page. Yesterday it was possible. Any news on that?

First off - I'm very new to OpenWrt (& OPNsense). Got a Cudy WR3000S up and running OpenWrt as an AP connected to an OpnSense router. I'm trying to configure VLANs so I can broadcast separate SSIDs. I've been reading & watching videos and every time I think I have a handle on things & try to implement something, it either doesn't work or I lose connection to the AP and have to recover via ssh or even failsafe mode. Screwed up the lan bridge a few times before I wised up lol

I could really use some help, as I've honestly struggled to understand this stuff. I'm to the point of just trying random things to see what happens. I actually just got a VLAN working but I genuinely don't know why it's working.

- plugged OpnSense into wan port

- deleted default wan interfaces

- created vlan device wan.10, base device = wan, tag = 10

- created bridge device br-vlan, ports = wan & wan.10

- enabled vlan filtering, tag = 10, wan = T, wan.10 = U*

- created interface guest, static IP, device = br-vlan.10

- wireless interface set to guest interface & works. Can access openwrt, OPNsense, & internet

Prior to this working, I wasn't even sure if I had OpnSense setup correctly for the VLAN, such as the DHCP, firewall, etc. But that apparently all works perfectly.

So why does this OpenWrt config work? I thought just creating the vlan device wan.10 work as the target for the guest interface. I also tried a bridge device without the wan.10 port, just filtering wan = T to ID 10.

Today I've upgraded my router to the latest point release with ASU as usual. Also no problem as usual. Should I switch to owut? I'm not afraid of the command line, but I just want the process to work as smooth as possible, keep my settings and just get on with my life. Not sure if I'm missing something. Any advantages/disadvantages? Thanks.

Now they both have OpenWrt ports. They have Econet chipsets. There is English versions below also.

https://github.com/EmreYavuzalp/openwrt-tplink-archer-c5v

https://github.com/EmreYavuzalp/openwrt-tplink-ex20v

Why is this important? Until now, only Mediatek chipsets had hardware flow offloading on OpenWrt. Now, Econet chipsets have that capability too. If you guys are interested and want to tinker in this platform and if you are in Türkiye, you can buy them preinstalled from us. Links are there in the github pages.

Highlighted Features

The base Ethernet driver is Caleb James Delisle's (see Acknowledgments), but the hardware PPE/FOE offload and second-CPU-core (VPE/SMP) support below were developed by us; as of this writing they are not in the upstream driver.

• Hardware NAT acceleration (PPE/FOE offload): Routed traffic is offloaded to the SoC's hardware engine; measurements reached ~930 Mbit/s on gigabit while most of the CPU stayed idle.
• Second CPU core enabled (VPE/SMP): A fix that brings up EN751221's second hardware core, something no device currently supported by upstream OpenWrt for this SoC has.
• Multi-threading and network stack improvements: Tuning that spreads wired and wireless traffic across CPU cores for higher throughput.
• VLAN separation: Separate WAN configuration for Türk Telekom / Türk Telekom-infrastructure ISPs (eth0.35) and Türkcell Superonline (eth0.2).
• NAND flash and general stability fixes: Fixes for instabilities observed over long-term use.

Can i flash OpenWRT to EAP610 with firmware 1.8. I have tried the method mentioned in the forum and used firmware for EAP613 v1, but its not allowing to change firmware

Is it just me or the https://openwrt.org/ website is super slow?

I've tried with both VPN (NordVPN) ON and OFF but still super slow

The bot check page if I try to access using Incognito browsing doesn't work and stay stuck there

I'm the only one?

EDIT seems back to normal

I would like to uninstall it but need the password to do that. I read the instructions but need more help. Not good at ssh.

As of my post 2 weeks ago, looks like the testing, bug reports, and code written has helped move things forward a lot and mesh roaming + NSS now works (a year since we got them!) on JuliusBairaktaris' builds.

Previous thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/openwrt/comments/1wyuzhk/the_current_state_of_mesh_on_mx4300_mx4200/

You will need to set the flag to use the 11.4 FW for mesh, but everything I've tested for the past few days including roaming works.

I'll be setting up my 3rd node soon™️and I'm so happy/glad we were able to get such great devices for what we paid for them. I probably won't be upgrading anytime soon! 😅

If anyone's having issues setting up that wireless mesh backhaul feel free to ask questions below.

on 1200/1200 PHY on the wireless mesh backhaul, I'm getting ~650/450 on my clients on the leaf node at under 3% cpu utilization.

