Old-FAQ

The FRITZ!Box family is a range of universal routers manufactured by AVM GmbH, Berlin. The first models were sold in germany only, in 2004 when this unofficial Wiki was startet, that's why it's written entirely in german language. Now the FRITZ!Box is sold allover the world and it's time to add support for the international community.

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Remainder from the old wiki:

The primary goal of this Wiki is to help users and developers to get familiar with the rich feature set of the FRITZ!Box and the internal workings of the FRITZ!OS running on it. A lot of information has been collected so far and there's by far no other commercial router on this planet with a similar amount of user collected free information.

All text is written in german language with translation links at the upper right corner of each page. However, automated translation results vary, they may as well be completely useless. That is where IRC may come in handy. If you have a question you can try one of the international support channels linked to this Wiki.

FAQ for those who don't speak german

What is the FRITZ!Box?

The FRITZ!Box family is a range of universal routers for DSL-, UMTS-, DOCSIS- or LTE-access to the internet. Besides being routers they all add a large scale of additional features.

Most models support telephony, covering POTS, ISDN, VoIP, GSM or PacketCable. Most of these models can drive analog or ISDN telephones, DECT phones and SIP telephones, including Android or iOS Smartphones running FRITZ!App Fon.

All recent models can be used as WLAN access points, either in the 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz bands, a few models support both bands simultaneously. WDS is supported, either in base or in repeater mode. An optional proprietary extension allows full WPA2 encryption when linking up FRITZ!Boxes via WDS.

Another major feature is NAS-storage, which can be storage media connected to the USB-Host, a mounted WebDAV-resource or builtin NAND-Flash. Files can be served to the LAN or WLAN via FTP, Samba or the UPnP-AV / DLNA Media-Server. You may also control and use it from Smartphones running FRITZ!App Media, which currently is public betatest software. Access from the Internet is also possible using FTP, FTPS or HTTPS, locating the box via Dynamic DNS, AVM's brand new MyFRITZ! Service or by a Connect-Mail announcing each public IP address change.

For more info check out the official homepages at avm.de and fritzbox.eu. AVM does not sell the Box directly, but there are quite some resellers worldwide, see also the where to buy map. In some countries you can get it from bigger ISPs, you may as well direct your favorite hardware shop to one of the international distributors.

Early FRITZ!Box models are also available as an international version with an english Webinterface. This covers the 5113 and 7113, which are only available with Annex A, and the 7140 and 7170, which are available with either Annex A or B.

Current international models support switchable Annex and a multi-language Webinterface covering german, english, french, spanish and italian language. This covers the ADSL capable 7270 and the VDSL models 7340, 7360, 7390 and 7570.

What is the FRITZ!OS?

The FRITZ!Box uses an extended ADAM2 bootloader named EVA and runs the FRITZ!OS operating system, a mix of mostly GPL licensed open source software with proprietary addons.

The open source part spans a Linux 2.6 Kernel, uClibc libraries, a BusyBox on top of these with a range of well known free Linux commands. Documentation on these are separated in the BusyBox-Befehle and the Linux-Befehle sections. 'Befehle' is the german word for '(shell-) commands'.

The closed source part covers the DSL-, UMTS-, DOCSIS- and LTE-stacks, the telephony stacks, the wireless LAN drivers and most of the comfort services. Documentation on these are separated in the Kernel-Modules, Shared Libraries, AVM-Befehle and Startup-Scripts sections of this Wiki.

You needn't know anything about the internals of the FRITZ!Box to use it. It comes with a well designed Webinterface with easy to use assistents for beginners and can be switched to an expert mode for the advanced users.

Where can I get the source code?

AVM releases very complete tarballs of the open source part of the FRITZ!OS for each model, with many up to date addons provided by the chip manufacturers involved you won't find elsewhere, rendering the FRITZ!Box one of the most developer friendly commercial product on the market.

Older source code covered multiple models and is collected version wise here. Code for recent models can be found in the 'x_misc/opensrc' subfolder of each model directory here.

You find links to the source code in each model article of the FRITZ!Box family too. For developers there's an unofficial archive with unpacked and browsable code on gpl.boxmatrix.info]. It may contain slightly outdated code so always check the above official sources first.

Where can I get the firmware?

The Firmware itself is a collection of free and proprietary software and thus is copyrighted by AVM. Unlike the source code it may not be spread by any third party, neither in original nor in modified form.

Recent models can search firmware through the Webinterface to perform an Online-Update. The most recent firmware can always be found in the language subdirectory for each model on the AVM FTP-Server. For a few models no public firmware is availlable.

The x_misc folder of most models contains a Windows executable which is called Recovery.exe. It allows to repair the firmware and the configuration of a box using the ADAM2 bootloader. It is a last resort solution and will reset the box to factory state. It should not be used unless you have serious problems or want to remove a modified firmware.

Where can I get modified firmware?

Short answer: legally nowhere.

Remember this is your firewall, it is not recommended to replace it with "something found in the net". Besides this legal restrictions forbid the spread of the Firmware. These are the two major reasons why all serious modifications to the Firmware are distributed in form of code, which fetches the firmware from AVM, unpacks, modifies and repacks it for personal usage.

The most mature project which simplifies this task is Freetz, located at freetz.org. It allows to modify about any recent member of the FRITZ!Box family with a comfortable make menuconfig driven system to remove unwanted functions and to add a large scale of open source software to the FRITZ!OS. A subsequent make compiles a customized Firmware to be flashed through the FRITZ!Box Webinterface.

Note that modified Firmware usually voids your warranty. The policy of AVM is to stop support for modified boxes. If the bootloader is not damaged by a modification (typically doesn't happen) a box can always be returned to supported state using a Recovery.exe. Always download a Recovery.exe before flashing any modified Firmware. For some models no Recovery.exe is availlable.