Adding OpenWrt Support for Netgear RAX120 (Nighthawk AX12)

For Developers
527

Is VLAN tagging supported in swrt ?

528

The 5Ghz radio range being quite low with OpenWRT is a known issue in this thread, I am not sure anyone as started a bug report on the OpenWRT github. If you search my post history on this thread or something related to low 5Ghz range, you will find that there is a board-2.bin file that must be swapped in the firmware folder. You will lose the 3rd radio, but 5Ghz will have much improved range.

As far as low wifi speed, that is because OpenWRT doesnā€™t natively support this routers NSS abilities. You must use an NSS enabled build. See this thread here: Qualcommax NSS Build . I personally use a modified build from AgustinLorenzo. https://github.com/AgustinLorenzo/openwrt/releases

529

Anyone have any idea how to flash openwrt permanently on RAX120v2?

I first flashed the rax120v2-squashfs-web-ui-factory.img from netgear firmware page, after that router booted successfully to initramfs openwrt. But then when going to flash the sysupgrade.bin from the backup/flash page (i unchecked that keep settings option), the firmware gets flashed and reboots, but it boots directly to tftp server recovery mode (power led blinking).

My issue is same as the one described here: Openwrt bug request #17917

I also tried to ā€œmtd erase rootfsā€ by ssh when booted to initramfs and then flash the sysupgrade.bin from flash page, but still same issue. It boots directly to tftp server mode.

If anyone flashed the openwrt successfully (persistent, not initramfs), can they please share the exact flashing process and on which openwrt version they're on?

EDIT: I was able to install latest version of openwrt this way

  1. Grab openwrt-24.10.0-rc4-qualcommax-ipq807x-netgear_rax120v2-squashfs-web-ui-factory.img from: Openwrt release page
  2. Flash the web-ui.img from Netgear stock GUI, then when it boots into initramfs, connect to router via ethernet.
  3. Flash openwrt-24.10.0-rc4-qualcommax-ipq807x-netgear_rax120v2-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin via luci gui (uncheck keep settings option)
  4. The openwrt will be installed correctly. Next when booted into 24.10.0-rc4, grab latest openwrt version of your choice and flash sysupgrade.bin via luci gui to get to the latest openwrt version.
  5. I personally installed latest openwrt nss build from here : August Lorenzo NSS Builds and installed the sysupgrade.bin
  6. Then swapped board-2.bin and cal data according to this reply to fix 5ghz wifi: Adding OpenWrt Support for Netgear RAX120 (Nighthawk AX12) - #421 by villahed94
530

Iā€™m Sharing my cal-ahb-c000000.wifi.bin, which I extracted from my RAX120v2ā€™s art partition manually. Also inside the zip, Iā€™ve written instructions on how I extracted it from art partitions, which commands I ran etc so you guys can extract your default factory calibration data (if you so desire). I hope someone finds this info useful.
Credits to this openwrt script : 11-ath11k-caldata
calibration data + Instructions download link: RAX120v2 factory cal-ahb-c000000.wifi.bin Download.

Replacing the calibration data is enough to resolve low 5ghz wifi signal issue. You could use with default board-2.bin that ships with openwrt and use the router in tri-band configuration. But I'd suggest using Netgerā€™s board-2.bin since RAX120v2ā€™s antennas probably weren't designed to work in tri-band config and possibly could cause interference between 2 5ghz bands.

Been running AugustLorenzoā€™s Latest NSS openwrt build, till now seems solid without any issue. Got this router for cheap, used on ebay (Ā£50), the hardware specs on this is exceptional. Once ofdma, mumimo, beamforming are enabled via ssh uci commands, easily get 150 mbps down and 70 mbps up on 2.4ghz (20mhz) and 300mbps up/down on 5ghz (160 mhz) (my max isp internet speed is capped at 300mbps)

4 Likes
531

yes, itā€™s a good fw, but, working with ISPā€™s PPPoE, the service wont connect, i did report to his github, but the creator closes the issue not giving any reason

532

Iā€™ve been using the calibration data file way up in this thread for a long time. Is this the same? Do you have ALL 3 radios operable? If so whatā€™s the ā€˜trickā€™ to getting the 2nd 5Ghz to work? I am only substituting the file in one place ā€“ do I need to put it in a second folder as well?

