Many difficutlies with OpenWrt on R7800

Not trying to cast aspersions but I've had a really rough time after installing OpenWRT. I was on DD-WRT but reverted to stock firmware, then flashed the Nighthawk R7800 version of OpenWRT. Wanted to configure Wireguard but my experience in just getting the basic install stable has been more than challenging.

About 25% of the time when I try to load any of the router's webpages, I get either a 0 on the page or an error message, "No related RPC reply". Once that happens it takes several refreshes of the browser to get the router webpage to open.
Set up a Static DHCP lease and that doesn't seem to work.

I followed the quick start guide as far as installing goes including finding the version for my router.
Really want to get this to work but the interface is shall we say not user friendly and I'm not sure what is wrong with my install.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Edit: forgot the most important thing, my download speed is half of what it was on wired ethernet. 1Gbps connection which I could get on other router OS but at most 490Mbps with OpenWRT.

Disclaimer: not owning this particular device, but a very similar one of the same target.

This device is quite popular among OpenWrt users for quite a few years now, so this shouldn't happen - and would be a known issue by now, so there must be something strange amiss. Unless you're working with a weird browser or browser plugins - or are dealing with caching issues of redirects or other things related to your previous firmwares, there would be only two things coming to mind. Either a faulty flash (image corrupted in transfer or something similar) - or misconfiguration of some kind. I would suggest flashing OpenWrt again, without keeping settings (sysupgrade -n </tmp/sysupgrade-image.bin>) and then sticking to defaults to the extent possible (just configure WAN access and enable WLAN), also clear your browser cache (or try a different one/ incognito mode).

This would be a pure software feature, pretty much independent of the hardware - if it were broken, it should/ would be broken for everyone - and this isn't a known issue either, so probably just another side effect of your previous issues.

This is within the expected performance margin of this hardware, you can tweak it slightly via software flow-offloading, but I wouldn't really recommend that (it's not without side effects). See e.g Bandwidth Issues on Zyxel NGB6817 - #2 by slh or NBG6817 download speed inconsistencies - #2 by slh for some background.

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Appreciate you taking the time to reply. I had wondered if it were a bad flash, but wanted to seek advice before proceeding. Chrome and Firefox were used and experience the same thing even in incognito mode with no plugins.

The performance hit is sort of the deal breaker for me. I'd literally have to accept a 50% performance hit where the stock firmware and even DD-WRT give the full connection speed.
Might be a big enough reason to start getting into Ubiquiti. :slight_smile:

My own take home message would be taking a look at So you have 500Mbps-1Gbps fiber and need a router READ THIS FIRST and Tips for getting cheap used x86-based firewall with full Gbit NAT (a PC Engines APU) if you are in the US.

Obviously there are also new contenders (x86_64 based 4-port systems starting around 250-300 EUR/ USD on Bezo's book store or Jack Ma's market places), but some of the older designs going EOL these days are still quite capable and cheaply available on the second hand markets - in combination with just about any AP (preferably OpenWrt supported) you like (including the r7800); same goes for managed switches. The more you get north of ~500 MBit/s, the more this approach becomes a viable option.

Best to my knowledge, the standard OpenWrt releases for Netgear R7800 does not provide hardware offload support.
But
You can take a look at the builds where members here provided releases where hardware offload (NSS) is provided. Links below.
ACwifidude
Kong

No idea how good their hardware offload implementation is, compared to factory stock but you can give them a try.