Linksys e3000 with LEDE

I'm considering loading up my old e3000 to support my parents wifi needs. They have a crappy DSL that supports something minimal like 10/1mbit. I know about the proprietary drivers issue, but I suspect the e3000 is more than enough to support such a meager internet connection. Does anyone have experience with the e3000 on LEDE who can comment?

I've ran weaker versions of that router. If you don't need wifi, go for it.

Ethernet drivers support BQL meaning fq_codel works properly. Could also use ethtool to reduce buffering.

FWIW you can get wireless by connecting a USB wifi adapter.

And yes, LEDE is better than stock.

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@neheb, do the wireless drivers work at all? I thought the broadcom proprietary drivers were functional.

erm they might. All the broadcom stuff that I have is not so I just assumed.

With default Lede only 2.4G radio works in 11bg mode. The 5G radio does not work. With the proprietary driver "kmod-brcm-wl + wl + nas" both radios work at 300mb. The rest works well.

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@hardvk0 , could you please provide more details how you got the 5GHz radio working. I'm using the June 3rd snapshot with kmod-brcm-wl. Only one radio is recognized:

[ 12.246883] kmodloader: loading kernel modules from /etc/modules.d/*
[ 13.243083] wl: module license 'unspecified' taints kernel.
[ 13.248766] Disabling lock debugging due to kernel taint
[ 13.356514] wl0: Broadcom BCM4329 802.11 Wireless Controller 5.10.56.27
[ 13.363617] SSB/BCMA glue driver successfully attached

I believe that requires the wl_high driver. Not available in LEDE unfortunately.

Finally figured it out myself:

  • remove kmod-br43
  • remove /etc/config/wireless
  • add kmod-brcm-wl , wl, nas and wlc

@u373jk I followed your instructions and got mine to work as well -thanks!

However I find that it doesn't survive a reboot. When it boots up, the SSIDs are both blank on the "Wireless Overview" page, and neither are visible to clients.

If I click "Edit" for one of the wireless interfaces, the next page shows the SSIDs correctly, so I just click "Save & Apply" and somehow that revives the SSIDs and everything works perfectly again (until the next boot).

I've tried to read through the LuCI source code to see how I can trigger this automatically from /etc/rc.local but I can't grok it.

Wondering if this matches your experience, and if you have a solution.

I've rebooted many times since last June and never lost a wireless config. My e3000s are running stable, I didn't change any config or firmware since then, so they are still running version 17.01.2. But I remember about lots of problems between the wireless config file content and the GUI, as well for editing as for displaying.

I would recommend not to use the web GUI for this. The system behaves correctly according to the config file (/etc/config/wireless). Please check this file before and after a reboot. If it does not survive a reboot, then there is something wrong with your filesystem.

Thanks @u373jk, that's a good data point. Would you mind posting your /etc/config/wireless from an e3000 (slightly anonymized if necessary)?

root@hostname:~# cat /etc/config/wireless

config wifi-device 'wl0'
        option type 'broadcom'
        option txantenna '3'
        option rxantenna '3'
        option channel '6'
        option htmode 'HT20'
        option txpower '20'
        option country 'LU'
        option hwmode '11n'

config wifi-iface 'default_wl0'
        option device 'wl0'
        option network 'VLAN6'
        option mode 'ap'
        option ssid 'blah24'
        option encryption 'psk2'
        option key 'blahblah'

config wifi-iface
        option device 'wl0'
        option network 'VLAN7'
        option mode 'ap'
        option ssid 'blahKIDS'
        option encryption 'psk2'
        option key 'blahblah'

config wifi-device 'wl1'
        option type 'broadcom'
        option txantenna '3'
        option rxantenna '3'
        option channel '44'
        option htmode 'HT40+'
        option txpower '20'
        option country 'LU'
        option hwmode '11n'

config wifi-iface 'default_wl1'
        option device 'wl1'
        option network 'VLAN6'
        option mode 'ap'
        option ssid 'blah50'
        option encryption 'psk2'
        option key 'blahblah'

root@hostname:~#