THANKS

533

Nope, calibration data that I shared is extracted directly from my unit- RAX120v2.

I also initially used the calibration data that was shared on this thread and it does work fine. But i noticed the mac address of wifi is different from my factory mac address of my router. Also on wifi analyzer shows that mac address of my wifi's manufacturer as ā€œBELKIN INTERNATIONALā€ instead of ā€œNetgearā€. I think its because the caldata that was shared was probably extracted from linksys mx4200 or some similar IPQ807x router.

So I decided to extract calibration data directly from art partition of my router (i assume its unique to my device?). Performance wise I didnā€™t noticed huge jump over other shared caldata on this thread though.

Regarding 3rd 5ghz radio, it works fine so long as you do not replace board-2.bin. Netgear RAX120v2 probably was never designed to work as tri-band router (just an assumption). Hence why when we replace the generic board-2.bin with factory, one it loses itā€™s 3rd radio. The only issue, if you use default board-2.bin it wonā€™t work with 160mhz.

I personally decided to replace board-2.bin since I didnā€™t know what else to do with the 3rd radio and 160mhz with stable 5ghz band was my outmost priority. I think the board-2.bin (probably extracted from stock) shared in this thread maybe combines both 4x4 5ghz band onto one 8x8 5ghz interface? (Since that matches with Netgear's advertisement on this router having 12 stream ā€“4x4 on 2.4ghz and 8x8 on 5ghz band).

534

Does anyone know how to get the fan working on this router? Does OpenWrt even support any package for spinning the fan?

535

Hi, you can try the following:

You need to locate the g761 controller using the following command:

find /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon*/name -exec sh -c 'echo -n "$1: "; cat "$1"' _ {} \;

Here's what you should see here. Here's my example: you need to adjust hwmon13 with the number you got from the search and adjust it in the script.In these two statements:

FAN_PWM
FAN_EN

/sys/class/hwmon/hwmon13/name: g761

Create the following script (I use the /root folder). Use a file manager, for example, WinSCP.

Give it any name you want; in my case, "smartfan".

Add the following...

#!/bin/sh

# --- ConfiguraciĆ³n ---
FAN_PWM="/sys/class/hwmon/hwmon13/pwm1"
FAN_EN="/sys/class/hwmon/hwmon13/pwm1_enable"

# Habilitar control manual
echo 1 > "$FAN_EN"

while true; do
    MAX_TEMP=0

    # Lee todos los sensores que contengan "cpu" en su nombre
    for zone in /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone*; do
        TYPE=$(cat "$zone/type")
        case "$TYPE" in
            *cpu*)
                TEMP_RAW=$(cat "$zone/temp")
                TEMP_C=$((TEMP_RAW / 1000))
                # Guardar la temperatura mƔs alta encontrada
                if [ "$TEMP_C" -gt "$MAX_TEMP" ]; then
                    MAX_TEMP=$TEMP_C
                fi
                ;;
        esac
    done

    # LĆ³gica de la Curva basada en la temperatura mĆ”xima
    if [ "$MAX_TEMP" -ge 75 ]; then
        echo 255 > "$FAN_PWM"
    elif [ "$MAX_TEMP" -ge 65 ]; then
        echo 180 > "$FAN_PWM"
    elif [ "$MAX_TEMP" -ge 55 ]; then
        echo 110 > "$FAN_PWM"
    elif [ "$MAX_TEMP" -ge 45 ]; then
        echo 60 > "$FAN_PWM"
    else
        echo 40 > "$FAN_PWM"
    fi

    sleep 20
done

Save changes

Give it permissions

chmod +x /root/smartfan.sh

Add it to /etc/rc.local to make it permanent

/root/smartfan.sh &

exit 0

Restart the router

2 Likes
536

The instructions by akm-04 generates the default calibration bin that's created when you flash openwrt firmware. 5GHz doesn't work well unless board-2.bin is replaced or the other calibration file from earlier in the thread is used. You can replace both but replacing only one got 5 ghz working for me. You will have to choose between 160ghz or dual 5 ghz radios though.

