WRT610N v1 / LEDE / Compiling

This router, the WRT610n v1, provides more challenges than normal.

Firstly, the 5 GHz chip is not supported by the opensource OpenWRT drivers. That means, if you install 15.05.01, there will be no 5 GHz support.

Luckily, you have the option of using the proprietary Broadcom wireless drivers -- the only catch here is that you need to compile your own firmware.  For this, you will need a computer running a Linux OS or any BSD or even a Mac. Cgywin on Windows does not meet the requirements.

Before downloading the source, you will need to have the following installed:

gcc, binutils, bzip2, flex, python, perl, make,
find, grep, diff, unzip, gawk, getopt, subversion, libz-dev and libc headers.

With that done, you will need to make the following decision: do you want to stay with the stable OpenWRT version (15.05.1) or do you want to try the 'trunk' version.

If you want to try the trunk version, then the next question: do you want to stay with OpenWRT or do you want to try LEDE? Sadly, there was a disagreement within the OpenWRT project, which resulted many of the most active developers leaving and starting their own project, LEDE.

It seems to have been a very amicable divorce, as both projects are now working together.

In this example, we will be using LEDE (where now most of the active development is taking place).

Firstly, you will need to download the source. For this, you will need to have 'git' installed.

The git command to do that is:

git clone https://git.lede-project.org/source.git

The following steps are to set things up before compiling. It is very handy to have LuCI (the web-interface) already installed. The steps for this are:

cd source/
./scripts/feeds update packages luci
./scripts/feeds install -a -p luci

Now you're ready to set up your '.config' file, which you'll need to do the compile.

To do this, type (in the source directory) 'make menuconfig'

If you're using 'make menuconfig' for the first time, take a while to look around at all of the options.

Then choose which options you'll want for the compile. After saving your options, the next step is to do a 'make' -- and this could last a while (depending on your computer).

Once the compile is done, check the '/bin' directory for the results.

If you want to stay with OpenWRT, here are the git links:

git clone git://git.openwrt.org/15.05/openwrt.git <- stable branch
git clone git://github.com/openwrt/openwrt.git <- 'trunk' branch

To keep your directories up to date, use 'git pull' (of course, in the source directory).

Regarding the WRT610n v1, it's running fine on LEDE as a repeater. Until the first LEDE stable version comes out, I'll update the bin file about once a month.

https://wikidevi.com/wiki/Linksys_WRT610N_v1
https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/linksys/wrt610n

And a screenshot for those who care: