acognard,

That you want a version of OpenWRT that is stable - that is a very valid argument.
Also, you want a version with Luci included so you don't have to work from the command line - that is also a valid argument.

It seems the stability issue is not bad with BB RC2.
You can consider installing RC2, and install Luci yourself:
http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/luci.essentials

ok, tks for your help. What i understand is that i need to upgrade my opewrt to rc2.
i suppose my wdr4900 has to be installed from http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/ … actory.bin

my questions are : can i install this factory from the actual Barrier Breaker r39430 ? and what about Keep settings option ?

Tks. Arnaud

No problem, tell me the packages you want and I will compile them.
I can't build all packages because it fails compiling - even when I set  it to ignore errors and continue

It was me. Lots of people had issues with their wifi.
Reading the thread I found some messages saying that was r39430 had been running for days and heavy torrent.
So I compiled and uploaded it, and worked fine for all who tested the build.
I thought it was a good idea to provide a "stable" trunk in the wiki, because in that moment there was no RC for this router, only buggy snapshots.

(Last edited by dabyd64 on 7 Aug 2014, 20:12)

ok, it works fine, & again tks a lot for your job, but i am not able to install any packages. I tryied openvpn & ofs. That my need, but in the future, i think i will have new needs .
arnaud dot cognard at laposte dot net.
tks.
Arnaud

acognard, have you tried the current trunk snapshot or the RC2?

Current trunk:
http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/ … pgrade.bin

Barried Breaker RC2:
http://downloads.openwrt.org/barrier_br … pgrade.bin

Currently I'm in RC2

(Last edited by dabyd64 on 7 Aug 2014, 20:28)

i am confused, but i am newbie with all of your words . I used your link https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?pid=237869#p237869
and it works fine for me. except if i try to install any package :
stalling openvpn-openssl (2.3.4-1) to root...
Downloading http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/ … c85xx.ipk.

Collected errors:
* satisfy_dependencies_for: Cannot satisfy the following dependencies for openvpn-openssl:
*     kernel (= 3.10.49-1-6c65c25e13f7f8b548e6fb18e70884b5) *
* opkg_install_cmd: Cannot install package openvpn-openssl.

sorry.
Arnaud

acognard,

Those trunk snapshots like you've installed are rebuilt every day or two. While most of the packages are compatible between that builds, the packages including kernel modules are intentionally made incompatible for safety. So in order to install openvpn package (which includes a kmod) officially you can only use the package which was built at the same time as the firmware image you have flashed, opkg won't allow you to install a kmod package built today into openwrt system which was built a couple days ago. So when dealing with trunk you should either download all packages you're willing to install later at the same time when getting firmware image itself, or... in fact you can ignore that error.

If you're sure that kernel didn't change between the version you have installed and the current trunk, then you can force opkg to ignore dependencies check. See opkg --help for valid key to do that. In most cases it will work fine. It the worst case you will need to boot into failsafe mod and delete faulty kmod from the system.

I support the fact that WDR4900 is very stable under BB RC2 . I've been able to get it running for more than 5 days without reboot. (Most of the reboot is due to itchy fingers trying out configurations). With DD-WRT (May/June 2014 build), I couldn't get it to stay stable for more than 1 day at most. Depending on traffic, it will reboot when I've other devices connected to ethernet.

I'm on RC2 generic. Do you see any differences in performance and stability between P1020 and generic ? I understand the only differences is in SMP support.

acognard,

I understand you are confused - this is not so easy, and we all need to learn.

You have installed OpenWRT on WDR4900 - a router that is classified as Work in Progress (not supported), so you got yourself into a little situation. That is cool!

Since your router works right now, I suggest that you wait for Barrier Breaker to be "final". I dont think it is more than a few weeks away (but I dont know). The final has the advantages:
1) It will be supported/available for years
2) It will come with the Web GUI (Luci) preinstalled, just as you want.

If you are more eager and upgrading your router feels urgent, I suggest you got to BB RC2. But then:
1) You should expect to upgrade soon again (as BB turns final)
2) You will need to install Web GUI (Luci) yourself (I provided a link a while ago)

The "trunk" changes all the time - avoid them unless you really know what you do. They are for people who want to test new versions of OpenWRT, not for people who primarily wants a router that works.

The fine image that you downloaded/installed was a completely unofficial image. That does not make it bad. But it is not the image you should rely on for production for the next months, rather something to just test on your router because at the moment it might provide advantages/save work, compared to trunk.

Keep in mind that this router had no stable or rc release when I made the custom build.
Only trunk, that some days worked well and others was bugged.
Now with BB RC2 it no longer makes sense.
The wiki can be edited and that comment/link removed.
I can't do it myself because it drops a forbidden error when saving the changes!

I updated the Wiki. http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wdr4900
Please feel free to correct/improve. If you don't feel like updating the wiki, comment here and I can update it.
dabyd64: Thanks for the image - it was a good contribution at the time!

I just bought a WDR4900 v1.3 and saw that BB RC3 is just released.
Has anyone successfully flashed RC3 yet?
I guess I will give it a go and report back my experiences.

Hi there, i bought an WDR4900 v1.3 over a year ago. My decision based on informations in this forum for its OpenWrt compatibality and the power it has. So i'm not new in here but i had never registered to the forum.

Now i dropped the TP-Link OEM firmware and installed "OpenWrt BarrierBreaker 14.07-rc3 generic". Worked without problems. You can follow all the essential configuration steps in the OpenWrt Wiki, they fully match to this version.

