I’m reaching out to seek assistance with my TP-Link Archer C20 V6.8 router (Indian Version), which I recently purchased. I was initially excited to install OpenWRT on the device, as it was listed with version V6 in the marketplace. However, after receiving it and attempting to install OpenWRT via TFTP (using the last supported firmware for version V6), the router has unfortunately become bricked.
Now, my router is non-functional, and I am unable to find any available firmware for version V6.8 on TP-Link’s official website. I specifically wish to avoid using the stock TP-Link firmware and continue with OpenWRT, as that was the primary reason for purchasing the device.
Could anyone provide guidance or assistance on how to recover the router, or ideally, if you could make the OpenWRT firmware for version V6.8 available? I understand this might be an uncommon scenario, but I believe the community’s expertise can help resolve the situation.
I would greatly appreciate your support in helping me get OpenWRT running on my Archer C20 V6.8.
Which image did you actually attempt to flash? V1? V4? V5? Because as far as I can see, V6 is not supported yet/there is no prebuilt image for V6.
Unless someone puts in the work and develops support for V6/V6.8 you will have to do that yourself. First step would be getting a UART to USB adapter to see what is actually going on as the router boots.
For getting the device functional again (albeit on stock firmware), maybe you can try to reach out to TP-Link customer support. If they send you a firmware file you could most likely flash that via TFTP. Then you can at least use the device or sell it and get one that already is supported by OpenWrt.
Edit: Also beware that the C20 only has 100 MBit/s (= FE/Fast Ethernet) capable ethernet ports. If that will be a bottleneck for your use case, you might want reconsider this anyways.
Mostly , I don't want to use stock firmware to be honest as lot of vulnerabilities are coming up in TP-Link Routers specifically in Archer C and A series routers.
First of all, this particular router model is not supported by OpenWrt. Normally, to add support for this model, a developer would need to have access to the device, but because this looks like a fairly rare device to begin with and limited to only certain regions, it is unlikely that the conditions for adding support will be satisfied. Unless you, personally, implement the support.
If you want to restore the device to its original firmware, you need to ask the manufacturer to give you the firmware. The only other method is trying at your own risk to use firmware of close-enough models. In this post (in some Brazilian forum) someone claims to have successfully used that method to recover this particular model, albeit they didn't get 5GHz to work. You can use Google translate and follow that rabbit hole, but be prepared to spend a lot of time and maybe get no working router in the end.
