I want to be able to run Open WRT on the TP-Link-WDR3500.

I see from this link that some patch has been created

https://dev.openwrt.org/browser/trunk/t … ?rev=35423

Can anyone advise me when there will be a binary release supporting this hardware?

Thanks,

zedfour1

No time soon, I suspect. This is just my opinion, but:
1. it is old
2. it doesn't have a great spec
3. It is not too easy to hack
4. it isn't really cheap.

Rob what are you talking about?? Did you see the link with the patch??

Since it's now supported in trunk, here you have the binary:

http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/ … actory.bin

note: trunk means risky, unstable, beta, test, and so on...

(Last edited by nebbia88 on 13 Feb 2013, 18:29)

I dunno. Brain-fart I guess.

I'm running the trunk version (Barrier Breaker) without a problem on my TP-Link WDR3600.
It is even more stable as teh AA-RC1. The wireless drivers are newer and more stable.

Rob I think you may be  crazy. It has a great spec 2.4G and 5G concurrent and cheaper than most others.

nebbia88, thanks for the link to the binary, this is really appreciated. I will try this in the morning.

Zandhaas. thanks for the info on the WDR3600. I can't afford this version but will report back on the WDR3500 as it has a different Ethernet interface.

All, thanks for your kind time in considering my question.

Wow nice job with the patch. Would love a new release with all functions working but untill then are there any more feebacks?

ok, ok! I am crazy! This looks really nice.
What is working, and what not?

Hello everyone, I'm new in here, but I've received one TL-WDR3500 this afternoon and i'm interested in opening it, flash it, torture it if needed to make a progress for a working OpenWRT firmware. If someone could tell where the work is on now.

Thanks

I testes latest trunk today on a new TL-WDR3500, Barrier Breaker (latest trunk).

Trunk is very buggy.
I also installed Luci, but is full of errors on network setup and mc (indispensable) is missing.
I set up root password (passwd) from telnet but after rebooting the root password was "null" again!

Very bad and totaly unusable, I'm restoring TP-LINK original firmware.

(Last edited by pilovis on 26 Feb 2014, 08:13)

For the maintainer of Openwrt Wiki:
be honest, don't say that this router is supported. (http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wdr3500)
I read this statement and bought the router

TL-WDR3500 is NOT supported! Just a few functions of this router work on openwrt, also Luci doesn't work (errors on networking setup).

(Last edited by pilovis on 1 Mar 2014, 00:41)

Can you please be more specific as to what's not working for you?

I'm running trunk r39582, and OpenWRT is rock-solid for me...

Hi all. Nooobie here , and very excited about Open Wrt.

So, as above, I'm using the TPLink wdr3500. I've managed to install Open Wrt, logged in over telnet, changed the password and after exiting, only SSH login is allowed. All is going well. I installed Luci, and configured one of the Wifi NICs and off we go.

HOWEVER, after a reboot, I loose everything that was installed, and the telnet login is enabled again, with the password for root reset to null.

It seems to have reverted to the original setup as per before first boot.

Any tips are very much appreciated.

I installed everything from here: http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wdr3500

I installed the sysupgrade from here: http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/ … pgrade.bin

I'd like to know am I missing something? Is there a way to force everything to be stored permanently?

Any and all help is appreciated.

Shanks.

Just to make sure: You did flash the factory image before, at least once?

I can confirm that you're correct! I didn't install the factory image beforehand.

So, I reverted to the original TP link flash, and then started the process again. Now I flashed the factory image instead of the sysupgrade one.

And it all works great!!

Thanks for your help!

All this talk about the TL-WDR3500 being so inferior? It's seemed to be the best bargain for a duel band router on Amazon. I needed to use it as a repeater, didn't do the research before i bought it. Repeater mode wasn't included in the stock firmware... d'oh! Almost returned it. Did some research, discovered OpenWRT. Installed it, along with LuCI. [OpenWrt Barrier Breaker r40768 / LuCI Trunk (svn-r10180)]

I read discouraging comments about the capabilities of this router to work as a repeater / extender (didn't try out WDS).  I almost gave up.

However, from what I read, this router is identical to the more expensive models, except for the radio module. There had to be a way!

Don't believe the hype! The TL-WDR3500 runs OpenWRT and funcions as a repeater / extender PERFECTLY.

First, I followed the directions here:

http://blog.michael.kuron-germany.de/20 … l-wdr3600/

Then, using WinSCP, I customized my configuration file according to this post:

https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php … 17#p176517

Easy-Peasy!

Hope this helps somebody.

(Last edited by manthinking on 20 May 2014, 19:32)

Hello fellows,

I installed OpenWRT on this router, in order to use it as Multi SSID access point, where each SSID is tied to its own VLAN.

I created the first SSID on the 2.4 GHz radio, bridged it eth1.3 interface (WAN port, VLAN3), and it worked fine.
I then created the second SSID on the 5 GHz radio, bridged it to the eth1.4 interface (WAN port, VLAN4) and it also worked fine.

So I created two more SSIDs, both on the 2.4 GHz radio in addition to the first SSID, and bridged them to eth1.5 and eth1.6. To my surprise this is not working, clients connecting to these SSIDs do not see their respective upstream DHCP servers.

