Archer C7 v4 support

For Developers
82

I am using r5329-769e1ba
Did you install any addon?

83

None. Only luci. My C7 V4 is a US version. Flashed said snapshot over the first official firmware (170301) as soon as I took it out of the box, didn't update it to the latest (170901) before flashing.

I'm using mine as a WDS AP on the 2.4GHz radio, PPPoE connection to a 20/5 fiber service, and firewall. 5GHz radio seems to work fine, too. Longest uptime so far was one week, interrupted by a power cut.

Previously I had a 1043ND V2 on 17.01.4 doing these tasks.

84

It usually hang when there are high download speed or numerous connections like 10mbps or running bit torrent. It doesn't hang immediately but it hang eventually. Is it because router faulty? But I only got this a few months ago, erm.

85

hi guys, just a quick update on 802.11s with ath10k (plain qca988x). was able to make it work by adding 'option macaddr' for mesh network. highest performance would be with no encryption. both c7 here.

86

Jrambo99... to your question on where's the 2.4Ghz antennas... I would have to guess it s similar to the v3, where the external "rabbit ears" handle both bands. There it's easier to figure out, you can see cables from one (2.4Ghz) chip going to the plug in card handling 5Ghz that has a diplexing section that allows a single connected dual band antenna to handle both. I'd guess both radios and diplexer circuit are on the mainboard on the v4, inside the shielding can.

1 Like
87

Now that you explained it, it's clear how it works. Thanks!

I went ahead and bought one a week or so after that post, 2.4GHz range and throughput is better than my old 1043ND v2, while also adding decent 5GHz N/AC support. I'm actually surprised by the 5GHz radio, I thought it'd be much more limited range wise (60-70 year old house, solid walls and lots of them).

Router is still going strong, no lock ups/slowdowns and no instability so far, haven't moved off that particular snapshot.

88

Hello,

Just installed the yesterday LEDE snapshot on an archer c7 v4. The wifi seems to work fine so far but I'm not able to make the USB work. I've installed all the required packages to make it works (kmod-usb-storage, etc.) and plug in USB key, mouse, keyboard, etc. did not trigger anything in the dmesg.

Is this a known issue ?

89

I see that the release/packages are for the mips_24kc instead of mips_74kc. Is there any concern over loss in cpu performance or any ill effects towards sqm?

root@LEDE:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep cpu
cpu model : MIPS 74Kc V5.0

root@LEDE:~# cat /etc/os-release | grep ARCH
LEDE_ARCH="mips_24kc"

90

No, you'll be fine :slight_smile:

91

Last week I bought brand new Archer C7 v4 EU. Installed LEDE with luci.
Do you know if there is LEDE with fastpath enabled for this hardware? As I have 500Mbps from my ISP and can achieve 250Mbps only.
Is there any roadmap when c7 v4 will be fully supported by LEDE?

1 Like
92

Anyone else noticing overhead is only applied to ingress not egress?
root@LEDE:~# tc -d qdisc
qdisc noqueue 0: dev lo root refcnt 2
qdisc fq_codel 0: dev eth0 root refcnt 2 limit 10240p flows 1024 quantum 1514 target 5.0ms interval 100.0ms memory_limit 4Mb ecn
qdisc noqueue 0: dev br-lan root refcnt 2
qdisc noqueue 0: dev eth0.1 root refcnt 2
qdisc cake 800d: dev eth0.2 root refcnt 2 bandwidth 3400Kbit besteffort dual-srchost nat rtt 300.0ms raw mpu 64
qdisc ingress ffff: dev eth0.2 parent ffff:fff1 ----------------
qdisc noqueue 0: dev wlan0 root refcnt 2
qdisc noqueue 0: dev wlan1 root refcnt 2
qdisc cake 800e: dev ifb4eth0.2 root refcnt 2 bandwidth 51Mbit besteffort dual-dsthost nat wash rtt 300.0ms noatm overhead 18 via-ethernet mpu 64

Heading

93

I just bought two new Archer C7 v4 (US) routers and after 2 days of struggling with DD-WRT to setup a separate guest network VLAN, I decided to give the LEDE 12/17/17 snapshot a try. I was able get it configured with a working VLAN for a guest network relatively quickly and have moved it into production (home use). I was able to do the entire configuration via LUCI and found the user interface, especially the VLAN configuration, to be a lot more intuitive that the DD-WRT version I tried originally.

