Possibilities of porting to a new HW

hello everyone and nice to meet you .

since this is my first post here let me introduce my self first , im from Greece , im a ee student with some
experience in networking , i moslty used PFsense till a friend introduced me to OpenWRT.

We got my hands on a Business router from a greek manufacturer (Oxygen ) that although locked from the isp had a realy capable set of hw fetures (4g+ & VDSL2 35b modems , quite a bit of ROM and ram and without any broadcom ICs on the pcb)

the company on their web site have this :

Open Source Software (OSS) is used in parts of our products that are under the GNUv3 licence. Contact us for the request of relevant source code implemented functionanilty using OSS

We havent contacted them yet , but in theory they are willing to share info ... :crossed_fingers:

 Model number : Oxygen HPV05400

Chipset: IKANOS IKF7185SE-B1-PB1-C

xDSL: IKANOS FXS70IF1BE-B0-0

 Ethernet: QCA8337-AL3C PE68189.KA 1543
 
 Wi-Fi: Atheros AR9381-AL1A
 
 NAND Flash: S34ML02G100TF100 (256mb)
 
 RAM: EM68c16cwqe-254 (x2) (256mb)
 
 CPU: VX185

 its using u-boot (boot dumps from serial are available)

also i found this that seems to have realy similar architecture to ours .

(sory they are low quality , ill upload better ones Asap)

*Boot dump from serial
{ah char limit , lets use a paste bin }

A Firmware image is avelable for the general "family" of devices , i dont have for the one with 4g.
but they are on the same pcb

with all the info provided , im asking what are the chances of geting any version of openWRT on this ,
and to help with the ods , what pcs of info would be usefull to ask from the company , if they indeed are willing to provide any info.

Thanks in advace , and sorry for my english

The gist is, forget it.

There is neither SOC-, nor modem support for any Ikanos chipset (neither mainline, nor OpenWrt specifically). Another of the exotic specimens using this chipset would be the AVM Fritz!Box 7390, for which there is more information available.

Getting this supported would require writing SOC support first, a major undertaking for a very small set of (rare/ exotic) older devices (which, even with their corresponding OEM firmware, were very quirky) - it's very unlikely to happen, unless anyone with a huge motivation would spend months/ years of working on this - not impossible, but extremely unlikely. xDSL modem support or any of the phone features is pretty much not going to happen either, 'thanks' to the driver situation.

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Thanks for the reply !

sadly writing SOC support is way beyond my knowledge .

For the record , what chipsets/CPUs/Modems are best supported by openwrt?
i was used to pfsense`s

a modern x86 will do with a intel nic

recipe , and its intresting to learn about this new platform ...

Ideally those that already are supported by OpenWrt right now, without you having to do anything :wink:

Beyond that, sticking to the popular ones generally makes sense, e.g. (roughly from lower end to higher end):

  • lantiq/ xrx200
  • ath79
  • mt7621
  • ipq40xx
  • ipq806x
  • mt7622
  • bcm2711/ RPi4
  • x86_64

There are some more exotic targets available which can be very interesting as well (e.g. mvebu, sunxi, rockchip), albeit mostly in a wired-only capacity and if you know what you're doing. Work on ipq807x is ongoing, very promising hardware, but difficult to beat into reasonable shape.

In terms of xDSL modem support, there is only lantiq vr9 at this point - slightly dated and a relatively slow SOC, but pretty much fully working (but often used in low-end ISP-branded devices and with sub-par wireless). There is no support at all for cable modems.

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I wouldn't restrict bcm27xx to only the Pi 4 - most other Pi variants work well to. I've got a few Pi3s that are workhorses running OpenWRT.

However, it's definitely valid to say that anything that has a BCM chipset that is not a product of Raspberry Pi Trading should be avoided. The Pi Foundation/Pi Trading have advanced the state of Broadcom opensource by many years, but those advancements are still pretty much limited only to actual Raspberry Pi Trading products.

I am very intentionally restricting the advice to the RPi4, as this is the first RPi device which offers more than USB2 as system bus to the outside. In terms of routing performance, the prior generations do not compare to the RPi4 and should not be considered as a (wired-, the wireless is not for actual usage either way) router appliance with OpenWrt.

Pi 3 has worked absolutely fine for wireless CAN tunnelling (using canneloni - https://github.com/mguentner/cannelloni ), and the 4 wasn't available when we obtained a bunch if Pi 3 based Sfera Strato Pi units. The Pi 3s have served very well for a Layer 2 OpenVPN tunnelling server over WLAN. OpenWRT-supported hardware that is readily available with a 9-65v DCDC converter + CANbus support is extremely rare.

Obviously I would not recommend a Pi 3 for a new purchase, but if someone has Pi 3s on hand, they are perfectly usable and well supported. There are also plenty of use cases for the Pi Zero W - obviously the Zero2 would be preferable here if not for the current blob situation.

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