Upgrading to OpenWRT 10.03.1-rc6

Immediately after the upgrade to 10.03.1-rc5, the OpenWRT team released 10.03.1-rc6. Since rc5 didn’t fix wireless on my Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH, I gave rc6 a go.

This time the upgrade preserved most of my settings. I still had to reinstall my usual software, and fix a few things. Use the following to install my original list of useful software. This should be handy when rc7 or, haha, the “final” 10.03.1 is released.

opkg update
opkg install kmod-fs-btrfs kmod-fs-ext2 kmod-fs-ext3 kmod-fs-ext4 kmod-fs-isofs kmod-fs-reiserfs kmod-fs-vfat kmod-fs-xfs
opkg install kmod-nls-cp1250 kmod-nls-cp1251 kmod-nls-cp437 kmod-nls-cp775 kmod-nls-cp850 kmod-nls-cp852 kmod-nls-cp866 kmod-nls-iso8859-1 kmod-nls-iso8859-13 kmod-nls-iso8859-15 kmod-nls-iso8859-2 kmod-nls-koi8r kmod-nls-utf8
opkg install kmod-usb2 kmod-usb-storage kmod-usb-storage-extras block-hotplug block-mount hotplug2
opkg install --force-overwrite avahi-daemon bind-dig bwm conntrack-tools fdisk fping iftop ip kmod-ipv6 libnl lft lsof luci-app-ntpc luci-app-openvpn luci-app-upnp luci-ssl miniupnpd mtr net-tools-hostname ngrep nmap ntpclient openssh-client openvpn rsync screen snmpd sshfs tcpdump vim
mkdir /mnt/usbstorage -p

This list no longer includes iptables-utils, which has been merged into iptables and is now simply a dummy package.

After that, I also had to:

  1. Restore my OpenVPN certificates to /lib/uci/upload/
  2. Delete duplicate configurations in “LED Configuration”
  3. Go to System -> Startup and enable the newly-installed daemons

Warning: do not restore to /overlay, even if that is what your BackupPC server is archiving. Restore to the root directory.

I tested wireless throughput on rc4 and rc6 on my Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH, and also on a Linksys WRT-54-GL with DD-WRT v24-sp1 for comparison. Since rc5 was unstable (except in 802.11b-only mode), I didn’t bother with full tests. All wireless networks had an identical configuration, from ESSID to channel to encryption settings.

I used iperf to transmit 10-second UDP streams from my laptop (on wireless) to zuul (on gigabit Ethernet). When testing between two directly-connected nodes, iperf will scale its burst rate until it finds the maximum link speed. Example: iperf -u -c zuul -b 35M -t 10. The results, averaged over 5 tests each:

Linksys WRT-54-GL with DD-WRT v24-sp1 – 28.5 mbit
Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH with 10.03.1-rc4 – 23.9 mbit
Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH with 10.03.1-rc6 – 26.8 mbit

I’m glad to see improved throughput since rc4, but it still doesn’t quite reach the WRT-54-GL, which is surprising. The difference is small enough to ignore. So far, I’ve had no issues with drops in wireless. I’ll update this post after I’ve had time to observe wireless stability.

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  1. Lukas’s avatar

    I think you somehow forgot to add the openwrt tag to this post. ;)

    Reply

    1. Aron Griffis’s avatar

      Just wondering if I’m reading this right … it sounds like rc6 was a major breakthrough in wifi stability, right?

      Reply

      1. Tyler Wagner’s avatar

        I suppose I should have updated the post. It did improve over rc4, but it still has issues with dropping. I haven’t upgraded to the final release yet.

        Reply

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