Netgear Nighthawk as wired AP

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

I am just starting to learn how to work with OpenWrt. I borrowed a Netgear Nighthawk AC1900 (R7000) to help me learn. I want to set it up as a wired access point, but I am stuck.

I followed directions on the device page for installing OpenWrt firmware 24.10. It seems to have been successful.

The Nighthawk is connected by ethernet on the WAN port to the root router and by ethernet on the first LAN port to my computer. To do some tasks, I follow the directions and disconnect the ethernet cable from the WAN port.

Now I'm following the directions in the quick start guide. The first task listed is to enable a wi-fi access point. The second step in the directions to do that is to access "Network" - "Wireless" in LuCI. But "Wireless" does not appear under the "Network" menu or anywhere else.

DNS is working only through my VPN, not through the root router. The root router and the Nighthawk have the same IP address (192.168.1.1). Several attempts under "Network" - "Interfaces" to change the IP address on the Nighthawk have failed because the change is never confirmed, so it gets rolled back. In network interfaces, "lan" is green; "wan" and "wan6" are red. "lan" has a static address. "lan" is a bridge ("br-lan").

Questions:

  1. How do I get the Nighthawk working as a wired AP?
  2. How can I enable "Network" - "Wireless"?
  3. Must I set up the Nighthawk up explicitly as a client or as a router? If I do, where and how do I do that?
  4. How do I change the IP address?

Many thanks for any help.

2

It is not going to work that way you need to set the Netear to 192.168.2.1

Recent build will let you Save and Apply without confirmation if that does no work you can manually edit /etc/config/network and change the br-lan IP address.

About Wireless that might not work see:
https://openwrt.org/meta/infobox/broadcom_wifi

I have several Broadcom routers a.o. the R7000 but those run DDWRT as I need the wireless

3

Thanks, egc!

I changed the IP address successully without confirmation.

I was aware that Broadcom devices were not supported well, but didn't know that my borrowed device used Broadcom.

There is some support for wireless. Any idea why the "Wireless" menu option does not even appear in LuCI?

4

No sorry, as said I use DDWRT for my Broadcom devices.

Because of the status of Broadcom wireless not many people will try to use wireless so not much expertise in house about it.