***** CAUTION - FACTORY FIRMWARE ***** The "factory" version of OpenWrt firmware is intended to be used when re-flashing a new device from the original manufacturer's non-OpenWrt firmware to an OpenWrt based firmware such as the VT SECN firmware. Be aware that the process of re-flashing a device from the manufacturer's original proprietary firmware to a different firmware such as OpenWrt or DD-WRT involves a certain level of risk of making the device inoperable in the event that something goes wrong during the process e.g. a power interruption. Please note that this is **not** an issue for devices whose original firmware is based on OpenWrt e.g. Dragino and GLiNet devices. The "factory" firmware version is produced automatically by the OpenWrt build process. The "factory" version of VT SECN firmware is generally not distributed. Only the "sysupgrade" version of VT SECN firmware is normally distributed. NOTE: Any VT SECN "factory" firmware is **not** explicitly tested on new devices. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is assumed to work correctly based on testing conducted on the "sysupgrade" version of the firmware. You use any VT SECN "factory" firmware at your own risk. If you brick a device while re-flashing from the manufacturers firmware, then recovery involves accessing the serial port and using the UBoot firmware. This can be fairly difficult on devices that don't have easy access to the serial port connections. Once an OpenWrt based firmware has been installed, then there is an additional OpenWrt Failsafe method that can be used to recover from a bad flash or mis-configuration. This method only requires the use of the network port. A safe approach to flashing OpenWrt on to a new device for the first time is to flash with an OpenWrt standard firmware such as the "Chaos Calmer" release for your device. OpenWrt's firmware for all devices is available from the OpenWrt Downloads web site (https://downloads.openwrt.org/). You can install a recent release such as "Chaos Calmer" and that will give you a LuCI Web interface, from which you can easily upgrade to other OpenWrt based firmware such as VT SECN by using "sysupgrade" firmware images. If you upgrade to VT SECN from the OpenWrt LuCI web interface, be ***certain*** to un-tick the checkbox that is labelled "Keep Settings". Otherwise you will have the new firmware trying to run with the old settings. This checkbox is ticked by default in the LuCI interface. If this does happen, you should find the device on the original OpenWrt IP address (192.168.1.1 by default) and you can reconfigure (e.g. reset to factory defaults) or reflash from there. Reflash is recommended.