USB Tethering with GL-AR750S-Ext

Installing and Using OpenWrt Network and Wireless Configuration
1

I’ve recently installed vanilla OpenWRT on my GL-AR750S-Ext and want to enable USB tethering so I retain the ability that exists in the original GL firmware.

I’ve followed the directions from here: https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wan/smartphone.usb.tethering

However, nothing that has been installed adds a usb driver that I can use for tethering. Does anyone have experience with this hardware and tethering?

Thanks.

2

what does this mean ?

run logread -f via ssh, connect the phone to the GL-AR750, post the log output.

3

What I mean is, a USB interface doesn’t show up, nor can it be added. I’ll run the command and post the log later when I have a chance. Also, FWIW, it will be tethering with Android. Thanks.

4

As shared in the user guide, sometimes the USB pops up as eth interface. Did you check with and without tethering android phone connected?

5

in version 24.10.4 and recent Android, this Ethernet interface is named usb0.

  • Did you enable "USB Tethering" on your Android?
  • Do you have hotspot services from your cellular provider allowing you to do so?

If not, you should be able to begin tethering on WiFi, and then disable to use call data. :wink:

6

Here’s the output of logread -f:

Tue Nov 25 11:26:55 2025 kern.info kernel: \[10023.993351\] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 10 using ehci-platform
Tue Nov 25 11:26:55 2025 kern.info kernel: \[10024.201838\] rndis_host 1-1:1.0 usb0: register 'rndis_host' at usb-1b000000.usb-1, RNDIS device, be:10:e8:4b:66:ee```
7

Yes I enabled USB Tethering and my mobile plan allows for hotspot and tethering.

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8

This is your interface.

To be clear, you created an network interface configuration for usb0, correct?

config interface 'phone'
        option proto 'dhcp'
        option device 'usb0'

BTW, you can add it to the WAN Firewall Zone.

9

Good news, I got it working. I saw on the logread output that the usb device was using the ehci-platform. I checked in the software section of Luci and saw that kmod-usb2-pci provides ehci support and it was not installed. Once I did that the usb0 device showed up and I was able to create a new interface that uses usb0 and assigned it to the wan firewall zone. I'm online with tethering while I write this reply.

Thanks for everyone who helped!

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10

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