Well, I think R6400 v2 is a cost-effective router.
Its hardware is similar to R6300, which has been supported.
I heard someone changed the borad id of R6400 to that of R6300, and the LAN could work, but the WLAN could not.
Broadcom ARM and NAND are often challenging, the BCM4360 WLAN is never going to work (aside from b43), the same applies to the BCM4331 WLAN. Given this predicament, it's probably not a good choice for OpenWrt.
3 Likes
I have looked at the Supported Hardware page and sadly I cannot find my device - the Netgear R6400v2.
Question: is support for it planned / coming?
DD-WRT supports it 
"BCM4360 WLAN is never going to work"
Then how come DD-WRT supports it?
https://forum.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=316399&highlight=r6400v2
I happen to own this device and latest DD-WRT runs quite happily - including a stable WLAN, both 2.4 and 5Ghz. Everything works, except for some issues with the OpenVPN client, which bring me to this forum and a sad conclusion that OpenWRT is a non-starter here.
Soul, meet devil.
2 Likes
Sorry, did not realise this was a legal issue, not technical. Long time Debian user here.
The 'wl' driver that, as I understand, we need here is in Debian's 'non-free' repository (at least its binary x86 and x64 versions). So it would seem there is a legal way for a open-source project to host and distribute 'wl' in binary form?
Having BCM43xx-based devices work with OpenWRT would rock!
https://packages.debian.org/stretch/broadcom-sta-dkms
First, it appears to be only a STA (client) driver, not an AP driver.
It's installed size of 14,140.0 kB likely makes it unusable for many all-in-one routers.
Also note that it is compiled under DKMS, not distributed in binary form. As most all-in-one routers can't build their own firmware, this is not an option.
1 Like
@Utumno The code might also not be portable, and the binary blobs floating around are often tied to an older kernel. Notice how recent OpenWrt uses e.g. kernels 4.9/4.14/4.19 in its codebase, and compare that to what DD-Wrt is running with the Broadcom blobs. That is often 3.x.
root@DD-WRT : ~ # uname -a
Linux DD-WRT 4.4.191 #1163 SMP Sat Sep 7 06:35:50 +04 2019 armv7l DD-WRT
root@DD-WRT : ~ # lsmod | grep wl
wl 4290684 0
It is not merely a legal issue, if compatible blobs aren't made available by the vendor outside of a strict NDA arrangement. Yes, Debian has a broadcom-sta-dkms package, but this exclusively contains x86/ x86_64 module blobs and userspace components linked against glibc, furthermore these drivers are STA-only and don't include AP functionality. Even ignoring AP functionality, you won't get a corresponding driver for mips/ musl (or arm, powerpc, respectively uclibc) from Broadcom, they won't even talk to you unless you've ordered several million of chips from them.
Given that this situation has remained unchanged for their softmac designs for well over 15+ years, there is no reason to believe that this will ever change.
1 Like
Old thread but you say legal but tomato supports R7000 and r6400...
Tomato uses deprecated 2.6.x kernel
1 Like