Here are my few cents about 14.07-rc3:
- LuCI was integrated. So you'll have a fully working GUI after the first Login via telnet and changing your password there.
- Very good basic configuration. Firewall blocks all, but not pings from WAN.
- 'uhttpd-mod-tls' package for HTTPS support wasn't installed
- The WLAN 2,4GHz HT mode at 40 MHz doesn't work. Only HT 20 MHz. But i read this somewhere before in this forum.
- WLAN 5 GHz latency and the throughput with HT 40MHz seems to be better than the stock OEM TP-Link firmware. But it's only a feeling.

I'm really looking forward for the final release.

I had a problem with the opkg manager. I couldn't choose between builds for a package. For instance: luci-ssl has two builds (svn-r10472-1 and svn-r10467-1). Via terminal and LuCI GUI only the latest svn-r10472-1 was installed. I'm quite new, may be i will figure this out. Can i choose a newer build without doubt?

(Last edited by Inno_A_Santana on 18 Aug 2014, 16:12)

Can the external antennas be taken off on this thing?

Talking about v1, the non-china/mpc85xx version with three antennas... yes, you not only can take them off... you actually have to attach them yourself when unpacking the router.

Just upgraded to BB RC3, and everything seems to be just fine.

What about HT40 ?

HT40, to be honest, I dont really know. I have just owned this router for a few weeks and left it in HT20.
But now that you asked I changed HT20 to HT40+, for the 5Mhz radio device (the 2.4Mhz device was not happy with it).

It seems to work. That is, I have one new Android phone and one not so new Apple MacBook... both connected to the 5Mhz WiFi, both working right now. If that means that HT40 works perfectly, or it means that it works now, but I will have problems in an hour, of if it means my clients do not recognize it anyway, or if it means that OpenWRT is just ignoring it... I dont know.

/etc/config/wireless: (relevant parts)

config wifi-device 'radio0'
    option type 'mac80211'
    option channel '36'
    option hwmode '11a'
    option htmode 'HT40+'

Then:
# wifi down
# wifi status (to confirm down)
# wifi
# wifi status (to confirm up)

I will leave it at "HT40+" for now. If anyone has any suggestions how to test it, feel free to let me know.

You can the the status in realtime in LuCI GUI, under the WiFi interfaces. HT20 & HT40 is switched forward and back. e.g.: When HT 40 is set, the standard is 20 MHz, when a connection is established and something is downloaded you should see that HT will switch from 20 MHz to 40 MHz. After a few seconds or after the download it will switch back to 20MHz.

But yes the 5GHz HT 20 & 40 Mhz works like a charm. Tested on my Samsung Galaxy S4 mini and Dell Notebook with Intel 6230 WiFi Adapter.
But 2,4 Ghz switching between HT 20 & 40 Mhz does not work. When set HT to 40 MHz you'll see in LuCI that is show 20 MHz permanently and instead of a 150Mbit connection (single stream) I have only the half 75Mbit bandwith (single stream).

(Last edited by Inno_A_Santana on 20 Aug 2014, 10:22)

Any reason to choose this router over the Archer C5/C7 which has 802.11ac? CPU power?

Since I already admitted I dont have a clue about 5MHz and dual band... should it be:

  option hwmode '11a'

or is it better with '11na'?

Any simple command line tool I can run to test actual throughput? (like netcat)

The HT40 problem is with 2.4GHz network

Since I am confused about this HT20/HT40 thing with 2.4GHz/5Ghz, I decided to do some testing and put the results in a table. I dont really know what HT20, HT40-, VHT40 etc means (I have some idea), but below is what I have observed.

11b/g/ng/n/a/an as well as HT20/HT40+/HT40-/VHT20/VHT40/VTH80 is configured in /etc/config/wireless

Every time I have changed configuration I have

# wifi down
# wifi
# wifi status

If I got "up":false I have given up that mode and written "did not start".

Otherwise I have copied a 256Mb file from an Ubuntu Desktop, via a WDR4900, to two MacBooks. Copying has been done with nc:

server (sending)
$ nc -l 9999 < 256Mb.bin
client (receiving)
$ time nc 192.168.8.101 9999 | md5

The resulting times are presented below. Sometimes I have run several sessions to confirm results (usually the second run has been faster / there are of course plenty of things that can disturb, like my neighbours).

2.4Ghz Channel=11

= 2.4Ghz ====== Older MacBook ========= Newer MacBook =
11b     #       401s
11b     HT20    did not start
11g     HT20    31s
11ng    HT20    30/33/36/38/39s         20/22s
11ng    HT40-   43/47s                  17/18s
11ng    VHT20   47/50s
11ng    VHT40   did not start
11ng    VHT80   did not start
11n     HT20    30s
11n     HT40-   30/30/39s
11n     HT40+   did not start

5Ghz Channel=36

= 5Ghz ======== Older MacBook ========= Newer MacBook =
11a     HT20    58/58s
11na    HT20    42/43/44s               28/29s
11na    HT40-   26/33/34s               20/21s
11na    HT40+   33/35s
11na    VHT20   40/43/56s
11na    VHT40   29/31/41s
11na    VHT80   did not start
11n     HT20    54s
11n     VHT20   33/41/69s
11n     VHT40   28/33/42s

Finally, over ethernet cable, for reference.

Gbit Ethernet   3.6s

This is obviously more complex than I thought. You can see what modes refuse to run at all. And you can see some modes are better in my particular situation. I dont really know what consistent conclusions to draw from this.

For anyone interested, I've added this router to my community build:

https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=50914