Running 22.03.7 on Asus RT-N11P wont work. Looking for alternate or higher OpenWrt version firmware

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

Dear Community,

yesterday i had the chance to flash a decade old Asus RT-N11P with the latest official stock firmware from asus. The device itself has works fine and has some good range capabilities with its two 5dB Antennas. Pretty fine for a few light on networking devices with average load. Unfortunately its no longer supported by OpenWrt beyond 22.03.7 due to its low (32 MB) ram. Flashing it with the last 22.03.7 is pretty straighfoward. Description can be found here:

https://git.openwrt.org/openwrt/openwrt/commit/?id=58e0673900ea585b03d3cc2f8917667faa3f977f

Booting and login into OpenWrt works fine (exclude the slow luci UI response due to old hardware aside). Enabling the default “OpenWrt” access point with no futher modification also works fine at first sight. The access point is visible to clients. But connecting to it silently fails with something like “cant connect to xxx” any client with zero information inside the OpenWrt system and kernel log. Looks like either the driver/chip/interface or whatever restarts somehow, because the access point disappears for a short period and then will be visible again. Restartiing the interface leads a little bit faster to the same result, making the access point visble again. Scanning with the radio0 in 2.4 GHz frequenzy range in the neighborhood shows “no data” and not a single wifi router/access point. So there is no chance to hook on another ap to get its internet access. Realtime wifi spectrum scan doenst show any device neither. Manually creating a access point with WPA2/AES works fine at first, (ap is visible to clients) but fails the same way like the default “OpenWrt” access point. No fail logs, no extra information.

As said, the stock firmware from Asus works fine, but lacks some stuff i need and can be installed with OpenWrt. I know, its a old device and is pretty outdated by its low memory and performance, but it still works and will serve - if running - a good purpose.

More info on the device:

https://firmware-selector.openwrt.org/?version=22.03.7&target=ramips%2Fmt7620&id=asus_rt-n12p

https://techinfodepot.shoutwiki.com/wiki/ASUS_RT-N11P

https://deviwiki.com/wiki/ASUS_RT-N11P

After OpenWrt flashing, the device defines itself as N12+. Btw: What does that “+” sign mean here? All RT-N12x devices?

Any ideas here? Any newer or other working firmware other than the Asus stock fw would be fine for now. Maybe i can use one of the FreshTomato fw images (or its mods) , but i am not sure which one to use, Anyway, it looks like its not nativly supported :

https://wiki.freshtomato.org/doku.php/hardware_compatibility#hardware_compatibility_table

Dont want to brick that thing :-/

Thanks in advance

Best

K.

2

The 32MB RAM is a deal breaker. It certainly cannot run anything current. I'm surprised it even runs 22.03, but that is surely the end of the road for that device.

The 32 MB RAM is harder limitation than the flash size. The current Linux 5.4 barely works with a 32 MB RAM system and spikes in memory consumption can easily crash the router with OOM (Out-of-Memory) errors.

Given the fact that you cannot run anything modern on that device, you are stuck with a firmware that has been EOL and unsupported for several years already. It has many known security vulnerabilities and will never be patched.

You can certainly explore other open source firmware options, but OpenWrt is not recommended on that device. My recommendation would be to e-waste the device and get something newish that can run modern OpenWrt.

3

Hi,

thanks for the reply. Yeah, i am aware of all that. All other boxes run with latest 25x custom fw builds (fw selector custom package builds), always keep them up2date. This one is the by far oldest i own now. As said, its range capabilities are too good to throw it in the e-bin. But too bad there is no option left :frowning:

Thanks for the reply

K.

4

Do you know any able to run on that device?

5

Nope...

You were the one mentioning fresh tomato. Or maybe ddwrt? I don't know, though, as I don't use them and I also don't have your device.

6

All fine! FreshTomato doesnt seem to support that device, though they have a freshtomato-mips/…/K26RT-N directory with possible candidates: https://freshtomato.org/downloads/freshtomato-mips/2026/2026.1/K26RT-N/Asus%20RT-Nxx%20%26%20CO/

But of course, many things (we all know) can fail on an flash attempt with a wrong image. Dont want to brick it, at least not the boot loader.

7

Isn't FreshTomato still using a really ancient kernel 2.6.32 for ARM and MIPS routers ? Even LTS of that kernel has been end-of-life since year 2016... (and Linux kernel 3.0 was published already in 2011, so it is 15 years since that 2.6.32 has seen any real feature updates)

K26 there means kernel 2.6.xx in their terminology.

Your OpenWrt 22.03 is really modern compared to that.

8

But isnt working on that device :-/

9

Reverted to stock. No other options. At least i couldnt find one.

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