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How is the UX story on OpenWRT these days? I have an Archer C7 running stock FW in my basement that keeps acting up, and my default would be just to flash DD-WR

How is the UX story on OpenWRT these days? I have an Archer C7 running stock FW in my basement that keeps acting up, and my default would be just to flash DD-WRT. I'm not opposed to a little bit of CLI fiddling, but I definitely also like my router to be a set and forget type of device. As far as what to do with it, I could picture house-wide ad/tracker blocking, sending traffic analytics to elastic, potentially some homeassistant/rtlsdr type stuff.

josteink 7y ago
> my default would be just to flash DD-WRT I have openwrt on all my 3 Archer C7s. I much prefer it to dd-wrt.
- mikepurvis 7y ago
  Did you have any drama getting it flashed? I'm trying now and consistently getting "Error code: 18005" from the stock web UI's firmware uploader, coming both from 160719 and also from 180114 (the most recent version from the vendor: https://www.tp-link.com/us/support/download/archer-c7/v2 https://www.tp-link.com/us/support/download/archer-c7/v2) Curiously, neither one lets me flash 180305, which is listed as the current version on the Canadian support portal: https://www.tp-link.com/ca/support/download/archer-c7/v2/ https://www.tp-link.com/ca/support/download/archer-c7/v2/ This kind of thing is why I stuck with the stock FW so long, le sigh. ---- Oh fun, so there's a note on this page about there being separate versions for US and rest-of-world: https://openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/archer-c5-c7-wdr7500 https://openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/archer-c5-c7-wdr7500 I grabbed the archer-c7-v2-squashfs-factory-us.bin file and we seem to be in business now!
  - tapper82 7y ago
    Blame the FCC dicks!
  - tapper82 7y ago
    Blame the fcc dicks!
neilv 7y ago
On OpenWrt, you can do most things from the Web admin interface, including installing additional software packages (and the corresponding "luci" Web admin interface module packages for them). That interface has hardly changed in a few years. One thing to know is that the overall documentation situation is "mixed", and if you Google for how to do something with OpenWrt, you'll often find very old notes someone wrote about how to do something with the command line and editing files. (I know Linux pretty well, have used OpenWrt for years including some complex setups, and occasionally I have trouble finding documentation of simple things like, e.g., what partitions/mounts are currently volatile, for example, and distro-specifics of where you're supposed to edit packet filtering rules.) There's not enough correcting of that scattered documentation, such as to say that almost everyone just uses the Web admin interface now. When in doubt, just look at what the Web admin UI currently does, and try to use that.
Nextgrid 7y ago
I didn’t touch the CLI at all configuring my OpenWRT devices. They are all configured through the GUI. The only reason I use the CLI is because I know how to and it’s quicker to backup the configuration (ssh root@<ip> uci export > backup) and restore it (uci restore < backup) but this can also be done through the GUI. The GUI is a nice combination of ease of use and advanced features. You can configure the basics easily, but the advanced stuff is also there if you need it (and if not just keep the defaults which are sane).
jotm 7y ago
It's good these days. Slightly less logical than DD-wrt, but pretty great overall. See other people's comments on running Openwrt on the C7, seems to have issues with 5ghz WiFi?
- floatboth 7y ago
  C7 rev 2 works flawlessly with OpenWRT
- mikepurvis 7y ago
  That's great to hear; my last OpenWRT experiences are from almost ten years ago at this point, doing multi-stage flash processes to get it onto Mikrotik boards. Not surprised it's been made more sane in the years since.
disposition2 7y ago
I tried it out on my C7 and while I liked it, it would not play nice with my pi-hole. On the stock firmware, I was getting a 50%+ block rate and never really saw an ad. After installing OpenWRT, I was only getting about 10% and was seeing ads on just about every device. I tried numerous configurations and nothing really worked. Ended up going back to stock but I recommend openWrt as long as you don't try to get it working with a pi-hole.

josteink 7y ago

> my default would be just to flash DD-WRT I have openwrt on all my 3 Archer C7s. I much prefer it to dd-wrt.

mikepurvis 7y ago
Did you have any drama getting it flashed? I'm trying now and consistently getting "Error code: 18005" from the stock web UI's firmware uploader, coming both from 160719 and also from 180114 (the most recent version from the vendor: https://www.tp-link.com/us/support/download/archer-c7/v2 https://www.tp-link.com/us/support/download/archer-c7/v2) Curiously, neither one lets me flash 180305, which is listed as the current version on the Canadian support portal: https://www.tp-link.com/ca/support/download/archer-c7/v2/ https://www.tp-link.com/ca/support/download/archer-c7/v2/ This kind of thing is why I stuck with the stock FW so long, le sigh. ---- Oh fun, so there's a note on this page about there being separate versions for US and rest-of-world: https://openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/archer-c5-c7-wdr7500 https://openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/archer-c5-c7-wdr7500 I grabbed the archer-c7-v2-squashfs-factory-us.bin file and we seem to be in business now!
- tapper82 7y ago
  Blame the FCC dicks!
- tapper82 7y ago
  Blame the fcc dicks!

neilv 7y ago

On OpenWrt, you can do most things from the Web admin interface, including installing additional software packages (and the corresponding "luci" Web admin interface module packages for them). That interface has hardly changed in a few years. One thing to know is that the overall documentation situation is "mixed", and if you Google for how to do something with OpenWrt, you'll often find very old notes someone wrote about how to do something with the command line and editing files. (I know Linux pretty well, have used OpenWrt for years including some complex setups, and occasionally I have trouble finding documentation of simple things like, e.g., what partitions/mounts are currently volatile, for example, and distro-specifics of where you're supposed to edit packet filtering rules.) There's not enough correcting of that scattered documentation, such as to say that almost everyone just uses the Web admin interface now. When in doubt, just look at what the Web admin UI currently does, and try to use that.

Nextgrid 7y ago

I didn’t touch the CLI at all configuring my OpenWRT devices. They are all configured through the GUI. The only reason I use the CLI is because I know how to and it’s quicker to backup the configuration (ssh root@<ip> uci export > backup) and restore it (uci restore < backup) but this can also be done through the GUI. The GUI is a nice combination of ease of use and advanced features. You can configure the basics easily, but the advanced stuff is also there if you need it (and if not just keep the defaults which are sane).

jotm 7y ago

It's good these days. Slightly less logical than DD-wrt, but pretty great overall. See other people's comments on running Openwrt on the C7, seems to have issues with 5ghz WiFi?

floatboth 7y ago
C7 rev 2 works flawlessly with OpenWRT
mikepurvis 7y ago
That's great to hear; my last OpenWRT experiences are from almost ten years ago at this point, doing multi-stage flash processes to get it onto Mikrotik boards. Not surprised it's been made more sane in the years since.

disposition2 7y ago

I tried it out on my C7 and while I liked it, it would not play nice with my pi-hole. On the stock firmware, I was getting a 50%+ block rate and never really saw an ad. After installing OpenWRT, I was only getting about 10% and was seeing ads on just about every device. I tried numerous configurations and nothing really worked. Ended up going back to stock but I recommend openWrt as long as you don't try to get it working with a pi-hole.