Question How to install OpenWRT on a Netis WF2409E Router ?

[codebyhasan]

I'm trying to install OpenWRT on my Netis WF2409E router. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any official support for this model on the OpenWRT website. Despite this, I still want to attempt the installation.

Here are my questions:

1. Has anyone successfully installed OpenWrt on the Netis WF2409E?
2. Are there any compatible firmware versions or community builds available for this model?
3. What risks are involved in installing OpenWrt on an unsupported router?
4. Can someone provide a step-by-step guide or any tips for the installation process?

Any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!
-Muhammed Hasan

 

[BFG-9000]

4MB flash and 32MB RAM devices are no longer supported by OpenWRT and the last build to support that was 19.07.10 from 2022 without a GUI (as there wasn't enough room so it was commandline-only)

Try DD-WRT, they support Broadcom much better than OpenWRT, which is generally only used wired-only without radios for Broadcom chipsets due to the lack of drivers. This is both because Broadcom couldn't be bothered to write a proprietary driver for such old hardware on later kernels (they'd much rather you bought a new router to make them more money), and OpenWRT wouldn't use a non-open driver anyway. DD-WRT still uses kernels 2.4 and 2.6 (which the device originally came with) for 4MB routers

 

[bill001g]

Unfortunately for you there is not interest in third party firmware so it is much harder to get support than say 10 years ago. Even so called "budget" routers have many of the features you used to load third party firmware for. The modern menus and settings are much better in general.

Although most these have lots of fancy features like say actual routing protocols, the number of people that actually use them is limited.

The key reason I stopped looking at third party firmware is the issue related to the hardware NAT acceleration. Modern routers have a feature that lets the nat be done by asic function rather than the cpu chip itself. There is some issue with the driver that allows this. I am not sure if you can't get it at all or if it is one of those open source issues where you can't distribute the driver pre compiled into the image. In many cases even with very powerful route cpu the router can not pass even 100mbps, most are closer to 30mbps, when you do not have this hardware asic assist.

Merlin that runs on asus has this feature but merlin never has added a lot of features to the image and asus has absorb many of the best into the facotry asus firmware.

As indicated by bfg-9000 the thirdparty images now require a lot a memory. I am not sure why it needs so much memory. They have not added that many feature it must be fancy screen images or something.