OpenWRT Built for TP-Link WR1043ND

PLEASE READ THIS POST COMPLETELY TO PREVENT ISSUES WITH YOUR ROUTER

What this firmware does

This firmware aims to be an opensource replacement for the stock TP-Link firmware in the Wireless N Gigabit TL-WR1043ND Router.

The firmware aims to provide better equivalent features compared stock firmware.

The firmware will also leave empty flash sectors for users to install addition packages for special features they require.
Unlike stock openwrt firmware, this is a firmware fully optimized for performance, optimization is targeted at the MIPS24Kc System On Chip, debugging features stripped and scripts are minified, compressed specifically for this Router platform.

Software Feature

1. Protoco Supported: Static/DHCP/Dual Stack/6in4/6to4/6rd/PPP/PPtP/PPPoE/3G UMTS/L2TP/Relay
2. LuCI GUI (Bootstrap) with Lighttpd Web Server
3. Dynamic DNS (Support HTTPS by skipping SSL Certificate checks)
4. QoS (Quality Of Service) Scripts
5. TinyProxy
6. UPnP (Universal Plug & Play)
7. SAMBA 3.6 (Windows File Sharing)
8. MultiWAN 
9. Harddisk Idle (Saves Power on attached External Harddisk when not in use)
10. Add User and Delete User accounts (no su function, use ssh root@youripaddress to get root while logged into router via SSH, this saves flash and achieves the same effect )
11. External Harddisk supporting only EXT2/3/4 FileSystem (NTFS is SLOW and FAT is unreliable, while the EXT Kernel Module allows support for all 3 versions of EXT Filesystem)
12. Vsftpd with SSL Support
13. MiniDLNA Media Sharing Server
14. Layer 7 Filtering
15. Transmission Bittorrent Capability GUI and CLI
16. Patched Realtek Switch Driver supporting (Port Priority/Port Mirroring/Jumbo Passthrough/BCStormFiltering/VLAN4K)
17. Reset to Defaults using the Reset Button GPIO
18. Full Wireless Support 64/128/152-bit WEP / WPA / WPA2,WPA-PSK / WPA2-PSK including Enterprise Radius Authentication
19. Ipset
20. Fdisk Partitioning Tool
21. Wake On LAN
22. USB Printer Server
23. Restore to OpenWRT default feature (just press and hold reset button)

Additional Optimizations

1. Expose more LuCI Options than Stock OpenWRT
2. Additional LuCI patching to improve GUI for touch devices
3. Optimized sysctl defaults
4. Compiler flags optimization
5. Addition package optimized for size
6. All Wireless Channels unlock (if US region is selected)
7. Max Transmit Power 24dbm
8. Tested NAT throughput 250Mbps LAN to WAN
9. Minified CSS and Javascript 
10. Patched Switch Driver for additional functionality 
11. Remove debugging feature from firmware to boost performance

openwrt-ar71xx-tl-wr1043nd-v1-squashfs-factory.bin - For TP-Link WR1043ND that are NOT running OpenWRT

openwrt-ar71xx-tl-wr1043nd-v1-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin - For  TP-Link WR1043ND currently running OpenWRT

Before Flashing please read my previous posts about TP-Link WR1043ND to know what you are getting into. Consult the documentation @ OpenWRT Website or ask if you have any queries.

You can download and install additional packages through the OpenWRT repository (the package installer is built into LuCI) but it will occupy more space on the JJFS partitions.

Reboot After Disabling Unused Features For Better Performance

 

My custom firmware comes with loads of features, however OpenWRT by default enables all features so you might want to disable features you don't need.

This will boost the performance of services you need to run.
If you experience low performance due to insufficient memory, you might want to create and mount a swap partition.

DO NOT DISABLE IMPORTANT FUNCTIONS LIKE NETWORK!

If you cannot access the Router try holding down the reset button this will reset the Router back to default.
If you still cannot access the Router try serial ttl adapter.
(This cheap device can debrick all configuration lockups except the bootloader so don't touch the bootloader)

DO NOT UNINSTALL THE PACKAGES THAT ARE ALREADY THERE!

The image is built using squashfs so it is READ ONLY. If you try to uninstall it only removes the hardlinks, no space is saved. If you don't want a function just disable it.

USE TRANSMISSION ONLY WITH AN EXTERNALLY ATTACHED HARDDISK!

The Router only has 32MB of RAM, when you torrent, the files are over 1GB.

You need to configure Transmission in LuCI to write all data to the externally mounted harddisk!

By default Transmission writes to RAM because there is no harddisk.

-------------------------------Old Firmware & New Firmware Below-------------------------------

Make sure you have sufficient FREE RAM (Check using LuCI SystemInfo) before you Flash any firmware!

To free up memory for upgrading firmware, ssh into the router then type

sysctl -w vm.drop_caches=1

This will tell the kernel to drop page caches so memory is freed up for you to upgrade firmware. You need to free up memory because before the firmware is flashed to the flash memory, it has to be copied into the DRAM.
You can download the files here.

As I have posted I am shifting from Mediafire due to the issues I encountered as described in this post.

The new files will be available on my github below.
Attitude Adjustment TP-Link WR1043ND

If you want to build your own firmware, I have placed the files in the Git Repo below:
OpenWRT  TL-WDR4300
OpenWRT TL-WR1043ND
Please note that to minify the Javascript & CSS and fix LuCI naming run the scripts in the following order del.sh -> luci.sh -> closure.sh & yuicompressor.sh.
The path should be amended in the scripts according to where you place the buildroot.
If you want to add my changes to whatever router you have simply diff the files and take the changes you want.

It is recommended to reset the all the wireless client profiles to the router after an upgrade.

I achieved 300Mbps LAN to WAN over wire NAT on this firmware. To get the same results you need to
-Disable P2P Block
-Disable MSS Clamping in firewall
-Reboot