Hopefully this snapshot proves to be a stable version. So far I am very pleased and want to thank everyone that contributed to building it. Keep up the great work!

94

dd-wrt is the dark side. no good can come out of it.

95

Hello. I've flashed Archer c7 v4 EU version on latest snapshot yesterday. But I can't install l luci via opkg.
I have already searched pretty much whole forum, stack and server overflow without any successful hint what-so ever. If anyone would be so kind to take a look I would greatly appreciate that :slight_smile: .

NOTE: I will post all my "cmd line" commands as collapsible since they can get pretty verbose.

First I've tried to do the opkg update, but it failed with "wget returned 4" Error.

root@OpenWrt:~# opkg update

root@OpenWrt:~# opkg update
Downloading http://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/targets/ar71xx/generic/packages/Packages.gz
Failed to establish connection
*** Failed to download the package list from http://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/targets/ar71xx/generic/packages/Packages.gz

Downloading http://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/packages/mips_24kc/base/Packages.gz
Failed to establish connection
*** Failed to download the package list from http://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/packages/mips_24kc/base/Packages.gz

Downloading http://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/packages/mips_24kc/luci/Packages.gz
Failed to establish connection
*** Failed to download the package list from http://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/packages/mips_24kc/luci/Packages.gz

Downloading http://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/packages/mips_24kc/packages/Packages.gz
Failed to establish connection
*** Failed to download the package list from http://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/packages/mips_24kc/packages/Packages.gz

Downloading http://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/packages/mips_24kc/routing/Packages.gz
Failed to establish connection
*** Failed to download the package list from http://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/packages/mips_24kc/routing/Packages.gz

Downloading http://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/packages/mips_24kc/telephony/Packages.gz
Failed to establish connection
*** Failed to download the package list from http://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/packages/mips_24kc/telephony/Packages.gz

Collected errors:

Ok, so some standard debugging would be few ping here and there:

root@OpenWrt:~# ping google.com

root@OpenWrt:~# ping google.com
ping: bad address 'google.com'

'bad address' Error? Haven't seen this on. Let's try ping ip directly

root@OpenWrt:~# ping 8.8.8.8

root@OpenWrt:~# ping 8.8.8.8
PING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: seq=0 ttl=55 time=8.153 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: seq=1 ttl=55 time=8.700 ms
^C
--- 8.8.8.8 ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 2 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 8.153/8.426/8.700 ms

Pinging IP directly was successfull. This means that internet connection should be set up OK. So the problem seems to be in DNS. 'dig' and 'host' are not installed so 'nslookup' was last my resort.

root@OpenWrt:~# nslookup google.com

root@OpenWrt:~# nslookup google.com
Server: 127.0.0.1
Address: 127.0.0.1#53

*** Can't find google.com: No answer
*** Can't find google.com: No answer

So it seems that DNS is not resolving properly. After a day of tinkering with router the best I could come up with was editing "/tmp/resolv.conf" (NOT the /tmp/resolv.conf.auto - which is referenced from dhcp config - this was fetched from my ISP provider correctly)

Original /tmp/resolv.conf.auto content

root@OpenWrt:~# cat /tmp/resolv.conf

Interface wan

nameserver 172.81.124.7 (changed for privacy purposes)
search cust.in.my.provider (changed for privacy purposes)

Original /tmp/resolv.conf content

root@OpenWrt:~# cat /tmp/resolv.conf
search lan
nameserver 127.0.0.1

Changed /tmp/resolv.conf content

root@OpenWrt:~# cat /tmp/resolv.conf
nameserver 8.8.8.8

After this change, pinging domain stared to work - so DNS started to work "somehow".

root@OpenWrt:~# ping google.com

root@OpenWrt:~# ping google.com
PING google.com (216.58.201.110): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 216.58.201.110: seq=0 ttl=54 time=6.444 ms
64 bytes from 216.58.201.110: seq=1 ttl=54 time=5.635 ms
64 bytes from 216.58.201.110: seq=2 ttl=54 time=6.161 ms
^C
--- google.com ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 5.635/6.080/6.444 ms

