Setup your Main router completely.
Plug your child router using the wan port to the main router lan port.
Log into your main router web admin. Click on CA at the bottom right.
Click on Connectivity and CA Router setup. Click on both Add Wired and Add Wireless nodes buttons. Wait for the Add wireless button to re-enable then click Done adding Child Nodes. And then Apply.
Now the child node light should start flashing purple and turn into a mesh node when it urns blue.
This is really finicky but mines up and running again after a full reset.
Benefits of installing open sources openwrt/DD-wrt -
1.Current firmware is EOL and this router will not get future updates. But with Openwrt/dd-wrt, you will get longer support.
2. Support for additional packages/features
3. Easy mesh setup
4. VPN support
5. Potential for activating the USB3 port, which doesn't function with the stock firmware.
IMPORTANT Caution for following: As of Sept. 2nd, there is no official release of OpenWRT available yet for this unit - only the developers' testing versions noted below. The Linksys included stock firmware version shipped is from Spring 2024, so you may want to wait for installing an official Openwrt release, which may come within next few weeks.
Steps to install openwrt -
There are two models of this router, one is straight MX4300 and other is Homewrk version (please clarify/update this and ways to identify them. i believe all woot routers are Homewrk version) [Edit by hiroll: Actually most or all of those shipped from Woot are almost certainly the MX4300 ... it's confusing, because the outer brown shipping box is still labeled for the original Homewrk, but the router units packed within the inner white box are labeled MX4300. AFAIK, all of the Woot units are shipped via slow UPS ground from a 3rd party in CA. I received two different ones weeks apart from the earlier deal posts, one ordered through Amazon and the other directly from Woot - and both outer boxes and contents are exactly the same.]
Based on the router version, you need to install different variation of openwrt. One is lytr [github.com] and second is qosmio's build [github.com]. You have to install right version to right router otherwise you may end up with bricked router.
Here are instructions, thanks to @andythepandy
1. Go to https://github.com/testuser7/open...ax-2540ea6 and download the squashfs file for your device (e.g., LN1301 is the same as MX4300, so you'd download openwrt-qualcommax-ipq807x-linksys_mx4300-squashfs-factory.bin).
2. Follow the installation steps from https://openwrt.org/toh/linksys/mx4200_v1_and_v
3. SSH into your router as user "root" and no password. By default, the IP address for the router would be 192.168.1.1
4. Make sure your router is connected to the internet (WAN port is connected to your ISP). Then in the router CLI, type "opkg update", press enter. Once finished, type "opkg install luci" and press enter. Once the command completes, reboot the router or power cycle.
5. Now you should be able to access Luci by going to 192.168.1.1 in your browser.
Some Relevent links:
https://openwrt.org/toh/linksys/mx4200_v1_and_v
https://forum.openwrt.o
https://forum.openwrt.o
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Mesh - is a setup where you have multiple wireless routers that work together to provide greater wireless coverage, while making it seamless for the client (ie- same SSID, smooth handoffs, etc.). In a mesh, one router is designated the parent node, and the rest are referred to as child nodes. Child nodes can be connected to the parent node either wirelessly or via ethernet.
Wired node, wired backend, wired backhaul are all referring to the same thing - that is, a child node in a mesh that is connected to the parent node via ethernet.
Wireless node, wireless backhaul is referring to a child node that is connecting to the parent wirelessly.
Note: you can have a mix of wired and wireless nodes.
You will get the best results with wired nodes but you can still get good bandwith with wireless nodes as this router has a dedicated 5GHz band for the backhaul.
As for your AT&T Gateway, you can disable wi-fi if your Linksys is giving good coverage in that location. As for DHCP, you can either leave it enabled or disabled on the AT&T Gateway. However, if you are using AT&T's IPTV service you may need to keep it enabled on the AT&T Gateway. With my Orbi, I left DHCP enabled on the AT&T Gateway and had it disabled in the Orbi (bridge mode). With the Linksys, DHCP is still enabled on my AT&T Gateway and I also left it enabled on my Linksys as that was the default setting and I am testing it with the Orbi still hooked up. Once I remove the Orbi, I can either leave DHCP enabled on the AT&T Gateway and either have it enabled or disabled on the Linksys, or I can disable it on the AT&T Gateway and enable it on the Linksys (I do not have IPTV).
As far as the Gateway, I do have my wireless radios turned off, but its a different set of problems.
- My fiber is in the closest on the 3rd floor of the house, and reception is pretty trash anywhere outside the bedroom.
- There also happens to be a trashy patch panel that is entirely unlabeled, and with metric load of trial/error I was able to find the port in the living room, and have a router connected there.
- However, I clearly didn't set things up correctly - the NAS I have is connected to the Gateway in the cloest because it is quite loud... but I have major delay issues because I can't get the AT&T to work fully with my old TP Link Archer C7 that is a V1 (yup its that old - came from newegg before it became a rave router with later HW revisions)...which is why I've been kind of living with it.
- For some reach the Archer C7 won't accept it if the Gateway is in passthrough mode, and I'm pretty sure I found some bugs in the C7 while setting up port forwarding :-) As a result I have the C7 Router connected through its own "domain/sub-net" (I think I said that right) because I can't get it to work any other way. The benefit is with the External Antennas in the C7, I can get reception in the whole house easily, although it does need a good restart once to twice a week.
