TP-Link Archer C5 with OpenWRT

Since I couldn't find any real information about the C5 running OpenWRT in English or German apart from some commits to OpenWRT enabling the support.


Some infos about the router:

I bought the TP-Link Archer C5 AC1200 WLAN Dual Band Gigabit Router (802.11b/g/n/ac, 1200Mbit/s, 4x LAN, 1x WAN, 2x USB 2.0) from Amazon Warehouse Deals for 67€
Right now it is the cheapest AC router with OpenWRT support I could find apart from one without Gigabit Ethernet.
The hardware of the C5 V1.2 is nearly identical to the C7 V2. Apart from the claimed max speed, I couldn't find a difference.

Installing OpenWRT on the Archer C5:
I just followed the instructions for the C7 and used the provided C5 .bin file instead of the C7 one.
That's it. Everything C5 specific works out of the box, including the 5Ghz WiFi.

Configuring WiFi:
I had some minor problems setting up the wifi through LuCI.
1. Because I saved the router password in Chrome, my WPA2-Key was overwritten with the password every time I changed something. Deleting the password in Chrome solved it for now.
2. After I chose the Auto channel, the 5GHz wifi wouldn't start. Even changing the channel didn't help. I had to edit the channel in the config file by hand.

Country Code:
Because of some laws the country selection isn't working by default.
To unlock the allowed channels for your country, you have to use the reghack.
This is rather important for my case because there are many wifi networks around, but none of them are channel 12-14 and the one on channel 11 is rather weak.
Afterwards I changed the country to world to test what the router is capable of:
2.4GHz: 25 dBm /   316 mW  Choosing anything above 25 dBm results in 25 dBm
5GHz:    30 dBm / 1000 mW which is also the maximum allowed in Germany at some frequencies

Speed:
Because I'm rather limited by my other wifi products right now, I can't really test the max speed, but I can compare it with my previous router, the TL-WR1042ND with some huge 8dBi antennas:

Sony Xperia Z1 Compact and Asus Nexus 7 (2013) LTE : I could finally replace the top results in the Speedtest.net App which I got over LTE (88Mbit/s) with WiFi results (98Mbit/s). With my old router, I only got around 50-60Mbit/s. iperf results are above 100Mbit/s as well

TP-Link TL-WN821N Netzwerk W-LAN USB Adapter 300 MBit: At around 150Mbit/s it should be around the same as before.

HP Chromebook 14: ~200Mbit/s

These results are from a quick test I did between the various devices and 2 Computers connected over Gbit Lan (which provided around the full 1Gbit/s of course). I will have to do further testing when I have some time since the testing environment wasn't constant across the tests at all and the iperf values aren't really accurate because I didn't write them down or save them, so they are just what I remember.

Range:
The range is a bit better on the 2.4Ghz band than before, but not really much. The 5GHz range is nearly as good as the 2.4GHz range in my flat. But only after I fixed the country setting and set the TX power to 30dBm.

So in the end I'm quite happy with the router so far. Right now I don't have time to do more stuff with it, but if you have any questions, then don't hesitate to ask me.

What this Blog is about

Over the last couple of years I have done quite a bit of cool things with technology. Sometimes it took quite a bit of research to get the information that I needed so I sometimes posted the results on various forums to help others with similar problems and to have a guide for myself to repeat the project. With this blog I want to collect most of those projects and I will add more over time.
I'm from Germany and German is my mother language, so please excuse my English and don't hesitate to ask me something in German. Since most of the tech world uses English, I decided to use it rather than German which most people can't understand.