I understand v21.02.0 stable is yet to be released but I'm wondering if it's safe to already buy MR8300 now (because I need a new router now) to install v21.02.0 when it's released? At this stage, what are the odds of MR8300 not being fully supported by v21.02.0?
WAN port VLAN tagging is currently broken on IPQ40XX target because OpenWrt detects two different NICs (eth1 WAN and eth0 LAN), on other platforms the WAN is eth0.2 and thus you can use VLANs without problems.
If you don't need VLANs then it should be good considering it has 512MB RAM which is more than enough to handle 3 ath10k radios and plenty of third party services running.
Hi.
I've just ordered this device yesterday. It'll be ship in a couple of days. I'll be able to get you so back experience.
For what I have understood, the MR8300 image is based on the EA8300 which is a very close device. This later is supported for 2y now. So I'm pretty confidend the MR8300 will be fully supported in 21.01.0.
Hi
I have the router now. Here is some back experience (MR8300 v1.1)
start the router without WAN access. go to 192.168.1.1. Click on background to bypass the loading of controler for your smartphone.
Go to 192.168.1.1/fwupdate.html and upload a factory image.
First I try to upload a custom build image (with mesh), and the wifi0 (qca 9886) doesn't seem to work. There are documented issues about this (EA8300 and MR8300). I Tried to change channel, power, country ,driver (CT or not). I went back to wpad-basic-wolfsll (no mesh), nothing seem to work. ipq4019 internal wifi works nevertheless.
So I switched to the 2nd firmware which still has the stock firmware, and setup the LAN and wifi with it.I allowed WAN access. I flashed the factory image provided by openwrt (no custom). I remove wpad-basic-wolfsll to wpad-mesh-wolfssl. Everything works now, including the wifi0.
There is certainly something that had change between the two tries, but I can't tell.
Hey @geminis3 , this issue only affects the WAN port? So when I'm using VLANs on the LAN ports of the MR8300 it should work?
Asking because I need to replace my old router, which uses multi-SSIDs and VLANs, and the MR8300 seems to fullfil all my needs.
The successful install detailed on the current MR8300 page was tested with the older firmware 1.1.17. It may also be a region model issue.
I see from the OpenWRT page for the EA8300 that it might be possible to install using a serial cable but the reason I choose a Linksys was to have the dual firmware option so I could roll back if issues with OpenWRT. I'll be returning the router but now I'm wondering if this is going to be an issue for all v1.1.18 Linksys routers
Hi.
I have bought this very device (v1.1) in early september, it had the 1.1.7 firmware.
There is no manual upload of firmware, even with 1.1.7, only automatic. To install OpenWrt, I had to manually browse this URL : http://192.168.1.1/fwupdate.html I have updated the device page with this procedure.
Can you check if this page is still available with 1.1.8 ? If so you should be able to install OpenWrt.
Is there a link to download the 1.1.7 firmware ? There's only the 1.1.8 on linksys website.
I have not installed 1.1.8 firmware. In order to avoid automatic update of the firmware and the possibility of a locking of installing openWrt, I chose to disconnect the WAN while configuring and installing.
Thanks for sharing the firmware update link! I just bought a Linksys MR8300 and I thought I had to return it since the manual firmware update option has been removed with the most recent update.
I was able to install the latest OpenWRT stable release for the MR8300 by uploading the factory image through that link.
Which firmware version do you have ?
I must confess that I was also surprised when not seeing the manual update possibility. What are we supposed to do if the firmware has a bug, and we want to get back to an older version ? Alright, there is still the possibility to switch to the secondary firmware.
The link was found in the EA8300 page. As both devices are almost identical, you can grab infos in its page.
I'm on firmware version "1.1.5.193013", the hardware is identified as "MR8300v1".
One thing I discovered though is that Linksys hasn't removed the manual update option in the official firmware, it has been hidden away from the user. When you are in the "Connectivity" section, you have to press on the "CA" link on the bottom right of the page, it's next to the legal information links. After pressing that link, the manual update option is shown. I guess the option has been hidden away to prevent tech support calls or something similar.
Thanks for the info, it's tricky to find.
I didn't use much the stock firmware, my only goal was to install OpenWrt. As the fwupdate page works, I didn't went further in investigating.
Yeah, the Linksys webpage has a lot of documentation but it's not well organized at all.
This device is really good for OpenWrt thanks to the amount of RAM it has over other cheap routers, right now I'm having some issues configuring PPPoE and I'm getting an "Unknown error (USER_REQUEST)" when setting up the WAN, it's really weird since the same configuration works in another OpenWrt router and the same fiber setup works with OEM Linksys firmware.
This is really useful info. Perhaps it could be added to the Wiki page for this router?
I went the hard way and typed in the URL to the firmware page (there's a link out there somewhere for it). Would have been easier and simpler to know you could click on that link to bring it up.
Thanks!
I did it.
I assume that both methods have the same result. It's not that long to handtype the URL. How many time will you do it ?
Concerning the firmware switching : has anyone tested the advanced reboot feature in Luci for the MR8300 ? I don't have the device to test it (I mean right now). I have only tested the manual power switch method.
The advanced reboot option works for me. Of course it is an optional install from the Software page. Using 20.02 first release. Wi-Fi is very stable. Had issues with a WRT3200ACM where 5Ghz would drop constantly. No issues with MR8300.
@sandyandi Has your question been answered in the meantime?
In case yes, please consider marking this topic as [Solved]. See How to mark a topic as [Solved] for a short how-to.