But opkg update still doesn't work:

root@OpenWrt:~# opkg update

root@OpenWrt:~# opkg update
Downloading http://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/targets/ar71xx/generic/packages/Packages.gz
*** Failed to download the package list from http://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/targets/ar71xx/generic/packages/Packages.gz

Downloading http://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/packages/mips_24kc/base/Packages.gz
*** Failed to download the package list from http://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/packages/mips_24kc/base/Packages.gz

Downloading http://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/packages/mips_24kc/luci/Packages.gz
*** Failed to download the package list from http://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/packages/mips_24kc/luci/Packages.gz

Downloading http://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/packages/mips_24kc/packages/Packages.gz
*** Failed to download the package list from http://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/packages/mips_24kc/packages/Packages.gz

Downloading http://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/packages/mips_24kc/routing/Packages.gz
*** Failed to download the package list from http://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/packages/mips_24kc/routing/Packages.gz

Downloading http://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/packages/mips_24kc/telephony/Packages.gz
*** Failed to download the package list from http://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/packages/mips_24kc/telephony/Packages.gz

Collected errors:

But now it returns error 8 instead of 4. :confused: wonderfull.

Tried also to wget the google.com but it returned 404:

root@OpenWrt:~# wget http://google.com

root@OpenWrt:~# wget http://google.com
Downloading 'http://google.com'
Connecting to 172.217.23.206:80
HTTP error 404

I'm out of ideas and open to any :slight_smile: .

For completion I'm including 'network', 'dhcp' and 'firewall' configuration from /etc/config/* .

/etc/config/network

root@OpenWrt:~# cat /etc/config/network

config interface 'loopback'
option ifname 'lo'
option proto 'static'
option ipaddr '127.0.0.1'
option netmask '255.0.0.0'

config globals 'globals'
option ula_prefix 'fd58:67d6:2825::/48'

config interface 'lan'
option type 'bridge'
option ifname 'eth0.1'
option proto 'static'
option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
option netmask '255.255.255.0'
option ip6assign '60'

config interface 'wan'
option ifname 'eth0.2'
option proto 'dhcp'

config interface 'wan6'
option ifname 'eth0.2'
option proto 'dhcpv6'

config switch
option name 'switch0'
option reset '1'
option enable_vlan '1'

config switch_vlan
option device 'switch0'
option vlan '1'
option ports '2 3 4 5 0t'

config switch_vlan
option device 'switch0'
option vlan '2'
option ports '1 0t'

/etc/config/dhcp

root@OpenWrt:~# cat /etc/config/dhcp

config dnsmasq
option domainneeded '1'
option boguspriv '1'
option filterwin2k '0'
option localise_queries '1'
option rebind_protection '1'
option rebind_localhost '1'
option local '/lan/'
option domain 'lan'
option expandhosts '1'
option nonegcache '0'
option authoritative '1'
option readethers '1'
option leasefile '/tmp/dhcp.leases'
option resolvfile '/tmp/resolv.conf.auto'
option nonwildcard '1'
option localservice '1'

config dhcp 'lan'
option interface 'lan'
option start '100'
option limit '150'
option leasetime '12h'
option dhcpv6 'server'
option ra 'server'

config dhcp 'wan'
option interface 'wan'
option ignore '1'

config odhcpd 'odhcpd'
option maindhcp '0'
option leasefile '/tmp/hosts/odhcpd'
option leasetrigger '/usr/sbin/odhcpd-update'
option loglevel '4'

/etc/config/firewall

root@OpenWrt:~# cat /etc/config/firewall
config defaults
option syn_flood 1
option input ACCEPT
option output ACCEPT
option forward REJECT

Uncomment this line to disable ipv6 rules

option disable_ipv6 1

config zone
option name lan
list network 'lan'
option input ACCEPT
option output ACCEPT
option forward ACCEPT

config zone
option name wan
list network 'wan'
list network 'wan6'
option input REJECT
option output ACCEPT
option forward REJECT
option masq 1
option mtu_fix 1

config forwarding
option src lan
option dest wan

We need to accept udp packets on port 68,

see https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/4108

config rule
option name Allow-DHCP-Renew
option src wan
option proto udp
option dest_port 68
option target ACCEPT
option family ipv4

