7 ms·

Update on Linksys WRT1900AC support for OpenWRT

136 points by atriix 12y ago

zokier 12y ago
Here are the patches (and discussion) mentioned https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2014-April/024589.html https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2014-April... https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2014-April/024703.html https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2014-April... https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2014-April/024837.html https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2014-April...
- mng2 12y ago
  The firmware can be built with what we have provided, and will run on the WRT1900AC successfully. It is true that it would lack wireless support, but that would not stop the firmware from actually working. https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2014-April/024858.html https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2014-April...
  - lstamour 12y ago
    > The code quality issues in the patches are fixable. The biggest problem with this is the fact that right now, the wifi chip (from Marvell) needs a proprietary driver to run. The submitted patches only include a prebuilt .ko for this driver. The response I got from Belkin indicates that they didn't realize that this was going to be a problem and they are now trying to fix it. More at: https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2014-April/024680.html https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2014-April... [That said, I find this to be typical of Belkin overall and would not, at the moment, recommend any of their Belkin/Linksys products if you expect to interface with them using software.]
  - 0x0 12y ago
    Wow, I can't believe they are seriously claiming that. Too funny.
IgorPartola 12y ago
Personally, I now only buy and recommend routers that are supported by OpenWRT even if the end user does not end up using it. Usually such support means that the device is fairly open and uses fairly standard hardware. Something new and esoteric is likely to be more buggy. OpenWRT is also a great OS. If your router supports it, please give it a try, for security's sake.
- ferongr 12y ago
  That means the WRT1900AC is not one of your choices yet, right? Also, I'm personally very bummed by the fact it has Marvell WiFi. They tend to be really mediocre and buggy, both in Windows, Linux and embedded applications.
  - IgorPartola 12y ago
    I have been sticking to TP-LINK products lately. They and Buffalo seem pretty open and reasonably priced. Just a personal preference though. Lots of people I know are happy with Asus, Linksys, etc. Also, from what I understand Microtik routers are a great alternative to OpenWRT, though I have not used them myself.
    - snowwindwaves 12y ago
      The mikrotik hardware is good but I find the documentation is poor and several times I have found their implementation of a feature is half baked. For instance their openvpn is over tcp only. If you can make sure they do what you need and figure out how to set them up to achieve that they can be very cost effective. They are popular with the wireless ips crowd but have been facing strong competition from ubiquity. Given the choice i buy ubiquity products, but they don't have as many "features". Mikrotik have also been gpl violators.
      - Spidler 12y ago
        I gave up on Mikrotik when I got one of their Switches, which explicitly have support for VLANs, and could only discover that the .. vlan..support was so botched that it couldn't make default VLAN's on different ports.
buzzkills 12y ago
It still appears in their list of supported hardware though. http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/start http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/start of course when you dig deeper it is clear it doesn't work but still should it be in one of the other tables showing support in progress
dfa0 12y ago
Wow, this costs more than a Chromebook!
- Yorrrick 12y ago
  I'd willingly pay that price if it delivers on what they said in the marketing. But it appears we'll have to wait.
- jotm 12y ago
  It has some impressive specs, though. The 1.2 GHz processor may finally be able to write to a HDD at full USB 2.0 speeds without getting overloaded.
  - mrsaint 12y ago
    Hey, it comes with a cooling fan even! ;) So it has USB 2.0 + 3.0 and eSATA. According to this chart, r/w performance seems quite good (and certainly above USB 2.0): http://core0.staticworld.net/images/article/2014/04/wrt1900ac_usbharddrive_benc-100262010-orig.png http://core0.staticworld.net/images/article/2014/04/wrt1900a...
13throwaway 12y ago
ELI5 why companies don't open source drivers. The hardware is proprietary so what do they have to lose?
- zymhan 12y ago
  A great deal of performance differentiation in hardware comes from the drivers themselves, not the underlying hardware. This is evidenced in things like differing performance in similar situations using different OSes, such as a game in Windows vs. the same game in Linux (assuming they both us OpenGL). The techniques that companies use to improve performance on their hardware are almost as complex and important as the hardware itself. This isn't to say that there isn't a benefit in open-sourcing drivers, just that companies are justified in being weary of open-sourcing their drivers.
  - zokier 12y ago
    > is evidenced in things like differing performance in similar situations using different OSes, such as a game in Windows vs. the same game in Linux (assuming they both us OpenGL). I think better example would be the evolution of performance over different driver versions.
