Recently, I upgraded my soft router. I remember that the last time I posted a tutorial on building a soft router was back in 2019. At first, I thought there was no need to post anything since I was just tinkering with the hardware. However, the original post has been archived and is no longer accessible, so I decided to create another tutorial for everyone to discuss and learn together.Soft routers have developed well in recent years, with many compact products that have high configurations. Personally, I prefer to build my own, depending on personal preferences.Here are the specifications:CPU: INTEL G6900TMemory: SK Hynix DDR5 5600B 8GBMotherboard: Onda H610-VH5-WSSD: Optane 16GBNetwork Card: Four-port i226Wireless Network Card: QCNFA765Power Supply: Great Wall 0 Decibel 300WCase: JONSBO V4I chose the 6900T official version of the CPU. The T version is relatively hard to find, mainly because it is newer and has lower power consumption and heat generation, which is sufficient performance for a soft router.The motherboard is not the best option, but it was cheap; it should be the cheapest board that supports DDR5 and can accommodate 12, 13, and 14 generation CPUs, costing only 280 yuan…Memory can be any usable DDR5, with a minimum of 8GB; 4GB is sufficient for a soft router.Single-sided memory module with four chips.I bought a brand new Optane 16GB for 18 yuan. This is almost exclusively used for soft routers and NAS systems now, making it an optimal choice.I chose a four-port i226 network card, the manufacturer is unknown, but the build quality looks decent.Here’s a note: the motherboard can have two 16X slots or a combination of 16X and 4X, allowing for two cards with a total of eight i226 ports. If the motherboard’s built-in network card is also 2.5G, then it results in nine 2.5G ports for the soft router, but that would be expensive.I didn’t say much about the case; I chose the JONSBO V4, and if necessary in the future, I can add a hard drive to make it a NAS unit.A view from the back; this case has been around for a long time.I found a boxed cooler that I hadn’t used before; the fan doesn’t need to be removed.I don’t know where I dug out the brass fittings, which I bought previously and never used…Now, let’s assemble the machine.The completed build looks simple and unpretentious. The reason for using this cooler is that it makes it easier to change the CPU later, for example, considering new INTEL 300 series CPUs that come out.NFA765 wireless network card is purely for testing purposes. Currently, typical wireless network cards supported by OPENWRT include WIFI5’s QCA9880, WIFI6’s MT7921, WIFI6E’s MT7922, and NFA765. However, most network cards do not have power amplifier chips, so the signal can be weak. Moreover, a single network card can only operate on either 2.4G or 5G; to use dual-band, you need to install two wireless network cards. Therefore, this is only suitable for research and learning; for normal use, you still need to connect a router to act as an AP.The Great Wall 0 decibel power supply achieves a fanless operation.The assembled appearance.That concludes the hardware part; next is the important software section.For the soft router system, I chose OPENWRT and prepared the following three files:System firmware, there are many options. Here, I will use the firmware released by Enshan “Smart Super God” as an example:https://github.com/firkerword/op … combined-efi.img.gzWINDOWS PE Micro PE:https://mirrors.sdu.edu.cn/wepe/WePE_64_V2.3.exeSSD writing software, physdiskwrite:https://m0n0.ch/wall/downloads/physdiskwrite-0.5.3.zipA friend mentioned that the firmware couldn’t be downloaded, possibly due to not being able to access GitHub. I have placed these files on the cloud:https://pan.baidu.com/s/132OtxbAsHye9nzFFcyMYlg?pwd=xqmuExtraction code: xqmuAdditionally, I’m also sharing the latest version of the official native OPENWRT system for everyone to learn, but I don’t recommend beginners use it as it is too basic…After downloading all three files, decompress the firmware “2024-01-19-openwrt-x86-64-generic-squashfs-combined-efi.img.gz” to obtain the “2024-01-19-openwrt-x86-64-generic-squashfs-combined-efi.img” image file. For convenience in later operations, let’s rename this image file to: 1.img.Next, prepare a USB drive, install the downloaded WIN PE software, double-click to open WePE_64_V2.3.exe, and select the first USB drive icon under the other installation methods in the lower right corner.Choose the USB drive you want to make into PE, format it to NTFS or FAT32, and then click on the button below to immediately install PE to the USB drive. After a moment, a WIN PE bootable USB drive will be ready.Now copy the files 1.img and physdiskwrite.exe to the root directory of