I want to upgrade my WRT3200ACM to 21.02.0-rc3

i am running OpenWrt 19.07.7 r11306-c4a6851c72 / LuCI openwrt-19.07 branch git-21.044.30835-34e0d65 and i would like to upgrade to the latest build available
21.02.0-rc3 (r16172-2aba3e9784) but i have read these cautionary posts about the change of structure for the VLANS. if i am willing to lose all my not very complicated config and start new, is there a downside? can i just use the sysupgrade img and NOT save settings and i am good? i am hoping for better WIFI support for the broadcom and maybe fixes in other stability areas.

First, the WRT Series are Marvell chipsets, not Broadcom.

Second, avoid the 21.02.0-rc's for the Marvell based WRT Series. Lots of Wifi and DSA (Switch/VLAN migration) issues. I have been testing some of the advance experimental builds with Kernel 5.10+ and there are still DSA and routing issues.

I've got three Marvell based WRT Series in service (mine and other family households) all running 19.07.7 without issues.

do you have an example

Let’s see

  1. Constantly dropping wifi
  2. Poor wifi performance
  3. While I was able to get LACP to work with DSA and LAG fixes back ported to kernel 5.10 by @LGA1150, it will not route traffic across wifi to LACP bridge

If you have some better images, happy to test.

Should be no issue if you do not keep your config (there will be a warning box). DSA VLAN setup works fine, the only downside is some people have been running into an issue with WIFI intermittent connectivity issues, others are fine. If you experience that you only have to toggle the power switch to reset back to the image you are currently running (see wiki). There were some netifd changes that came into the 21.x tag post the RC3 build which you will want, so at a minimum you will probably want 21.02-SNAPSHOT; but it looks like RC4 is on hand so maybe just wait for that to be announced.

@anon80727944 the OP mentions nothing about LAG. I do not add bonding to my builds, one image is going to be the same as the next in that regard. Some of that is recent, perhaps netid has not caught up.

Ahh of course, not Broadcom... sorry. Marvell. I was reading a separate article about the Broadcom modem in my laptop and transposed... I did some troubleshooting and it looks like I have solved my immediate problem (fingers crossed) but I was confused about the DSA situation and Wifi problems but everyone seemed to be just sticking with 19.07.7. I assumed that problems were fixed and everything gets better with upgrades. perhaps ill wait longer... thanks.

Installed rc4 on WRT1900ACv1

Wifi performance and reliability seem much better.

Seems I'll have to wait until OpenWrt moves to Kernel 5.10+ and back ports the fixes for LACP to work.