[AKSurfin]

Is there a stable firmware for the Netgear R7450? I flashed from factory to DD-WRT with r49326 factory-to-ddwrt.img. Status page states unit is a R6800 with 880mhz cpu instead of R7450 with 1ghz cpu that the Netgear firmware stated. Had problems with stability of 5ghz. Reset. Tried again with same results. Reset from web gui. flashed r49418 from DD-WRT web gui. Setup as station bridged to 5ghz AP. applied settings. reboot. clients weren't receiving IPs. Set manual IP. Access router web gui. The router is connected to the AP with 800M rx and 6M tx. I've noticed the tx varies then fixes at 6M. Tried same configuration only with a 2.4ghz AP. Also turned out to be unstable. Reset, flash r49492, reset, configure, reboot, no IP received from AP while connected to station bridged. I would like to use this router as a client with VPN, but I haven't been able to get client bridge to work so haven't bothered with VPN yet. Any suggestions?

[kernel-panic69]

Most likely the router detection info is not available as the 7450 is in a group of devices with the same FCCID, which the developer may have only had the 6800 in hand to work with, or someone offered theirs to test firmware images with. Amplifying information from the other identical devices is likely required to fix this cosmetic issue. As far as the rest of your woes, you have not provided any points of discussion regarding configuration details, so screenshots of your configurations may help give the rest of us things to suggest to rectify your woes (or not). Stability is in the eyes of the beerholder, anyway.

[AKSurfin]

Screen shots.

[AKSurfin]

Would you like screen shots of syslog also? I make the bare minimum changes from default settings to get a client bridge to work. I brought the router home to work on it, so now it is connected to a WRT3200ACM with DD-WRT r48402 AP instead of my ISP's wifi cable modem where I was testing and where it must ultimately live. Still doesn't pass DHCP from AP to client as it should in client bridged mode. If I manually set an IP on client I can connect to the web gui of the client bridged router but not the AP or the rest of the network.

[kernel-panic69]

Is NTP / router time updating at all with the station bridge gateway mode set to auto dhcp? That setting has always been a manual setting to set it to the same gateway IP as on the main setup page. I have no idea what your advanced wireless settings are or what is on the Services -> Services tab. Pretty much every tab you visit to configure Station Bridge, including advanced wireless settings, should be given at a minimum.

[AKSurfin]

NTP has not been updating. Other than going to the services tab to enable syslog and the security tab to disable the SPI Firewall for testing, everything else is factory default setting. I did disable Auto DHCP and manually set the gateway after posting the screen shots last night, unfortunately no change. I did find that if I manually set an IP on my laptop with it connected to the client bridged router by ethernet, I can reach other devices inside my network, but not the internet. I can not reach the client bridged router or the client that is connected to it from any other device in the network.

[Flappjakk]

I have a Netgear R7450 and I agree that wireless connectivity does have problems. I bought this router at the end of December 2021 and installed r47911 on it out of the box. It replaced a Buffalo WZR-600DHP as my primary router. It had intermittent wireless connectivity problem immediately. I upgraded to r47942 and this version was no better and no worse. This past weekend I upgraded to r49492 and it is way worse on wireless. Opening Chrome on my phone will result in pages not loading or pages loading with images missing, or my phone will alert me that my wifi connection has no internet connectivity, which will suddenly correct itself. This router normally doesn't have wired connection problems, but streaming from my Plex server to my Roku will result in the router needing to be reset after some time. The R7450 is way faster than the old Buffalo, but at this point it is too unreliable to use so I put the Buffalo back in service with r49492 and it's working great, albeit wireless is slower than the Netgear, when it works. I have the R7450 now as a secondary AP so I can troubleshoot it. I did notice that to get this thing to work in this mode, you need to go to Setup->Networking and change WAN Port Assignment to br0. Maybe this is because I connected it to my LAN using the WAN port, but I thought assigning WAN port to switch was automatic now. Maybe not.

kernel-panic69 was able to help me out with some issues over the weekend. Hopefully he or someone else has some ideas to try to get this R7450 stable.

