I am not yet very familiar with OpenWrt and network technology. So please excuse my perhaps stupid question:
Does OpenWrt turn the TP-Link RE450 repeater into a working WLAN router or WLAN access point?
The RE450 has only one Ethernet port. Of course you cannot use it as a switch for LAN devices... But can the one Ethernet port be used as a WAN port, although it is actually intended as a WLAN-LAN "transducer" in the TP-Link firmware?
I would like to use this device for a WLAN subnet that I want to build up after my actual router (FritzBox).
While not knowing this specific device, I do know OpenWRT, and yes, it will become a fully functional router and/or WLAN access point. Even though it only has one LAN port.
So if you want this as a "WLAN subnet", by which I suspect you mean a NAT'ted separate subnet behind your Fritz, that that will work.
Also, you could set it up as a routed (non- NAT'ted) separate subnet, though it means you do also need to add a hardcoded route statement to your Fritz.
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Thanks for the info.
In the meantime I bought a RE450 v2 repeater and transferred OpenWrt Image openwrt-19.07.3-ath79-generic-tplink_re450-v2-squashfs-factory.bin to it.
This was done quite easily via the TP-Link web interface. After booting OpenWrt for the first time, you have to connect the PC to the Ethernet port of the router so that the PC gets an IP address 192.168.1.xxx via DHCP. Then you can call the LuCi web interface at 192.168.1.1 and configure the two WLAN interfaces.
In order for the RE450 to function as a routed AP the Ethernet port must also be removed from the bridge with the two WLAN interfaces. I have activated DHCP Client for the Ethernet interface so that it gets an IP 192.168.178.xxx from my Fritzbox.
In the firewall I then set the ethernet port as WAN and allowed all traffic between it and the WLAN interfaces.
All adjustments were made over the LuCi web interface.
After that the former repeater worked perfectly as a routed access point (openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wifi/routedap).
Hope I have reported everything correctly...
I have one more question: What does "Masquerading" mean under Network > Firewall? In my case the effective firewall is between Provider-IP and Fritzbox. Between Fritzbox and RE450 no restrictions are needed - so can I switch off "Masquerading"?
The motivation for this whole story was to track and to regulate the internet consumption of my children (Quotas and Bandwidthcontrol).
Therefore I originally wanted to install the LuCi-App "OpenWRTQuotas" on the RE450. Unfortunately it turned out that the memory on the RE450 is too small for this LuCi-App :-((
Now I'm using "luci-wrtbwmon" for monitoring and I guess I'll have to programm something for the rest myself.
Or is there a ready-to-use OpenWrt tool with low memory requirements for quotas and a bandwidth limitation?
I am very grateful for hints!
Masquerading is NAT
If you can setup a static route on the fritzbox to subnet on the RE450 then you may disable it. Otherwise leave it enabled.
Thanks a lot for your answers and suggestions.
As reported above I managed to operate the RE450 as a full functional router using openWrt.
In the mean time however, the available memory became less and less every week til the RE450 router became unstable. 
I also read about similar behaviour in this forum.
So finally I ended up buying a (cheap and used) v2 Tp-Link Archer C7 since this router has more RAM and it seems to me one of the most used OpenWrt router.
Since download quotas and quality of service limitation for my kids is the main reason to have a non-stock firmware, I then decided to go with Gargoyle. Gargoyle was also one mor reason to buy the Archer C7 - it is reported to run flawless on these routers.
Now everything works fine and stable since on month :-)). There is enough available RAM an it does not become less over time.
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