However my problem is my router randomly reboots like crazy, especially if I'm downloading or transferring files over wifi, similar to the problems people faced using Netgear firmware. Using the earlier board-2.bin (to get a working 5 ghz radio) and setting both radios to 23dbm fixes reboots if everything is connected to the 5ghz radio. As soon as any client starts transferring over the 2.4ghz radio I get an instant reboot. Unlike stock firmware, disabling wmm mode in 2.4g doesn't seem to do anything.

At first I though it was a thermal issue but im running the fan at a high manual pwm value, and onboard sensors show temps below 60. The problem wasn't as bad in 24.10.4, but any release afte including 24.10.5 has gotten a lot worse.

Anyone else have this router and experiencing random reboots, especially large transfers?

537

Strange, Iā€™ve been using NSS-builds for the last month and didnā€™t face any random reboots (2.4ghz is stable out of the box without any caldata or board-2.bin modifications). You mentioned you were using 24.10.4, I assume thatā€™s the official version of openwrt? If so Iā€™d suggest giving August Lorenzoā€™s build a try to see if that fixes reboot.

Alternatively you could try the exact build Iā€™m running (my fork of augustā€™s repo) to see if it fixes issue (Since I can confirm the router doesnā€™t reboot randomly on this build) Link. Just after flashing sysupgrade.bin, on first boot Login via gateway 172.17.0.1 (I Changed this in my build) then Luci --> System --> Custom Commands --> "Fix 5ghz Calibration Data (RAX120v2)" | the router will reboot by itself once the fix is applied. Itā€™ll run this script to fix caldata and replace board2.bin (my fw ships board2.bin inside the sysupgrade firmware). Give it a try to see if this fixes random reboots.

Also I noticed yourā€™re using manual pwm values to change fan speed. Iā€™d suggest switching to closed loop to control fan speed since thatā€™s the way stock oem firmware uses. (You can find the fan documentation here from this link. If you do flash the build from my repo, it should by default run the fan on auto configuration and speed would scale linearly with increasing temperature (it uses this fan script ā€“ but do note my fan script sometimes causes issues with openwrt 24.10 versions (for some reason g762 fan controller bugs out an reports fan1_input as 0, though it runs very stably on openwrt 25). Moreover you can see more custom commands in Luci --> System --> Custom Commands which you could use to manually choose fan speed if you so want.

You can have a look at all the custom modifications I made in my build here.

Hope this fixes your issue.

2 Likes
538

I had to flash back to stock firmware, made sure I was running the latest release or the version just prior that fixed the random reboot issues, then flash back to openwrt. I have a few hours of uptime and have downloaded about a dozen linux isos to /dev/null through wifi and so far no reboots.

I'm using your build now, it has a lot of conveniences built in. how often do you plan to make builds or is it a one off?

539

I probably wonā€™t be updating every month like August does. I will probably release a version every 6 months or so. I always prefer stability over monthly updates / security, usually I just setup my router once and forget about it.

540

Greetings, I'm evaluating getting one of these on the cheap, and I went through the whole thread to understand the current status. I couldn't find a summary, but this is what I gathered:

Other than builds mentioned above, here are some fixes that were mentioned along the way:

  • Replace board-2.bin for 5Ghz, relevant comment. This is included in akm-04's build.
  • Replace cal-ahb file with the one from MX4200, shared here.

Other relevant details:

  • RAX120 comes in v1 and v2, v1 won't work, so you have to make sure you are getting v2, as to how to identify them, in the sticker, there's a id/number/code at the bottom right corner, it needs to end with 03, if it ends with 01 or 02 it's a v1; see replies for 507.

I might need to go over the whole thread again, but please let me know if something I wrote is not correct, I will edit accordingly so it reflects current status.

1 Like
541

Hi @Music2326,

I've always tried to keep my version as ā€œout of the boxā€ as possible, and so far I don't think there have been any reported issues with this device.

The change you mentioned is intended to select the best firmware available so far for both ath11k and NSS.

Regards, Agustin

1 Like
542

Thanks for your reply and clarification Agustin, if I get the device I'll be sure to test your build and provide any feedback.

I hope my small summary is able to help future readers to some extent.