[GTALUG] Wireless router: TP-Link Archer C7 $100

[Christopher Browne]

I picked up one of these at NCIX on Saturday...

- Installed it Saturday evening, getting it working as a backup wireless router;
- Upgraded the firmware from TP-Link, which required redoing that configuration
  effort :-(
- Pulled the OpenWRT binaries (per Giles' link), and installed, which was,
  modulo a wee bit of "wait afterwards hoping it worked", about as easy as
  he suggested
- Introduced configuration to have it take over my WAN link, which worked,
  but then didn't seem friendly to needs for incoming connections
  (torrents^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H and ssh), so plugged the old router back
  into place

I poked at sundry sources of docs concerning the differences between
firewall rules and firewall routes, which didn't really tell me anything I
didn't already know or hadn't already done.

Yesterday, I wrote up a script to pull config tarballs off the router and
throw it, version-controlled, into a favorite Git repo, so I have backups.

In keeping with the strategy I described a bit at the last meeting;
anyone interested can review the GTALUG "backups" repository
at GitHub for the broad approach...
See http://github.com/gtalug/backups
That repo doesn't include this, as my router's config isn't GTALUG
business, but the approach in the scripts in the "scripts" directory
should be suggestive.

I wee while ago, I retried the WAN link, basically moving the plug
from one router to the other, and, a mod to gateway addresses in
/etc/network/interfaces later, all now seems copacetic, with no
particularly interesting changes made to explain why incoming
traffic wasn't happening Saturday but is working now.

At any rate, my old Cisco/Linksys WRT310Nv2 will be retiring
as consequence.

The one interesting area that I probably need to poke at more
is that of IPv6 support.  The old router didn't have any (evident)
support.  OpenWRT seems to.  I haven't fiddled with the
configuration, as I could readily see that breaking things.

I had been suppressing IPv6 activity (e.g. - my internal
Bind9 /usr/sbin/named instances being run with the "-4"
option that suppresses IPv6 usage); perhaps that ought to
change now?  I'm not quite sure.