  - gmrple 12y ago
    To continue your point, often companies tier their products by their firmware to save development/manufacturing costs. If anyone can change the firmware, they may be able to make a $99 router perform like a $599 router (if I recall this was one of the big pulls for open-wrt or dd-wrt on the linksys 54g).
  - jotm 12y ago
    Belkin effed up their firmware so badly on the F7D4301 that I got a new one for $35. The original firmware was slow, buggy and required reboots every day. With Tomato it's one of the best deals I ever got :-) - dual band Wifi, Gigabit LAN, support for USB drives and 3G modems, no stupid blinking lights (I love that) - a perfect home/office router.
ram_rattle 12y ago
Tplink MR3020 is the cheapest in India, do try it you can create lot of application with this router
- jhenkens 12y ago
  I wish it had more than 4MB flash, but it is an awesome little box! The 4MB of flash just means you pretty much need to roll your own OpenWRT image if you want to change anything. A friend has one, and I have an MR3040 (3020 + 2000mAh battery) arriving today to hack around on to make it the perfect travel router for me.
  - ram_rattle 12y ago
    You can add a pendrive in the USB and extend the internal memory, search the web there are many tutorials
Omniusaspirer 12y ago
Knowing this, can anyone enlighten me on why you'd buy this router over the Netgear R7000? It seems to be a worse router from the reviews I've seen, albeit with better storage performance. http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/32393-linksys-wrt1900ac-ac1900-dual-band-wireless-router-review?showall=&start=5 http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/323...
- voltagex_ 12y ago
  Last time I tried a Netgear (a model from last year I think, AC enabled), it was awful. The web interface hadn't been updated since 2008-ish (could see stuff that was in older routers, old images etc) and didn't work properly. Netgear support denied the existence of a telnet interface [1] and I returned it after some other problems I don't remember. 1: http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/netgear/telnet.console http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/netgear/telnet.console
TehCorwiz 12y ago
Linksys (cisco) dropped the ball a long time ago. I've moved on an have been using Ubiquiti stuff for years. Their router even runs Debian.
- tacoman 12y ago
  I couldn't agree more. The Ubiquiti wifi hardware is better than any of the SOHO (Linksys, Asus, etc) I've ever used. I've changed most of my friends and family to using Ubiquiti stuff and I never hear about wifi problems anymore. The Nanostation and Rocket product lines are what I usually get. I put 4 Unifi's in a friend's large house and it the performance is great.
- walexander 12y ago
  Just FYI, Cisco doesn't own Linksys anymore. They sold it to Belkin in January 2013.
paulgerhardt 12y ago
Our startup has tried both the Asus RT68-U and the Netgear N7000 (the two top of the line, AC1900 class, consumer routers on Small Network Builder[1]) for both office and factory operations with both stock and DD-WRT[2] firmwares. Our initial preference was to lean towards the Asus given their track record on OpenWRT for the past few years. If your last experience with flashing a router's firmware was with the Linksys WRT-54G back in 2004 than you may have missed out on all the Asus development that happened in the past decade. We found the Netgear N7000 performed better overall. We were reluctant to use it as it did not support Dual-WAN mode initially like the Asus on stock firmware. (I.e. primary Comcast internet, secondary Verizon MiFi usb adapter.) We recently updated both routers to [Kong]'s firmware mod of DD-WRT[3] and now the Netgear N7000 blows everything out of the water. At our factory we are concurrently connecting 50 previously unassociated WiFi devices every 30 seconds and the dual-core 1Ghz Netgear just keeps on trucking with no problems. Our Asus meanwhile will crash about once a day. Going forward we will stick with the Netgear. It seems to have become the 'default' router on the DD-WRT community, with support for other routers being forks off the N7000 code. Given Linksys has long no longer been 'Linksys' been 'Cisco' been 'Belkin' been Marvell, I don't anticipate it superseding the thrown despite the classic throwback black and blue livery. The 1.2Ghz processor and quad-band antenna is nothing to snub at. Should be an interesting year for router enthusiasts. [1]http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/32239-ac1900-first-look-netgear-r7000-a-asus-rt-ac68u http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/322... [2]In broad strokes, DD-WRT is like a nice, easy to install, easy to configure version of OpenWRT. If you previously preferred using Tomato to OpenWRT this is for you. OpenWRT is when you really want ring-zero console access only with no amenities out of the gate. [3]http://tips.desipro.de/ http://tips.desipro.de/ - [Kong] made some modifications to DD-WRT to work better with the new AC-1900 class routers. They are fast becoming the master branch.
- newman314 12y ago
  What build number of Kong's are you using for the R7000? I just picked one up to potentially replace a flaky RT-N16 running Kong but it's not the cheapest device for home use. For that kind of money, it seems that Ubiquiti could be a viable option. Trying to decide if I should return the R7000 and get the Ubiquitis instead.

