Hi,
So I'm using this device as a dumb AP and a VLAN enabled switch. It's been good, except occasionally WiFi drops out. I use myself only wired connection (and not even from this switch) so I almost never notice it, but on laptop or phone sometimes I'll catch it happening. I've twice now caught it happening and bothered to look at the logs. I'll attach the latest logs of it happening (the other time the log lines were similar).
But seemingly what happens is that the device runs out of memory and kills WiFi related components.
Here is a summary of my device and and setup with the device. Summary is written by ChatGPT to save my time:
Device / version
Hostname: OpenWrt
Model: TP-Link Archer C6 v2 (EU/RU/JP)
Architecture: Qualcomm Atheros QCA956X ver 1 rev 0
Target Platform: ath79/generic
Firmware Version: OpenWrt 25.12.2 r32802-f505120278 / LuCI openwrt-25.12 branch 26.093.61282~ca72f10
Kernel Version: 6.12.74
ath10k firmware note
For this router, the OpenWrt device page mentions that some users get better 5 GHz stability by using the non-CT ath10k firmware instead of ath10k-ct. I have already done that package substitution.
So I am using:
kmod-ath10k
ath10k-firmware-qca9888
instead of:
kmod-ath10k-ct
ath10k-firmware-qca9888-ct
Network role
This device is used as a dumb AP / switch. Routing and firewalling are handled by a separate OPNsense router.
The Archer C6 is connected by Ethernet trunk to the router and carries VLANs for:
LAN: eth0.10
IoT: eth0.20
Guest: eth0.30
The OpenWrt device itself has a static management address on LAN:
192.168.10.2/24
Wireless configuration
Current wireless setup:
radio0: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9886 802.11ac/n
Channel: 36 (5.180 GHz)
SSID: MyWifi
Mode: Master
Encryption: mixed WPA2/WPA3 PSK, SAE (CCMP)
SSID: MyWifi Guest
Wireless is disabled
radio1: Generic MAC80211 802.11b/g/n
Channel: 1 (2.412 GHz)
SSID: MyWifi
Mode: Master
Encryption: mixed WPA2/WPA3 PSK, SAE (CCMP)
SSID: MyWifi IoT
Mode: Master
Encryption: mixed WPA2/WPA3 PSK, SAE (CCMP)
SSID: MyWifi Guest
Mode: Master
Encryption: mixed WPA2/WPA3 PSK, SAE (CCMP)
I previously also had Guest enabled on 5 GHz, but disabled that two days ago to reduce the number of AP interfaces and maybe reduce memory usage. The issue still happened again after that.
So currently I have:
5 GHz:
- Main
2.4 GHz:
- Main
- IoT
- Guest
Interface layout
br-lan:
- eth0.10
- phy0-ap0
- phy1-ap0
br-iot:
- eth0.20
- phy1-ap1
br-guest:
- eth0.30
- phy1-ap2
br-lan is static, while br-iot and br-guest are unmanaged bridge interfaces.
Ok, that's that with the ChatGPT summary of my use case.
Here are the logs when this happened:
This time it seems it happened very shortly after me opening the WebUI (I was checking something misc). Maybe opening the WebUI causes more RAM usage, I don't know, but in the past it has also happened without the WebUI being opened.
Any suggestions on what I could do would be nice.
Assuming there is no underlying "bug" here and the device simply has too little memory for my use-case, could there maybe be some components I could disable to use less memory? Or somehow strip the install? I don't need many of the functionalities OpenWrt offers, I just need a VLAN capable dumb AP/switch, firewalling, dns, etc, is all handled by another device.
Thanks.