Here is my configuration:
SSID1, 2.4GHz, WiFi1 bridged to eth1.3
SSID2, 5GHz, WiFi2 bridged to eth1.4
SSID3, 2.4GHz, WiFi3 bridged to eth1.5
SSID4, 2.4GHz, WiFi4 bridged to eth1.6

The VLANs 3, 4, 5, and 6 are connected with the single cable to the WAN port of the TL-WDR3500. Corresponding upstream DHCP servers are configured identically, except each of the VLANS is in its own subnet.

Only SSD1 and SSID2 work, the SSID3 and SSID4 do not. Is only a single VLAN per wireless radio supported?

Thinking that I need to turn on VLANs somewhere else, I went to the switch settings, and in addition to the untagged VLAN, added VLANs 3, 4, 5, and 6 to the CPU port. I left LAN 1 through LAN 4 port settings unchanged (untagged). As soon as I saved the settings I locked myself out. Now I can no longer connect to the router on the wired LAN ports.

Thank you!

I have progress. I noticed that the three bridges, connected to three different SSIDs on the same radio, for some reason had identical MAC addresses. I manually gave each of the bridges a unique MAC address, and now the Wireless clients get correctly assigned addresses from corresponding DHCP servers.

Ok, I plugged the TL-WDR3500 into the live infrastructure, and it is working. Awesome: multiple VLANs, trunked from the WAN port and mapped each to its own SSID; just what I needed.

Here is how to do this through LuCI interface:
  1.    Create as many Network Interfaces as you have VLANs. Interfaces attach to eth1.x, where x is the VLAN id. Make sure each interface has a unique MAC address.
  2.    Then create your SSIDs one at a time, assigning each to its own Network interface created in the previous step. This will create bridges, no need to create the bridges manually.
  3.    Turn the radios on.

That is it. Do not touch the Network – Switch configuration, for this setup VLANs are already enabled where they need to be.

Hi all,

new to OpenWRT so apologies if this is a stupid question (although allegedly there's no such thing as a stupid question - allegedly...) 

I have the WDR3500 and have flashed it with Barrier breaker.  After making some config changes (to firewall, dropbear and network) I rebooted and found none of the edits were saved.  I ran the firstboot command and telnet-ed in and re-implemented the changes and the issue appears to be resolved.  I set the passwd and rebooted. 

However, when I try to SSH in I get a connection refused error.  Any ideas/guidance on what would be causing this?  Worth noting, this is the 4th WDR3500 that I have flashed, with 2 being successful(after a bit of tinkering) and 2 not.

Thanks for your time,
ciara

Same case as a few posts above: You probably flashed the sysupgrade image. The first image to flash needs to be the factory image.

I'm starting to wonder if the wiki page on the WDR3500 gives the wrong instructions.

Guys,

I need your help! I installed the factory image from the following link:

http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wdr3500

After installing it I am able to telnet my router using the LAN Port in the failsafe mode. However, I am unable to SSH it. As of now, the router is pretty useless.

Please help me to get the router working again, I want to install the original TP LINK firmware again or install LUCI and get this work whichever way is easier.

I just want it to start working again as it is new and I just bought it.

Thank you so much

Why are you in failsafe to start with? There is no SSH in failsafe I believe. Did you follow the instructions for your first run? If not, start here:
http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/firstlogin

Then install Luci:
http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/luci.essentials

Note that you wifi is disabled by default and you will need to enable it. See basic config:
http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/basic.config

Once you get Luci installed, I recommend you flash Barrier Breaker 14.07-rc3 (or rc4/final when released, should be soon). These have Luci built-in and also have stable package repositories (i.e. no changes to kernel/modules). You currently have a development/trunk build, which is a bit of a moving target and will cause you more headaches in the future if you're new (like not having Luci by default). See here for 14.07-rc3:
https://downloads.openwrt.org/barrier_b … x/generic/

You can use the sysupgrade image, but I would reset to defaults since there may be some subtle differences in config files between barrier breaker and chaos calmer (trunk).

(Last edited by drawz on 27 Sep 2014, 16:42)

Hi drwaz,

Thank you so much for your reply!!

I read somewhere that we have to use the failsafe mode to install Luci, I must have been misinformed. Though I am unable to telnet to 192.168.1.1 when connecting my laptop to the router via LAN in the normal mode. I am receiving the following error:

Connecting to 192.168.1.1....Could not open connection to the host, on port 23: Connect failed

I am able to telnet in failsafe mode but not able to ssh in failsafe mode. I am able to do neither in normal mode.

In failsafe mode, I am able to set the new password and then after that when I try to ssh using this software called "Putty", I receive an error saying "Connection Refused"

Please note:

I am using LAN Port and not WAN port on my router to connect to my laptop.

Please note I have changed my Lan IP Address to the following settings:

Ip address: 192.168.1.5
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Defautl gateway: 192.168.1.1

Please let me know what am I doing wrong and what do I need to do. I just need to get the router working again.

Once again, thank you so much for your reply!!

It's unclear to me where exactly your configuration really stands. I recommend reseting to defaults using failsafe. To do so try the following commands in failsafe mode via telnet:

firstboot

If that doesn't work, then try:

 mtd -r erase rootfs_data

Once you've reset OpenWrt to defaults, then any of the guides linked to above should get you going.