Allow IPv4 ping

config rule
option name Allow-Ping
option src wan
option proto icmp
option icmp_type echo-request
option family ipv4
option target ACCEPT

config rule
option name Allow-IGMP
option src wan
option proto igmp
option family ipv4
option target ACCEPT

Allow DHCPv6 replies

see https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/10381

config rule
option name Allow-DHCPv6
option src wan
option proto udp
option src_ip fc00::/6
option dest_ip fc00::/6
option dest_port 546
option family ipv6
option target ACCEPT

config rule
option name Allow-MLD
option src wan
option proto icmp
option src_ip fe80::/10
list icmp_type '130/0'
list icmp_type '131/0'
list icmp_type '132/0'
list icmp_type '143/0'
option family ipv6
option target ACCEPT

Allow essential incoming IPv6 ICMP traffic

config rule
option name Allow-ICMPv6-Input
option src wan
option proto icmp
list icmp_type echo-request
list icmp_type echo-reply
list icmp_type destination-unreachable
list icmp_type packet-too-big
list icmp_type time-exceeded
list icmp_type bad-header
list icmp_type unknown-header-type
list icmp_type router-solicitation
list icmp_type neighbour-solicitation
list icmp_type router-advertisement
list icmp_type neighbour-advertisement
option limit 1000/sec
option family ipv6
option target ACCEPT

Allow essential forwarded IPv6 ICMP traffic

config rule
option name Allow-ICMPv6-Forward
option src wan
option dest *
option proto icmp
list icmp_type echo-request
list icmp_type echo-reply
list icmp_type destination-unreachable
list icmp_type packet-too-big
list icmp_type time-exceeded
list icmp_type bad-header
list icmp_type unknown-header-type
option limit 1000/sec
option family ipv6
option target ACCEPT

config rule
option name Allow-IPSec-ESP
option src wan
option dest lan
option proto esp
option target ACCEPT

config rule
option name Allow-ISAKMP
option src wan
option dest lan
option dest_port 500
option proto udp
option target ACCEPT

include a file with users custom iptables rules

config include
option path /etc/firewall.user

1 Like
96

@Darkless012, that sounds like there is some bug in the nightly snapshot. If I were you, I would wait a few days and try flashing a new version.

97

Hi folks !
Thanks to everyone who contributed to this project, it's awesome !

I do have one problem though, if someone could enlighten me. I have Archer C7 v4.0 EU, running latest Lede. I did some speedtests with stock firmware, and I was getting 290Mpbs down on the 5Ghz band. With Lede, I'm only getting about 160Mbps on 5Ghz (but I get 290Mbps using an Ethernet cable). I don't know why that is? I tried changing wifi channels, but things didn't improve.
Does anyone have the same problem ?

Thanks,
Best regards

98

Some more, hopefully useful comments from someone who successfully installed the dec 29 snapshot on an Archer C7 v4 EU device. First, it works out of the box, congrats to Felix for making it work.

My unit has 16M of flash - good!

The power supply is smaller and lighter - 2A instead of 2.5A.

There is only one USB port instead of two.

The 'wifi switchoff' switch on the back is missing.

The network layout is DIFFERENT. There is only one CPU port instead of two. WAN and LAN are both sent on the same port, using VLAN 1 and 2 as on some other boxes. Switching WAN to VLAN 6 and having a tagged WAN port (requirement for my ISP) was no problem.

The serial port on the PCB is clearly visible, but some SMD resistors and capacitors are missing. This is the same as with other TPlink boxes.

Interestingly, the 170901 firmware update for the EU and US version on the website, have the same checksum.

While v2 device uses internal antennas for 2.4G and the external antennas only for 5G, the v4 device uses the external antennas for both 2.4G and 5G.

So, there are different beasts - may I suggest on the former we use 'Archer C7-v4' as designation in the future?

The TPlink EU speaks about a v5 device and specifies it to have fixed antennas and a 1.5A power supply. No, have not touched one yet.

1 Like
99

I installed the Jan 1 snapshot.......
When I tried to access via ssh, it says connections refuse...

Any idea how to fix this?

100

Yeah I get this whenever I saturate my connection (around 20MB/s+)

It'll just crash and require a powercycle.

101

Disn't have this on the dec 29 snapshot. Did you wait long enough? It will take a few minutes for SSH to generate it's initial keys on first boot (not a v4 specific issue)