The Xiaomi 10G router, launched in 2022, features a quad-core Qualcomm A73 processor + 2GB RAM, equipped with four 2.5Gbps ports and one 10G Ethernet port, as well as one 10G optical port, supporting Wi-Fi 7. More than a year later, this configuration remains impressive.

Although Xiaomi’s router firmware has long been criticized for its simplicity, wasting such good hardware, there were rumors that Xiaomi routers might go open-source, so I still held a glimmer of hope.

However, now in the year 2402, the Xiaomi router has not seen open-source firmware, and the 10G router firmware has only received a few updates, now supporting Wi-Fi 7. Docker is still half-baked, lacking Wake-on-LAN support, with no plugins available.

The good news is that someone has managed to get SSH working, and I recently heard that there’s now OpenWRT firmware available, which I immediately tested.

1. Unlock SSH

● To flash OpenWRT, you need to unlock SSH first. You can search online for related tutorials.

2. Flash Uboot

● Use WinSCP to upload the Uboot and expanded partition files to the /tmp directory of the Xiaomi 10G router.

● Flash Uboot and expand the partition

mtd write mibib.bin /dev/mtd2
mtd write uboot.bin /dev/mtd18

3. Access Uboot Interface

● Connect the computer to the 10G router via Ethernet, set the computer’s IP address to 192.168.1.X, subnet mask to 255.255.255.0, and default gateway to 192.168.1.1.

● Power off the router, hold the reset button while plugging in the power, and wait about 20 seconds until the router’s indicator light changes from white flashing to solid orange.

● Use a web browser to access http://192.168.1.1 to enter the Uboot interface.

4. Flashing Uboot

● Download the firmware for the 10G router, which usually has two *.bin packages; the file name containing ‘factory’ is for the Uboot non-brickable package; the file name with ‘sysupgrade’ is for the OpenWRT web interface upgrade package.

● In the Uboot interface, select the squashfs-nand-factory flashing package and click Update firmware to start flashing the firmware.

● Wait for the router to reboot, then enter http://192.168.1.1 in the browser to access the OpenWRT system interface.

OpenWRT offers powerful customization features, such as static IP binding, DHCP, firewall, etc., which are much more user-friendly than the native firmware of the 10G router. It also supports Wake-on-LAN, dynamic DNS, and most importantly, it has many useful plugins that can be installed and used.

1. DDNSTO internal penetration tool, supports OpenWRT, Linux, Docker, Windows, Merlin, Synology, QNAP, and many other systems. It is suitable for accessing home network devices without a public IP. Interfaces like OpenWRT, NAS, qBittorrent, etc., can be mapped externally. The new version can even implement remote wake-up and SSH. You can purchase a subscription for only 26 yuan per year for 4Mbps, which is very reasonable; I have tested the speed and it works perfectly.

OpenWRT one-click installation script:

sh -c "$(curl -sSL http://fw.koolcenter.com/binary/ddnsto/openwrt/install_ddnsto.sh)"

2. Dynamic DNS

If you have a dynamic public IP at home, you can use the dynamic DNS function to bind your public IP to your own top-level domain name. I use Alibaba Cloud, and the domain name is bound to an IPv6 address.

3. OpenXXXXX

A powerful proxy plugin.

There are also ad blockers, IPTV streaming, KMS, ZeroTier, etc. OpenWRT has mostly integrated these features, and you can use them as needed.