Adding OpenWrt Support for TP-Link EAP-265

For Developers
1

Hello peeps
Im completely new to this so bear with me.
I'm hoping you can help me out as i seem to be complete idiot when it comes to networking and still don't understand where this is going.

I recently purchased a eap265 as I needed a decent access point in the house with mesh capabilities ,in the hope that later I can start grabbing outdoor access points. Im currently running a pfsense vm and omada container but started to look at opnsense as a Friend started using it, But with the recent news of tp-links shenanigans and all I wanted to look at alternatives. I program alot of esp- boards and have a usb to TTL programmer I use for that if that helps, what would this entail?

Many thanks
Jon

2

There isn't that much technical information available about that device available (and it isn't supported at this point), you'd have to start gathering information and work on the porting. From the little I can find using a quick search, it seems to be ath79 based, ar9344 or newer with Qualcomm-Atheros wireless, a little dated but porting should be rather straight forward. One big obstacle though, judging from the firmware downloads, TP-Link seems to use signed firmware images - so that would need to be circumvented (on other TP-Link EAP devices, the certificate validation dæmon can be stopped over ssh, maybe that works here as well, maybe it doesn't…).

3

Thanks for the information in wondering how far off the eap245 is, would that be a good template to start with? I'll take a look later at the datasheet and possibly open up my ap and take a look.

4

I don't know either of those devices, but start with comparing FCC images (often the images are blurry, but you can still get quite some information from the FCC ID and their database).

5

The EAP265HD is just an EAP245 v3 (maybe with different settings):

https://fccid.io/TE7EAP265HD/Letter/6-Request-for-FCC-Change-ID-4823578

It should be nearly trivial to add EAP265HD support, since it appears that it just uses the same FW images as the EAP245v3

$ ./openwrt/build_dir/host/firmware-utils-2022-01-29-872c87c6/tplink-safeloader -i signed/EAP265HD\(EU\)_V1_5.0.4\ Build\ 20211021/EAP265HDv1_5.0.4_\[20211021-rel57494\]_up_signed.bin 
Firmware image partitions:
base     size     name
00000800 00000800 partition-table
00001000 00000059 support-list
00001059 00000018 soft-version
00001071 0000000a extra-para
0000107b 0014d468 os-image
0014e4e3 00641000 file-system

[Software version]
Version: 5.0.4
Date: 2021-10-21
Revision: 57494

[Support list]
SupportList:
EAP245(TP-Link|UN|AC1750-D):3.0
EAP265 HD(TP-Link|UN|AC1750-D):1.0

[Partition table]
base     size     name
00000000 00040000 factroy-boot
00040000 00040000 fs-uboot
00080000 00002000 partition-table
00090000 00001000 default-mac
00091000 00000100 support-list
00091100 00000400 product-info
00092000 00000100 soft-version
000a0000 00010000 radio
000b0000 00010000 extra-para
000c0000 00180000 os-image
00240000 00c00000 file-system
00e40000 00030000 user-config
00f30000 00080000 mutil-log
00fb0000 00040000 oops
2 Likes
6

I was hoping this, I think the only difference was mu-mimo when I was looking at them both and the 265 was like $15 more

7

So follow the tplink 245 guide and ssh in then enter the above?

8

The current (snapshot) factory images won't be accepted, because they miss the EAP265 HD string in the support list. I've written the required patch for firmware-utils, and am checking if it builds correctly at the moment.

1 Like
9

So a day with it and the only issue I'm seeing is a weird WiFi performance

10

So i flashed the Tp-Link EAP 265 with the EAP-245 tweaked firmware supplied by @svanheule
It all seems to work as an AP the wan is static and connected to my sever running OpnSense. as soon as I sorted out the IP's I had to install luci as im terrible with SSH enough to get myself out but mainly in trouble.

Half the issues I'm finding I guess are my lack of knowledge. DHCP seemed a bit off and I had to assign static IP`s to everything but as I said that was probably my fault and it threw some error codes for either NAT or nft on installation (no idea what nft is)

The only real issue which might very well be me again is the signal seems to be patchy and should be alot stronger a cheap little old d-link seems to have better coverage.

once again many thanks for your help

11

Thanks for testing! Perhaps the signal issue could be due a misconfigured antenna gain, but I also know that the support for the 5GHz radio isn't great. Sadly, I don't know much about how to determine what extra gain should be provided, if any.

If you're experiencing signal strength issues on the 2.45GHz band too, it could be a gain setting. That radio is the QCA9563's internal radio, widely used and well supported.

12

The antenna are rated at 2mW is all I know.
The signal was never that great and was always just intended to cover the interior of the house, I'm now looking for 802.11r compatible outdoor access points to fit anyway so it's not too big an issue.

13

Yes the 2.4 band is my main concern I'm not that bothered about 5ghz.
most likely my settings then i`ve been messing about with channels to try stop conflicts with a Zigbee Network

14

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