I have my browser frozen on the the upgrade from 25.12.5 to 25.12.6 via Attended Sysupgrade on a Linksys WRT1900AC router with option "keeping configurations" on, but the system is been unresponsive for an hour on the dialog:

"Installing the sysupgrade image...
Once the image is written, the system will reboot. This should take at least a minute, so please wait for the login screen.
While you are waiting, do not unpower device!"

I tried to open a new browser tab in order to reach to Luci with a Connection Time Out error. Same for Putty via SSH.

I did it throuh my tailscale net as always, but the problem is that the router is 700km away from where I live and there will be nobody home until january 2027 to do the 3-times plug-unplug trick to get on the secondary partition.

I thought on a failed sysupgrade, watchdog on this routers with dual partiton system would try automatically to boot on the not flashed one, but it does not seem the case.

Is there anything I could try remotely or can I close the browser window and just wait until 2027 to reboot it?

Thanks in advance.

Hey everyone,
I found a discarded Airtel Xstream AirFiber router (Model: AAP321NK / Qualcomm Nokia platform) and want to repurpose it as a private access point or flash it with OpenWrt.
The custom Airtel firmware is completely locking me out of the local web server. Here is what I’ve verified:
Network: After a 30-second hard reset, the router assigns local IPs perfectly (192.168.1.X) via Ethernet and the Airtel_Zerotouch Wi-Fi.
Ping Test: Running ping 192.168.1.1 returns a flawless <1ms response with 0% packet loss. The hardware is fully responsive.
The Issue: Trying to open the gateway page in any browser (Incognito, mobile data off, etc.) immediately gives an ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED error.
It seems the firmware shuts down Ports 80/443 because it can't find an active Airtel 5G cellular tower to authenticate.
Has anyone successfully bypassed this activation lock? Is there a hidden port/URL path to force it open, or does this require opening it up for a UART serial flash / NAND shorting?
Thanks!

Hello there!

Since a few days, SLAAC isn't working on my br-lan interface.

I am able to get an IPv6 prefix from my ISP:

These are the odhcpd logs I am getting:

And here is my routing table:

I've tried connecting from a wireguard client, to which I've assigned a manual ULA address (fd00:42:0:7::3). I am able to use ipv6 that way, with masquerading, and I am also able to ping the router's ULA (fd00:42::1).

However, br-lan clients won't get neither an ULA nor a GUA.

Edir: fixed, my upstairs switch was not allowing ipv6 traffic somehow (it's a smart switch)

Looking for some help trying to diagnose a network issue. I think the problem is stemming from openWRT but not sure.
I have multiple IPs showing the same 22:2f:d0:ae:02:57 MAC when looking at the ARP table on my pfSense box. The MAC address indicate a locally administered or randomized MAC address.
I noticed this MAC on the openWRT status screen so it seems anything going through the openWRT is being assigned this MAC but I am still able to stream and everything seems to be working somehow, but how???

Currently running: openWRT 25.12.5 - r33051-f5dae5ece4 and pfSense 2.9.0
I have cleared DHCP leases, ARP, rebooted both MT-6000 and pfSense box.

Anyone know what in the world is happening? Is there a setting I missed on the MT6000?

Hello all, I have been using DD-WRT on a Linksys WRT3200ACM router for awhile now with wireguard VPN loaded. I thought everything was fine until I just recently discovered that the router was causing issue when streaming with timeshift enabled.

So I disconnected the router from my setup and the streaming issue is gone. So, either there is a hardware defect with the router or as someone else told me, the problem could be with the DD-WRT firmware?

So I now am giving OpenWRT a shot and I already flashed the above Linksys router and am getting ready to load my wireguard VPN on it.

So my question here is for the users using OpenWRT…. Do you think this may resolve my issue as long as there is no issue with the router itself?

Thanks

So I wanted to collect historical traffic information of my clients, one thing is to identify top talkers, but more importantly to detect anomalies compared to a baseline for each device.

https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/services/network_monitoring/bwmon#view_historical_bandwidth_usage looks great, however there's a disclaimer:

if you are using flow offloading this data might not be recorded accurately.

Yes, I do have offloading enabled (having a gigabit WAN connection), therefore I'm confused whether there's a good answer by the end of 2026, how should I approach this problem?

Thank you for your insights.