So my immediate future needs are "Can I get everything cleaned up...get port forwarding to work, get the NAS on the same domain"...but I am excited about the prospect of these LN1301 being enterprise units with dumbed down SW opens up the prospects that some kind of WRT firmware...but that is a future promise that may not materializeYes, that's right. There's a 2x2 5GHz radio ("low") and a 4x4 5GHz radio ("high"). The latter is shared with the wireless backhaul. I just did some speed tests standing next to the parent node, and I get around 10-20% better download throughput with the *low* 5GHz radio. You can configure the 5GHz radios separately (including having different SSIDs for both) by accessing CA menu on desktop browser (the settings are not available in the Linksys app).
- My fiber is in the closest on the 3rd floor of the house, and reception is pretty trash anywhere outside the bedroom.
- There also happens to be a trashy patch panel that is entirely unlabeled, and with metric load of trial/error I was able to find the port in the living room, and have a router connected there.
- However, I clearly didn't set things up correctly - the NAS I have is connected to the Gateway in the cloest because it is quite loud... but I have major delay issues because I can't get the AT&T to work fully with my old TP Link Archer C7 that is a V1 (yup its that old - came from newegg before it became a rave router with later HW revisions)...which is why I've been kind of living with it.
- For some reach the Archer C7 won't accept it if the Gateway is in passthrough mode, and I'm pretty sure I found some bugs in the C7 while setting up port forwarding :-) As a result I have the C7 Router connected through its own "domain/sub-net" (I think I said that right) because I can't get it to work any other way. The benefit is with the External Antennas in the C7, I can get reception in the whole house easily, although it does need a good restart once to twice a week.
So my immediate future needs are "Can I get everything cleaned up...get port forwarding to work, get the NAS on the same domain"...but I am excited about the prospect of these LN1301 being enterprise units with dumbed down SW opens up the prospects that some kind of WRT firmware...but that is a future promise that may not materializeYes, with the stock firmware you can choose whether to add the child as a wired or wireless node, or even both.
Yes, that's right. There's a 2x2 5GHz radio ("low") and a 4x4 5GHz radio ("high"). I believe the latter is dedicated for the mesh backhaul with the stock firmware. I'm not sure if this can be reassigned with 3rd-party firmware.
Not sure what is considered good or bad latency (I'm not a gamer), but I'd be surprised if it was "terrible" assuming you have a decent signal.
They don't have to all connect to the parent, it's fine if they can only connect to another child node.
Ok you sort of lost me here, and that's most likely on me as it's getting quite late here, but I would think that you would want to have a Linksys in your 3rd floor closet acting as the parent and connected to your gateway, and then have another Linksys in your living room hardwired to the one in your closet, and then there'd be another one in your garage (wireless node), etc. Also have your NAS connected to Linksys in the closet and not your gateway, this should simplify things. I hope this helps. By the way, act soon as tomorrow is probably the last day for the current deal on Woot.
Thanks for the info - I picked up a few; hopefully the deal sticks around for a while - I know that 3rd party support (Open WRT) will be sticky the more active units there are in the field :-)
Thanks for the info - I picked up a few; hopefully the deal sticks around for a while - I know that 3rd party support (Open WRT) will be sticky the more active units there are in the field :-)
Thanks for the info - I picked up a few; hopefully the deal sticks around for a while - I know that 3rd party support (Open WRT) will be sticky the more active units there are in the field :-)
There's a 2x2 5GHz radio ("low") and a 4x4 5GHz radio ("high"). The latter is shared with the wireless backhaul. I just did some speed tests standing next to the parent node, and I get around 10-20% better download throughput with the *low* 5GHz radio. You can configure the 5GHz radios separately (including having different SSIDs for both) by accessing CA menu on desktop browser (the settings are not available in the Linksys app).
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* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for luci-mod-status found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for luci-mod-system
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for luci-mod-system found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for luci-mod-network
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for luci-mod-network found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for luci-mod-admin-full
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for luci-mod-admin-full found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for luci-proto-ppp
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for luci-proto-ppp found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for luci-theme-bootstrap
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for luci-theme-bootstrap found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for rpcd-mod-rrdns
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for rpcd-mod-rrdns found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for libjson-script20240329
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for libjson-script20240329 found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for uhttpd
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for uhttpd found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for uhttpd-mod-ubus
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for uhttpd-mod-ubus found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for luci-light
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for luci-light found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for libuclient20201210
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for libuclient20201210 found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for uclient-fetch
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for uclient-fetch found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for opkg
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for opkg found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for luci-app-opkg
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for luci-app-opkg found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for luci
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for luci found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* opkg_install_cmd: Cannot install package luci.
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for luci-mod-status found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for luci-mod-system
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for luci-mod-system found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for luci-mod-network
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for luci-mod-network found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for luci-mod-admin-full
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for luci-mod-admin-full found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for luci-proto-ppp
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for luci-proto-ppp found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for luci-theme-bootstrap
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for luci-theme-bootstrap found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for rpcd-mod-rrdns
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for rpcd-mod-rrdns found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for libjson-script20240329
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for libjson-script20240329 found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for uhttpd
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for uhttpd found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for uhttpd-mod-ubus
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for uhttpd-mod-ubus found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for luci-light
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for luci-light found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for libuclient20201210
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for libuclient20201210 found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for uclient-fetch
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for uclient-fetch found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for opkg
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for opkg found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for luci-app-opkg
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for luci-app-opkg found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency libc for luci
* pkg_hash_fetch_best_installation_candidate: Packages for luci found, but incompatible with the architectures configured
* opkg_install_cmd: Cannot install package luci.
Just remember these compatibility issues would get resolved once it's merged into mainline
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