It’s unlikely. The OpenWrt community has moved on to ath79 (Qualcomm) and mediatek/filogic . Realtek never released the full datasheet for the RTL8196E’s internal switch and DMA engine.
That said, the have a driver called realtek_rtl8196c , which allows basic ethernet routing without Wi-Fi. If you are comfortable compiling your own kernel, you can build OpenWrt from source: rtl8196e openwrt
: Standard MIPS compilers often generate code that the RTL8196E cannot execute, leading to immediate crashes or "bricks". It’s unlikely
| Issue | Workaround | |-------|-------------| | (low RAM) | Use zram , remove dnsmasq → odhcpd + dnsmasq-light | | No hardware NAT | CPU handles all, max ~30 Mbps routing | | Switch VLANs break | Use swconfig with rtl8366_smi , check GPIO mapping | | WiFi instability (RTL8192CE) | Reduce tx power ( iw reg set BO + iwconfig wlan0 txpower 10 ) | | USB 1.1 only on some SoCs | Use dwc2 with dma_mask=0xffffffff | That said, the have a driver called realtek_rtl8196c