Installing OpenWrt to Cudy X6

As I wrote before, Cudy X6 router uses OpenWrt. But its UI is more user-friendly for the typical router user. I don’t want to use it for a few reasons:

  • I don’t want to be at mercy of the company to release software updates. In a year or two they may decide that it is not viable to support this router anymore
  • I’m quite familiar with OpenWrt for years I’m using it
  • I don’t trust Chinese software engineers. I had a lot of experience with Chinese software routers and the word “security” just does not applies to them. My first Chinese modem I cracked in 1 minute that it took me to search right answer on the Internet. The second one took 5 minutes searching for an answer and then login-in as a regular user. And changing the password dialog confirms my suspicions. Normally when you change passwords you need to confirm it, to avoid cases when you accidentally pressed the wrong key when you type a password. They didn’t have it
  • I don’t trust any Chinese company. They could add a backdoor by request from the Chinese government and somebody else can use this backdoor. I don’t have anything sensitive, but I prefer to know that the software come from a reliable source. I’m not sure if this is enough, but I hope it will increase security.

And as result, I decided to flash the latest OpenWrt version from here and attempted to flash it. Unfortunately, the file was rejected. It took me some time, to find the answer. I found that firstly I have to flash Cudy version of OpenWrt from here.

Please note: You have to use a version that corresponds to your hardware version. I found it on the status screen of the original firmware. It is possible to find it on the back sticker close to the serial number, but there was no hardware version on my router. Perhaps because it is version 1.

After that, you can flash any OpenWrt you want. Cudy’s OpenWrt was based on OpenWrt version 21 and I knew that there is a new major version so I immediately flashed the router to the latest OpenWrt version 22.03.02. Everything works just fine.

Overall, I’m quite happy with my new router. I hoped that I will get speeds closer to gigabit because my old router has only 1 CPU and limiting performance. It also does not support “Hardware flow offloading”.

The new router has a faster CPU and has 2 of them and both of them support hyperthreading. Also, the router does support “Hardware flow offloading” so I expected that it will be able to reach speeds much closer to one gigabit. Unfortunately, I got only about 110 Mbps more and speeds are typically 830-860 for download and around 910 for upload. It is not bad by any means, but I expected at least 100 Mbps more.

Just in case you would like to revert to the original firmware you have to follow these instructions.

I hope it will help someone.