Hi,
in a couple of weeks I'll be going on a road trip where I need a static WiFi environment for pulling data off my camera on a daily basis, which my phone hotspot with IP range hopping cannot provide. So i dusted off my old 300M Lite with ~2017 firmware, which obviously isn't ideal to put online as-is.
I found that the model has been discontinued (fair enough), and that there is a pretty recent OpenWRT firmware for it. It works well, but I have wasted hours and hours today connecting this thing to a VPN, and I cannot get it to work (neither vpnc, nor Strongswan, nor Wireguard - connects fine, but never routes through the VPN). I have also seen a post here that says that it will run GL-AR300M firmware, so I flashed v4.3.27 (openwrt-ar300m16-4.3.27-0514-1747192506.bin) and it works despite the warnings - but constantly disconnects some clients from WiFi, so I suspect it's not 100% compatible. VPN works nicely though, and setup is a breeze.
Maybe there's a chance to combine working VPN with working WiFi - is there a copy of the last official firmware for this thing anywhere? Thanks!
Oh okay, so the device should be fully supported despite the warning before flashing? That’s good to know, I thought I was in “you’re on your own” territory with crossflashing.
OpenWRT was rock stable over ~2 days of testing and can not remember a single unwanted disconnect.
2.4G is busy, but not terribly so. I cannot span a 40 MHz network without overlap, but it’s like my own 2.4G/5G AP that is active, there’s a 2.4G/5G with double SSIDs (main/guest) of the neighbours one floor above, and now there is some PV power meter thing that is heavily suppressed due to being in a metal distribution cabinet a couple meters away. Other than that, there’s no WiFi from any other neighbour, there’s little BT, and the one Zigbee thermometer also shouldn’t cause an overcrowded 2.4G band. My old laptop with Intel 8265AC (2x2) does 80 Mbit/s+ to speedtest.net servers in 2.4G, I think that is decent.
All clients move over to the other active AP, I haven’t checked if they will reconnect with the AR300M, but I’m confident they will. I just don’t know if the router fully reboots, or almost immediately accepts the clients back.
Is the other AP using the same SSID?
If so, this is most likely normal roaming behaviour.
However, if it’s not, since the AR300M-Lite has been discontinued for quite some time, we may not be able to offer much support in this regard.
In this case, we recommend switching to native OpenWrt and seeking VPN configuration assistance from their active community.