NETGEAR R8000 Nighthawk

NOTE: The hardware in this device is a bit of an exception to the above: the wireless devices are fully supported by the in-kernel brcmfmac driver.

Update 2024: While the drivers were fully supported at one point, many users have reported issues with the radios ceasing to function every few days. Currently the only known way to fix the radios is to restart the router.

• Second data partition (79 MiB) not available in OpenWrt
• For a proper performance use:
  • radio0 for the higher 5 GHz band (channel 149 or something else, depending on country)
  • radio2 for the lower 5 GHz band (channel 48, or something like that and lower)

• soc.broadcom.bcm53xx

For an explanation of different image types, see FAQ before installation.

As of OpenWrt 19.07, OpenWrt can be installed on the Netgear R8000 using the Netgear stock firmware's built-in firmware updater.

1. Use https://firmware-selector.openwrt.org to download the most recent stable chk OpenWrt image (as of this writing, openwrt-23.05.2-bcm53xx-generic-netgear_r8000-squashfs.chk). You can optionally generate a customized OpenWrt image with different installed packages
2. Connect your computer to the Wi-Fi router's LAN port using a wired ethernet cable.
3. Open a web browser and login to the stock Netgear router admin page; Then, navigate to the Firmware Update page.
4. On the Firmware Update page, upload the OpenWrt .chk file from above, click 'upgrade', wait a couple of minutes.
5. Navigate to the OpenWrt web UI at http://192.168.1.1 in your browser and set up the router as desired.

Needed for usbkey

• kmod-phy-bcm-ns-usb3 (for usb3 connection)
• kmod-usb-storage kmod-usb3
• kmod-fs-ext4
• block-mount (to mount usbdrive ext4 for example)

For WIFI

for 5 GHz work great load on radio2

1. set country code to US
2. set channel 48 to radio2
3. set channel 149 to radio0→ SAVE → Reboot

See https://forum.lede-project.org/t/is-there-a-way-to-unbrick-an-r8000/4173/3

see the nmrpflash page for a link to the Netgear flash recovery software

The CPU of this device does not provide VFP support:

# grep "\(model\|Feature\)" /proc/cpuinfo
model name      : ARMv7 Processor rev 0 (v7l)
Features        : half thumb fastmult edsp tls 
model name      : ARMv7 Processor rev 0 (v7l)
Features        : half thumb fastmult edsp tls 

Runnning ARMv6 or ARMv7 targeted Go executables on that platform will result in Illegal instruction errors.

The work-around is to target ARMv5 during compilation:

# export GOOS=linux
# export GOARCH=arm
# export GOARM=5

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