[kernel-panic69]

@AKSurfin: Then your device is not configured properly in Station Bridge mode and that needs to be rectified first. The GW setting on the wireless interface that is in Station Bridge mode needs to be set to manual and the same IP on the basic setup page needs to be entered there because there is NO DHCP client involved in Station Bridge mode for all intents and purposes. Also, if DNSMasq is still enabled in any way, it will create conflicts. I always disable WAN port first so I can disable DHCP server and uncheck all those boxes under it or see that it is disabled, etc. rather than rely on the javascript and underlying code to do it for me. Then I proceed to change the wireless interface setting(s) and other configuration items. The wiki edits and changes are still in progress and have not been pushed to the wiki pages yet. I will repeat what has been said several times over the past few years by the man himself (paraphrased): "If people cannot handle these fake bridge modes, then I will remove them." So please take the time to carefully read and sort out your mis-configuration. I don't have any of these newer MediaTek devices in hand, but it's not out of reach to acquire one to do write-ups for.

@Flapjakk: Thanks for the kind words. And yes, to get WAN port to work, there are some extra steps to do, but there has been some talk about not requiring to switch to router mode that I have yet to validate myself. I noticed this while re-configuring my R7000P that the WAN port was still assigned to br0 and wreaking havoc... lol.

[egc]

A few observations, the R7540 has a dual core 880 MHZ Mediatek chip as far as I know.

These routers are relatively new (support wise) so not bug free.

Default wireless settings are far from optimal, but I do not have your router so cannot help with that.

Station bridge is a hack and should be avoided at all cost

See my attached notes about Wireless bridge but that is only the way I would do it (if there really is no other option), it is not the only way and not necessarily the best way

[AKSurfin]

Thanks kernel-panic69. I'll try your advice when I get home.

[egc]

@kp69 about the WAN port, it is assigned to the switch but it actually is not.

I would expect that with "Assign WAN port to switch" you have a 5 port switch but the WAN port is just at VLAN2 (I am talking about Broadcom) and only VLAN2 is bridged to br0 (at least on Broadcom maybe different on other platforms?)

So it looks like a 5 port switch but is not.
I stay away from the WAN port if possible (also because the speed testing I did a long time ago did not show gigabit speed between WAN and LAN ports (probably due to the packets are routed via the CPU?)

[Flappjakk]

I think I'm done messing with this R7450 and I'll just buy something new. Is the Netgear R7800 still one of the top recommended DD-WRT routers? If not, what else is recommended? I'd like something that lots of people are using and have reported working well.

[blkt]

Recommended: R7800 (XR450/XR500), R7500v2, EA8500 (serial flash), R9000 (R8900/XR700), x86 (J4125).

[Flappjakk]

Thanks for the reply blkt. You links for the XR450 and XR500 show that they are nearly identical, the XR450 being feature limited for Costco. I guess feature limited probably is by way of Netgear firmware? Does running DD-WRT on these make them identical? How is the R7800 related to these 2? Are the XR450 and XR500 just rebrands of the R7800? They seem to be within $20 - $30 dollars of each other, which one would you buy?

[blkt]

Yes, rebrands they are essentially same with board differences like SATA port (R7800) & flash layout.

For example I have a used R8900 Costco model, after DD-WRT install it functions the same as R9000.
Same for XR450/XR500 factory-to-dd-wrt.img are different files, but dd-wrt-webupgrade.bin identical.

I use EA8500 daily even though slower CPU, single data link to cpu (R7800 dual) & older QCA radios.
EA8500 usually requires serial flash, so maybe not worth money saved in your case, also availability.

Anyway, TLDR R7800 or whichever rebadge is cheapest available, hopefully not defective since used.
Most are difficult to find new manufacturer warranty except XR500. "Welcome to Costco. I love you."