OpenWRT on i225-V type systems

Forum members,

I am considering to purchase one of these N5105 mini-pc systems with 4 x 2.5GbE ports on it to run ProxMox with VMs for pfSense and OpenWRT.

If I add a WiFi card to the N5105 mini-pc and want to pass it through to OpenWRT what issues might I face?
What is the best 802.11ax card to get that works well with OpenWRT that is mini pci?
I would have OpenWRT being an 802.11r AP on my network and would let pfSense to the routing.

I am also curious, what kind of success people have had using a NanoPi R5S with a WiFi card installed into it and what WiFi hardware is recommended for that?

Thanks for any comments or advice in advance.

Stuart

If you want AX, Mediatek is your only choice, today.

Consider power requirements and heat dissipation, all 802.11ax (and high-end 802.11ac not much less) cards are running very hot. The better choice would be offloading the wireless part to a dedicated AP (running OpenWrt).

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I am not opposed to that idea at all, what sort of 802.11ax (or high-end 802.11ac) do you recommend that is OpenWRT based?

Right now I have OpenWRT running on WRT3200ACM and a WRT1900AC (it is the AC I am contemplating to replace).

Stuart

The RT3200 is very popular here, and cheap.
60£ new, in UK, and $50 used, in US.

Frollic,

The RT3200 (e8450) is very interesting I agree (I also like Linksys hardware). The problem is that I see it is not supported with a stable version yet. Is there any prediction as to when it will be supported in a stable release?

I wonder if the RT3200 using factory firmware would integrate into 802.11k/r/v networks where the other routers are running OpenWRT currently (I have 802.11k/r/v working fine on OpenWRT currently).

Stuart

22.03 is out https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/22.03.0/targets/mediatek/mt7622/

Frollic,

That release must have been very recent. Seems a bit confusing to me, as that does not comport with this:

I also attempted to conduct an opkg update/upgrade (command line) on my wrt3200acm and it did not see any updates available for 22 as yet either. Is the only way to upgrade from 21 to 22 to use the GUI and the opkg command cannot achieve that?

This is command I normally run to do so:

opkg update && opkg list-upgradable | cut -f 1 -d " " | xargs -r opkg upgrade

Stuart

It hasn't actually been officially announced. It may even still be building as I write this. It will likely be announced soon, but on that topic.

this method will not upgrade you to a new major (or minor) release... it cannot upgrade the actual OpenWrt version or the kernel. However...

Upgrading packages (via the CLI opkg upgrade command or the LuCI Upgrade... button) can result in major problems. It is generally highly discouraged, unless you know what you are doing or if there is specific instruction to do so.

Yeah, you won't find the 22.03 packages in another release, unless you modify the URLs where opkg is looking for them.

Still not way to do it, though, you need to upgrade.

And pointing to a repo from a different version of OpenWrt will probably not work and/or could cause even more serious issues than general package upgrades... different kernel versions (which is almost always going to be the case when OpenWrt versions change) mean that packages compiled against a older/newer kernel will not be compatible.

Not saying it should be done, just that it's doable.

For clarity, let's define doable as the following:

  • yes, you can point the opkg system to a repo from a different OpenWrt version.

However, many (most?) packages will probably not install at all (the system should throw and error about a kernel version mismatch). But in a more problematic situation, something might install that is not compatible and causes major problems for the entire system.

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Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.

Frollic, et alia:

Fair enough, I am happy to do things using best practices. Thus, I would think then to backup my configuration and do the upgrade via the GUI is what you suggest then, correct?

I also want to make sure I understand that this is released as a stable not RC version at this point given the website seems to suggest otherwise for both the WRT3200 and the RT3200.

Let me just say that I appreciate very much everyone's responses and input. Now that a stable release is out for RT3200, perhaps I will pick one up in the next month or so.

Stuart

Yeah, that should work.

As @psherman said, it's probably still being built, but the official announcement should be out any day now.

Frollic,

Thank you, I will check my devices to assure there are not other things I wish to backup that are normally outside of the GUI's backup on both my routers. I am more confident and interested now to grab an RT3200/e8450 (they are basically the same, yes?).

I will also watch for the full announcement as well.

Thanks again!

Stuart