I have a TP-Link router and I want to try OpenWrt on it. Have other people tried this? How did it go? Is it difficult to revert if it doesn’t work? I’m nervous because it’s my main router.
I have it on all my home networking equipment, my router and my APs, and a wifi bridge for my SBCs. My experience has been that it is just as simple as the proprietary firmware, and more robust. The catch is that I chose each piece of equipment knowing that I would flash custom firmware onto it, so they were ones the OWRT wiki showed as being simple to flash.
Which model TP-Link are you going with? The page for whichever model on the OpenWRT wiki should tell you whether it’s easy or difficult to flash and revert
Is this a thing just for consumer routers?
Would it make sense rather than running microtik or ubiquity or Cisco?
I am currently using openwrt on a router, although my roommate did most of the setup. The interface is very detailed and it has every feature I’ve thought to look for, but certain things are organized in a way that makes them difficult to find. It’s very customizable. All in all a similar sort of experience to a lot of other FOSS apps.
it’s great. have it installed on my cheap mt7621 router and it just works.
Great choice! The MT7621 is one of the few targets that support hardware NAT offloading. Consider it if you’re buying an OpenWrt router for a high-bandwidth connection. You could also consider buying OpenWrt’s reference router, the OpenWrt One, since some of the proceeds go toward supporting the project.
I’ve been running it for about 8 years now. Never going back.
It’s brilliant but you do need to know what you’re doing.
It’s brilliant but you do need to know what you’re doing.
I feel like that’s only a little more true for OpenWRT than it is for stock proprietary firmware. You need a bit of competence to get it installed, but once you’re using it LuCI is more-or-less just as easy to use for normal, basic tasks. It can do other fancy stuff that stock firmwares can’t do at all, but that shouldn’t count against it since you don’t have to do those advanced things.
the thing with openwrt is that you have the freedom to fuck it up, which is exactly what tends to happen to people who know enough to come up with the idea of installing a different OS on their router.
So you really should make sure that you’ll be able to deal with it when you eventually fuck something up because you wanted to configure the blinking pattern of the LEDs or whatever.Though to be fair openwrt makes it fairly easy to back up configurations and just reinstall everything from scratch
Honestly I would not recommend doing it without any backup, but if you can directly connect your internet to any computer or use your phone for tethering then you aren’t really as vulnerable to a problem and should be OK.
The default set up should actually work fairly well but need you to set up the wireless security and so on. If you use the exact same details as your current WiFi then all your devices will just reconnect and save you a bunch of time. Also the performance of something like a basic TP-Link router is probably not enough to do a lot of extra fun stuff like a VPN or file sharing, so just focus on getting the basic things up first.
Also, take a backup of your current settings in the TP-Link router and get a copy of the firmware now, before you do anything else, so you can revert without having to get everything from another source. Good luck!
reverting is a matter of uploading the stock firmware through the gui on most devices.
I use OpenWRT on a TP-Link router (an Archer C7, circa 2013). I can’t say if it’s difficult to revert because I’ve never wanted to (which should tell you all you need to know).
If you’re nervous, get a second router as a backup device. OpenWRT runs on all sorts of things, including some which are extremely cheap. If finding some old used router is too much of a hassle, this thing is $30 brand new and runs OpenWRT from the factory.
Oh yeah, seconding the recommendation for GL.iNet routers with OpenWrt (technically their slightly modified fork but it’s very close to stock) preinstalled as an easy way to get your feet wet. They’re pretty nifty little travel routers, good to have if you don’t already make a habit of putting something between your gadgets and hotel wifi.
I installed openwrt just a month ago. Follow the instructions and pay attention to the outputs. Make sure the files out download are correct and don’t skip checking the hashes. You’ll be fine.
OpenWRT is great and the built-in web interface, LUCI, makes it as easy to configure as any serious network kit. What I will say, though, is that OpenWRT is a real network OS, more akin to enterprise grade tools like Cisco or SonicWall than anything sold in a big box store. Again, LUCI makes it easy and hides a lot of complexity so there’s nothing to fear, but you quickly come to realise the power of OpenWRT isn’t that it turns your Wifi Thing into a better WiFi Thing, but that it turns your Wifi Thing into a WiFi, routing, firewalls, bridging, VLAN, mesh, PPP, VPN, and a thousand other things Thing.
Been using it for about 16 years on TP Link, netgear, and now GLInet routers - its great.
The only one I ever reflashed back to stock was the netgear and that was mostly a temporary experiment.
I love having Tailscale running on it so I can access my LAN from anywhere and use it as an exit node.
Edit: I probably started with DDWRT on a Linksys… Forget if it was DD or Open WRT on the TP link.
Openwrt itself is intidimating to me, but it’s easier with LuCi, the web interface
I’m running it on an OpenWrt One and loving it. Not the best perf-per-dollar hardware but it does what I need at the moment, is completely open, and supports the project.
There’s a learning curve for sure. You might consider buying the cheapest possible router that supports it and experimenting with that on the side before overhauling your main network. $30-40 (or cheaper used) for the peace of mind of knowing you aren’t completely up the creek if something goes wrong.
Read the page for your specific model, they offer instructions and any issues/risks you should be aware of: https://openwrt.org/toh/start
I would like to think I’m a pretty smart guy, but you need to be intimately familiar with networking before you go down the OpenWRT rabbit hole. I decided to switch to UniFi equipment instead.