this USB drive.Then insert this USB drive into the soft router machine and power it on. Remember that the soft router machine should also be connected to a keyboard, mouse, and monitor because you need to perform SSD writing operations under PE.Boot the machine from the PE USB drive and enter PE. First, confirm in Disk Management whether the SSD to be written is in an unallocated state; otherwise, the write may fail. If it is a new SSD, you also need to select the G/P/T format. Here you can see my machine uses the Optane 16G as the soft router system disk, and remember that it is Disk 0.Open the USB drive, find the two files, right-click in the empty area of that window while holding the Shift key, and select to open the command window here.In the command window, directly enter “physdiskwrite -u 1.img”. The reason for naming the firmware 1 is for convenience in input.It will then list the disks on the machine. If it’s a newly installed machine like mine, there should only be the SSD and the USB drive, as my USB drive is also 16G, making it easy to confuse with the SSD. I previously remembered that the SSD is Disk 0, so just input 0 and press Enter.Then input y and press Enter to start writing the firmware to the SSD.After the writing is complete, shut down and remove the USB drive.The soft router system has been successfully written, but it cannot be used normally yet. We need to find a computer and connect it to the soft router with a network cable. The soft router has many ports; which one to plug in does not matter for now, just plug in one and power on the soft router.After powering on, wait about a minute, and in the computer browser, enter 192.168.1.1. Note that the IP allocation for the computer’s network port should be set to automatic. If the browser cannot open, then try changing the LAN port on the soft router one by one; after all, each person’s soft router has a different number and configuration of ports. Once you connect to the correct LAN port, the following OPENWRT management interface will appear.The default username is root, and the password is password. Most OPENWRT firmware has this default password; a few custom firmwares may not set a password or use a different password.Once logged in, you need to quickly change a few key settings. First is the interfaces; the following image shows how I have already modified it, removing the unnecessary V/P/N/0 and WAN6 interfaces, leaving only LAN and WAN. The LAN port connects to other devices in the local area network, while the WAN port connects the optical modem to the soft router. Let’s start by modifying the LAN port.Then click on the physical settings section. In my case, there are four independent network ports, eth0~eth3, which are all independent 2.5G network cards, and the motherboard has one Gigabit port, eth4. I plan to use all the independent network ports as LAN ports, so I will check all of them as LAN ports. After checking, remember to click on Save & Apply at the bottom.Now, let’s look at the WAN port. Here, you need to check what protocol you are using. If you have bridged the optical modem, then you need to select PPPoE dial-up. If, like me, you haven’t bridged, just keep the DHCP client as default.Next, for the physical settings, this is simple. To make it easier to remember, I set the motherboard’s built-in network port as the WAN port, which is eth4. Set it up and click Save & Apply.Another crucial point is that currently, the login address for the soft router is 192.168.1.1, which generally conflicts with the optical modem’s IP. Therefore, you cannot access the internet directly by connecting to the optical modem. You need to go to the LAN port settings and change the IP address. I changed it to 192.168.2.1 for easier remembering. After making the change, wait a moment before entering the new IP address in the browser to access the soft router management interface.At this point, the basic settings for the soft router are complete; simply connect the WAN port to the optical modem for normal internet use.Currently, my network setup has the optical modem directly connected to the soft router, which then connects to two newly released TP-LINK BE3600 WIFI7 routers in the main and secondary bedrooms.These two routers serve as wireless APs and are set up in a wired MESH configuration, providing excellent signal coverage. Here’s a reminder: be sure to set the hard router mode to wired relay before connecting it to the soft router for normal operation.First of all, such a configuration cannot be considered cost-effective compared to ready-made soft router products, as there are no advantages in terms of price or size. However, you can choose the latest components and upgrade at will. That’s all for now, thank you!
