[HOWTO] Install OpenWRT on TP-Link Archer A7

hi so many people asked me um how come you've never done any projects using the open wrt firmware um i've done things uh with uh ddwrt and a tomato firmware but nothing with the open wrt the two people what i mean two people asked in fact there was only one person asking it to ice open wrt is actually one of the oldest third-party firmware that you can install on your wireless router and it comes with a lot of features it is the oldest one i mean compared to the ddwrt and tomato that you just talked about open wrt was actually developed first right so in the first part of this video i'm gonna install the open wrt firmware on my tp-link archer a7 wireless router and i'm going to show you how we can do that but in the second part i'm going to reinstall the factory firmware because that is something that we might have to do at some point and with those things out of the way hopefully sometime soon we're going to do some cool open wrt projects so without further ado let's begin first off i'm gonna go to the open wrt website then supported devices and then click on this link which says i have a router and want to know if it is supported i already know that my router is supported but if yours is different this is the place to search it find it and make sure it is fully supported before installing the firmware so here is my wireless router tp-link archer a7 version 5. it has a page 2 so i'm going to go there because here i will have all the information i need including the open wrt firmware that i should first install and the one that i should upgrade to afterwards so there will be two steps first i will install this one then i will upgrade to the other one i'm also gonna download the stock firmware which i will need it later on in the second part of this video there are two methods that i can use to install the open wrt firmware one of them is very easy and the other one is a little bit more complicated and involves using the tftp i'm gonna actually use the easy one in the first part of this video and the tftp one in the second part of this video so i'll power on the wireless router and make sure it is not connected to the internet or any wired or wireless clients now on my computer where i have already downloaded the open wrt firmware i'm gonna disable the wireless interface and connect it with an ethernet cable to one of the lan ports of the router because i want to make sure the computer is only communicating with the router through the cable at this point my computer must have received an ip address from the wireless router so i'm gonna open a browser type in the router's ip address which in my case is 192.168.0.1 and then log into the router here i'm gonna go to the advanced tab then system tools and then firmware upgrade now i can click browse and select the first open wrt firmware that i should install and finally click upgrade now i just need to wait for a few minutes until the router reboots after the installation of open wrt the ip address of the wireless router has changed from 192.60 to 192.68.1.1 so i'm gonna enter the new ip address of the wireless router in the browser and as you can see the open wrt has been successfully installed i will choose a username and password for the router and then login it is now time to upgrade the firmware so i'll go to here and in the flash new firmware image section i will upload the second open wrt file that i have downloaded i'm gonna wait for a few minutes until it's done and then i can log in again [Music] all right now we're gonna go back to the stock firmware and according to the open wrt's instructions we're gonna use a tftp server basically this is how it's going to work there is a bootloader in the wireless router which has a tftp client with the ip address of 192.168.0.80 when the router is in the recovery mode the tftp client is configured to look for this specific firmware file in this specific tftp server [Music] so the router can actually install that firmware in other words if i manually assign this ip address to my computer and install a tftp server software on it and then rename the stock firmware that i have downloaded to this and put the router in the recovery mode i should be good to go [Music] so that's exactly what i'm gonna do i have already installed and started the solarwinds free tftp server there are different tftp servers that i can use for this purpose but i personally like the solarwinds so i have installed and started that i've also unzipped the stock tp-link firmware file renamed it to this and copied it to the tftp server root directory which in my case is here my computer is already connected to the router with an ethernet cable i just need to manually assign this ip address to its lan interface and it is something that i can do here so my computer which is the tftp server is now ready all is left is to put the router in the recovery mode and this is how i can do it i'll power off the router then press and hold down the reset button as i'm holding it down i'm gonna power on the router and keep on holding the reset button for another 10 seconds or so as you can see in the tftp server the router has downloaded this file from my computer and it is now busy installing it i just need to wait for a few minutes until it's done [Music] i can now log into the router and confirm that the stock firmware has been successfully installed all right that was pretty much it i was able to install the open wrt firmware and then go back to the stock firmware the first part was very easy i just had to upload the open wrt file in the firmware upgrade section the second part though was a little bit more tricky but at the same time fun because i had to create a tftp server to be able to upload the stock firmware i hope you liked this video and if you did i would really appreciate it if you hit that like button and also please subscribe to the channel if you haven't already so you won't miss the upcoming videos thank you very much and i will see you next time

Channel: Behfor

Views: 67,966

Keywords: openwrt, ddwrt, open wrt, tplink, tp-link, archer, a7, archer a7, custom firmware, how to, tutorial, behfor, tomato, dd-wrt, third party firmware, firmware, solarwinds, tftp, server, tftp server, OpenWRT, openWRT, Open WRT, WRT, wrt, wifi, wireless router, wifi modem, WiFi

Id: wrREvRUD9Ng

Length: 7min 54sec (474 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 18 2020