136 points by atriix 12y ago

Here are the patches (and discussion) mentioned https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2014-April/024589.html https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2014-April... https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2014-April/024703.html https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2014-April... https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2014-April/024837.html https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2014-April...

mng2 12y ago
The firmware can be built with what we have provided, and will run on the WRT1900AC successfully. It is true that it would lack wireless support, but that would not stop the firmware from actually working. https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2014-April/024858.html https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2014-April...
- lstamour 12y ago
  > The code quality issues in the patches are fixable. The biggest problem with this is the fact that right now, the wifi chip (from Marvell) needs a proprietary driver to run. The submitted patches only include a prebuilt .ko for this driver. The response I got from Belkin indicates that they didn't realize that this was going to be a problem and they are now trying to fix it. More at: https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2014-April/024680.html https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2014-April... [That said, I find this to be typical of Belkin overall and would not, at the moment, recommend any of their Belkin/Linksys products if you expect to interface with them using software.]
- 0x0 12y ago
  Wow, I can't believe they are seriously claiming that. Too funny.

IgorPartola 12y ago

Personally, I now only buy and recommend routers that are supported by OpenWRT even if the end user does not end up using it. Usually such support means that the device is fairly open and uses fairly standard hardware. Something new and esoteric is likely to be more buggy. OpenWRT is also a great OS. If your router supports it, please give it a try, for security's sake.

ferongr 12y ago
That means the WRT1900AC is not one of your choices yet, right? Also, I'm personally very bummed by the fact it has Marvell WiFi. They tend to be really mediocre and buggy, both in Windows, Linux and embedded applications.
- IgorPartola 12y ago
  I have been sticking to TP-LINK products lately. They and Buffalo seem pretty open and reasonably priced. Just a personal preference though. Lots of people I know are happy with Asus, Linksys, etc. Also, from what I understand Microtik routers are a great alternative to OpenWRT, though I have not used them myself.
  - snowwindwaves 12y ago
    The mikrotik hardware is good but I find the documentation is poor and several times I have found their implementation of a feature is half baked. For instance their openvpn is over tcp only. If you can make sure they do what you need and figure out how to set them up to achieve that they can be very cost effective. They are popular with the wireless ips crowd but have been facing strong competition from ubiquity. Given the choice i buy ubiquity products, but they don't have as many "features". Mikrotik have also been gpl violators.
    - Spidler 12y ago
      I gave up on Mikrotik when I got one of their Switches, which explicitly have support for VLANs, and could only discover that the .. vlan..support was so botched that it couldn't make default VLAN's on different ports.

buzzkills 12y ago

It still appears in their list of supported hardware though. http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/start http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/start of course when you dig deeper it is clear it doesn't work but still should it be in one of the other tables showing support in progress

dfa0 12y ago

Wow, this costs more than a Chromebook!

Yorrrick 12y ago
I'd willingly pay that price if it delivers on what they said in the marketing. But it appears we'll have to wait.
jotm 12y ago
It has some impressive specs, though. The 1.2 GHz processor may finally be able to write to a HDD at full USB 2.0 speeds without getting overloaded.
- mrsaint 12y ago
  Hey, it comes with a cooling fan even! ;) So it has USB 2.0 + 3.0 and eSATA. According to this chart, r/w performance seems quite good (and certainly above USB 2.0): http://core0.staticworld.net/images/article/2014/04/wrt1900ac_usbharddrive_benc-100262010-orig.png http://core0.staticworld.net/images/article/2014/04/wrt1900a...

13throwaway 12y ago

ELI5 why companies don't open source drivers. The hardware is proprietary so what do they have to lose?

zymhan 12y ago
A great deal of performance differentiation in hardware comes from the drivers themselves, not the underlying hardware. This is evidenced in things like differing performance in similar situations using different OSes, such as a game in Windows vs. the same game in Linux (assuming they both us OpenGL). The techniques that companies use to improve performance on their hardware are almost as complex and important as the hardware itself. This isn't to say that there isn't a benefit in open-sourcing drivers, just that companies are justified in being weary of open-sourcing their drivers.
- zokier 12y ago
  > is evidenced in things like differing performance in similar situations using different OSes, such as a game in Windows vs. the same game in Linux (assuming they both us OpenGL). I think better example would be the evolution of performance over different driver versions.
- gmrple 12y ago
  To continue your point, often companies tier their products by their firmware to save development/manufacturing costs. If anyone can change the firmware, they may be able to make a $99 router perform like a $599 router (if I recall this was one of the big pulls for open-wrt or dd-wrt on the linksys 54g).
- jotm 12y ago
  Belkin effed up their firmware so badly on the F7D4301 that I got a new one for $35. The original firmware was slow, buggy and required reboots every day. With Tomato it's one of the best deals I ever got :-) - dual band Wifi, Gigabit LAN, support for USB drives and 3G modems, no stupid blinking lights (I love that) - a perfect home/office router.

