Adtran / SmartRG SDG-8733

The Adtran/SmartRG SDG-8733 is a Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be) device based on the MediaTek Filogic 880 with tri-band (2.4GHz: 4×4 MIMO, 5GHz: 4×4 MIMO, 6GHz: 4×5 MIMO) Wi-Fi 7, one 10Gbit WAN, one 10Gbit LAN, three 1Gbit LAN, 2GB DDR4 RAM, 8GB eMMC storage, and one USB-A 3.0 interface.

• Download the official openwrt-VERSION-mediatek-filogic-smartrg_sdg-8733-initramfs-kernel.bin file to a laptop, rename it as openwrt.430, set up the laptop with a 192.168.1.10 static address, start tftpd on the laptop (I used Tftpd64 on Windows 11), and connect the laptop’s ethernet port to one of the router’s LAN ports
• Connect Serial GND,RX,TX
• Open Terminal Application
• Boot the router. During boot, “autoboot in 2 seconds” is shown on the serial; pressing ‘s’ and ‘t’ during these two seconds brings up an u-boot command line.
• Type ‘setenv boot_mode openwrt’ (default is boot_mode=normal) and then ‘saveenv’ so that u-boot will boot openwrt (instead of its default smartRG image) in the future. The default image comes with mmcblk0p4 and mmcblk0p5 partitions that are intended to hold an openwrt kernel and rootfs respectively, and u-boot environment has a boot_mode for booting from these partitions, but the partitions are empty (zeroed) in the initial image, so we have to supply our own openwrt image.
  • Alternatively, if you ever want to boot from usb, run:
  • setenv boot_mode usb
  • saveenv
  • boot
• Type ‘printenv boot5’ to see the contents of the boot5 variable which the SmartRG developers have pre-programmed to TFTP boot (boot5=run boot_openwrt_tftp, which does boot_openwrt_tftp=run uenv_import; run uboot_init_platform; if tftpboot ${loadaddr} ${openwrt_image}.${engnum};then bootm ${loadaddr}#${boot_default_config}; bootm; fi)
  • Note: you can just type ‘printenv’ to see all of the variable contents if you’d like to know how the developers set up everything in the U-Boot environment
• Type ‘run boot5’ to download and boot the openwrt.430 OpenWrt initramfs (Initial RAM File System) image. It will take an address of 192.168.1.1 as is usual for new OpenWrt installations. It will only be booted into memory.
  • It may be necessary to adjust (and possibly even temporarily disable) the OS firewall on the Windows device to allow the incoming TFTP connection
• From there on, scp the openwrt-VERSION-mediatek-filogic-smartrg_sdg-8733-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin file into the router’s /tmp directory, and then ssh there and run ‘sysupgrade -n -v openwrt-YOURVERSION-mediatek-filogic-smartrg_sdg-8733-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin’. The router will now reboot into the newly installed image.
  • ‘-n’ means DO NOT preserve any old configuration files
  • ‘-v’ means verbose

This package *could* cause issues during sysupgrades using ASU and/or OWUT.

• Go to https://github.com/mossdef-org/w1700k-wireless-regdb/releases and copy the URL of the latest regDB apk file.
• SSH to your router and run

cd /tmp
wget -O regdb.apk <paste the URL from above>
apk add --allow-untrusted regdb.apk

• Reboot

→ generic.flashing.tftp

→ generic.debrick

→ failsafe_and_factory_reset

→ Basic configuration After flashing, proceed with this.
Set up your Internet connection, configure wireless, configure USB port, etc.

Front:
Insert photo of front of the casing

Back:
Insert photo of back of the casing

Backside label:
Insert photo of backside label

→ Warranty

Main PCB:
Insert photo of PCB

→ port.serial general information about the serial port, serial port cable, etc.

How to connect to the Serial Port of this specific device:

→ bootloader

None so far.

Space for additional notes, links to forum threads or other resources.

Some Troubleshooting (Work in progress)

• The 10G WAN port and 10G LAN port aren't recognized as such in LuCI or by ethtool. It says they are 100Mbit, though the speed throughput actually goes much faster. This may be related to the driver for those Marvell Aquantia AQR113C ports not properly being loaded. A solution has not yet been identified

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