In today’s internet era, routers are essential for every household. Many people only see routers as tools for internet access, unaware that they can unlock more features by flashing firmware. I happen to have a Netgear R6300 V2, released in 2013, which uses the Broadcom BCM4708 processor and was positioned as a mid-to-high-end router at that time. So, I decided to use it as a guinea pig to flash third-party firmware and squeeze out its performance.
The R6300 V2 can be flashed with official firmware, Merlin firmware, DD-Wrt firmware, and OpenWrt firmware. I have previously flashed the first few, and this time I will try OpenWrt, although I have heard that this firmware is prone to bricking.
OpenWrt and Merlin firmware have similar functionalities, supporting multi-plug, ad-blocking, and personalized plugins, which might be why people feel that the R6300 V2 is still capable.
Next, I will introduce how to flash OpenWrt firmware on the R6300 V2. Before flashing, you need to do some preparatory work, the first of which is to download the OpenWrt firmware.
OpenWrt firmware download link:
https://archive.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/bcm53xx/generic/
The hardware preparation includes one R6300 V2 and an Ethernet cable.
Flashing OpenWrt firmware on the R6300 V2 involves three steps: first, restore the factory settings of the original firmware; second, flash the DD transitional firmware; third, flash the OpenWrt firmware.
Restore factory settings of the original firmware
Plug the Ethernet cable into the LAN port of the router, open a browser, and enter http://www.routerlogin.net. In the login window, enter username admin and password password to log into the router management interface.
Click on “Administration”, back up the settings, and enter the router restore factory settings interface. Click erase. Note that if you have flashed other firmwares, you must first flash back to the original firmware before flashing OpenWrt firmware.
Click “Yes” when prompted.
The router will automatically restart and restore factory settings.
After restoring factory settings, enter http://www.routerlogin.net again to log in.
Flash DD firmware
Enter the original router main interface, click on Advanced, Administration, Router Upgrade in sequence.
Click “Browse”.
Select the downloaded factory-to-dd-wrt.chk file in the pop-up window.
Click “Upload”.
Click “Yes” when confirming the version upgrade.
The router enters the upgrade interface.
After the upgrade is complete, enter 192.168.1.1, change the username and password, and click “Change Password”. If you have previously saved the same username and password, remove them from the browser.
After changing, log in to the router with the new username and password, click “Administration”, and scroll down.
Find Language Selection, click on the right side “English”, select “Chinese simplified”, click “Save”, and finally click “Apply Settings” to change to the familiar Simplified Chinese interface.
Flash OpenWrt
In the router management interface, click on management, firmware upgrade, open the firmware upgrade interface, and click “Select File”.
In the pop-up folder, select the downloaded OpenWrt firmware and click “Open”.
Click “Upgrade”, and the router will enter the upgrade process.
Wait for the upgrade to complete. You might think everything is done and want to enter 192.168.1.1 to set other functions of the router, but you can’t log in to the router management interface.
My heart sank; could it be bricked? However, I could still access the internet via a wired connection, so the router is not fully bricked but is in a semi-brick state, as the wired part can still access the internet, but there is no wireless.
After restoring factory settings, the problem remained. I had no choice but to search on “Baidu” and found that many friends who flashed OpenWrt firmware encountered similar problems, proving that this firmware flashing was a failure. So, flashing has its risks, and one must be cautious.
If you also have this model of router, I recommend being careful when flashing OpenWrt firmware. We spent a lot of effort to rescue this “semi-brick”.
END