High-end routers of today are almost as powerful as PCs of a decade ago. Most of the time this computing power sits idle, unused.
Your router is running 24/7, serving your WiFi/Internet, why not make better use of it by letting it do other tasks? This article aims to help you do just that! 🙂
ruTorrent (featured in fig above) is a nice webUI for rtorrent. This combo is commonly used on seedboxes.
We will setup ruTorrent and all its dependencies, mainly rtorrent, php, nginx and a few other tools to enable various plugins and extra functionality. This walk-through will be divided to 3 parts. But before we start, to avoid disappointment at the end, ensure your router:
- Has at least 256MB RAM (128MB will work if your internet connection is < 30mbps).
- Has at least 16MB flash/ROM. If you have 8MB then you can expand it with extroot.
- Is based on a multi-core SoC (ipq80xx/ipq40xx or mt7621). Single core units, like QCA9558, featured in TP-Link Archer C7, will work okay-ish if your internet connection is < 30mbps.
- Has a USB port (or eSata), and you have a spare USB HDD or a flash drive.
You can learn about your router’s specs by visiting the OpenWrt ToH.
I will try make this readable to both new and seasoned users, so it won’t be extremely detailed, but we won’t be skimming through either. This article assumes you already know how to flash LEDE/OpenWrt onto your router and can ssh into it and edit text files.
Part 1: Setting up rtorrent on a LEDE/OpenWrt router.
Part 2: Setting up nginx, php and cloning ruTorrent.
Part 3: Fulfilling ruTorrent plugin requirements to enable bells and whistles.
Part 4 (Bonus!): Setting up your phone to remotely control rtorrent.