Hello,

I am seeking any information I can find on making a router perform a number of tasks I no longer want to dedicate a computer to. Prior to this I had the Tenda N60 and Linksys E4200 v2.0, however, The former only runs tomato and the latter doesn't run anything (someone mentioned getting debian to run on it, but the website went offline so I can't do much with that). I went to the store, and found a decent router the TEW-818DRU, which attracted my attention because it included a USB3.0 port, which would help me incorporate my 2TB disk I wasn't fully using.

That being said, I haven't had much luck with DD-WRT, some things work, some things don't. My biggest issue is the lack of customization, but the mounds of conflicting information is also a drawback.  I am interested in Open-WRT's package system, but I don't see a dedicated project or any mention of the TEW-818DRU (or any other router I have), however there are some other TrendNet routers listed that are virtually identical in hardware, and I thought I would ask about it before I assume it's not doable.

I am debating getting one of these routers to work or possibly purchasing yet a different one to complete the project. Right now I am stuck at making the decision.

what chipset are in those routers?

Linksys E4200 v2.0 - MARVEL 88W8063 a/b/g/n (Ref: https://wikidevi.com/wiki/Linksys_E4200 - very bottom of page)
Tenda N60 - Broadcom BCM47186B0 (500 MHz) (Ref: https://wikidevi.com/wiki/Tenda_N60 )
TrendNet TEW-818DRU - Broadcom (No direct reference, but found multiple places and running Broadcom version dd-wrt)

There is some support for the chipset in the Tenda N60, but no pre-built image available that I know of. Hard to comment at all about the Trendnet without more detail.

In general, Atheros is a much better supported platform on OpenWrt and I encourage you to get a router with such a chipset if you really want to use OpenWrt. There are several that are fairly inexpensive.

drawz,

thank you for the feedback. there is a tomato image for the tenda, although I can't seem to find any build documentation which could be useful for trying to roll my own. I noticed some other people using tomato or generic linux installs on hardware to assist in overcoming specific challenges when installing.

Cost is not a huge motivator for me, but I really would enjoy getting something I already have here working. The dd-wrt completeness on the Trendnet does lead me to believe that should an image exist or be created for, it would be a decent vendor. Is there any documentation on what people did to start trying to build a new image? Especially those times where a minor revision in hardware was made and the porting to a new(er) version of a router with very similar hardware was accomplished by reusing an image and making minor changes. If I know how that is typically accomplished I can probably port some steps and re

one of the reasons I like the OpenWrt development is that it's very open and well documented. You're seeing the downside of those other projects not doing that well now.

Sorry I can't help more, but there is some info in the wiki: http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/devel/add.new.device