ram_rattle 12y ago

Tplink MR3020 is the cheapest in India, do try it you can create lot of application with this router

jhenkens 12y ago
I wish it had more than 4MB flash, but it is an awesome little box! The 4MB of flash just means you pretty much need to roll your own OpenWRT image if you want to change anything. A friend has one, and I have an MR3040 (3020 + 2000mAh battery) arriving today to hack around on to make it the perfect travel router for me.
- ram_rattle 12y ago
  You can add a pendrive in the USB and extend the internal memory, search the web there are many tutorials

Omniusaspirer 12y ago

Knowing this, can anyone enlighten me on why you'd buy this router over the Netgear R7000? It seems to be a worse router from the reviews I've seen, albeit with better storage performance. http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/32393-linksys-wrt1900ac-ac1900-dual-band-wireless-router-review?showall=&start=5 http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/323...

voltagex_ 12y ago
Last time I tried a Netgear (a model from last year I think, AC enabled), it was awful. The web interface hadn't been updated since 2008-ish (could see stuff that was in older routers, old images etc) and didn't work properly. Netgear support denied the existence of a telnet interface [1] and I returned it after some other problems I don't remember. 1: http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/netgear/telnet.console http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/netgear/telnet.console

TehCorwiz 12y ago

Linksys (cisco) dropped the ball a long time ago. I've moved on an have been using Ubiquiti stuff for years. Their router even runs Debian.

tacoman 12y ago
I couldn't agree more. The Ubiquiti wifi hardware is better than any of the SOHO (Linksys, Asus, etc) I've ever used. I've changed most of my friends and family to using Ubiquiti stuff and I never hear about wifi problems anymore. The Nanostation and Rocket product lines are what I usually get. I put 4 Unifi's in a friend's large house and it the performance is great.
walexander 12y ago
Just FYI, Cisco doesn't own Linksys anymore. They sold it to Belkin in January 2013.

paulgerhardt 12y ago

Our startup has tried both the Asus RT68-U and the Netgear N7000 (the two top of the line, AC1900 class, consumer routers on Small Network Builder[1]) for both office and factory operations with both stock and DD-WRT[2] firmwares. Our initial preference was to lean towards the Asus given their track record on OpenWRT for the past few years. If your last experience with flashing a router's firmware was with the Linksys WRT-54G back in 2004 than you may have missed out on all the Asus development that happened in the past decade. We found the Netgear N7000 performed better overall. We were reluctant to use it as it did not support Dual-WAN mode initially like the Asus on stock firmware. (I.e. primary Comcast internet, secondary Verizon MiFi usb adapter.) We recently updated both routers to [Kong]'s firmware mod of DD-WRT[3] and now the Netgear N7000 blows everything out of the water. At our factory we are concurrently connecting 50 previously unassociated WiFi devices every 30 seconds and the dual-core 1Ghz Netgear just keeps on trucking with no problems. Our Asus meanwhile will crash about once a day. Going forward we will stick with the Netgear. It seems to have become the 'default' router on the DD-WRT community, with support for other routers being forks off the N7000 code. Given Linksys has long no longer been 'Linksys' been 'Cisco' been 'Belkin' been Marvell, I don't anticipate it superseding the thrown despite the classic throwback black and blue livery. The 1.2Ghz processor and quad-band antenna is nothing to snub at. Should be an interesting year for router enthusiasts. [1]http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/32239-ac1900-first-look-netgear-r7000-a-asus-rt-ac68u http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/322... [2]In broad strokes, DD-WRT is like a nice, easy to install, easy to configure version of OpenWRT. If you previously preferred using Tomato to OpenWRT this is for you. OpenWRT is when you really want ring-zero console access only with no amenities out of the gate. [3]http://tips.desipro.de/ http://tips.desipro.de/ - [Kong] made some modifications to DD-WRT to work better with the new AC-1900 class routers. They are fast becoming the master branch.

newman314 12y ago
What build number of Kong's are you using for the R7000? I just picked one up to potentially replace a flaky RT-N16 running Kong but it's not the cheapest device for home use. For that kind of money, it seems that Ubiquiti could be a viable option. Trying to decide if I should return the R7000 and get the Ubiquitis instead.