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Ask HN: Best current model routers for OpenWRT, DD-WRT, Tomato, etc.?

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Re: Ask HN: Best current model routers for OpenWRT, DD-WRT, Tomato, etc.?

#51

Post by elvispt »

chx wrote: post #32
sashk wrote: post #25

I use two devices to handle usual definition of the router: 1. Mini PC[1] running as a router (pfSense); 2. eero to handle the wifi. Why? I've tried many times to use dd-wrt, openwrt and tomato firmwares on my routers, but every time I failed miserably: it's either something stops working, or I need to schedule routers reboots and so. So I gave up. Since that time, mini pc [1] is the third system which routes my traf…

I found https://www.amazon.com/Qotom-Q190G4-Celeron-Processor-Barebo... a fantastic device for the price. There's a non-Atom Celeron, a Broadwell chip and four Intel LAN ports in a <$150 package without moving parts. My home is small so this also handles the wifi for me.

What OS you running on that?

Re: Ask HN: Best current model routers for OpenWRT, DD-WRT, Tomato, etc.?

#52

Post by mbrock »

wincy wrote: post #26
mbrock wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried the Mikrotik WAPs? I'm just about to order a Mikrotik hAP AC Lite. https://routerboard.com/RB952Ui-5ac2nD It's for a one-floor collective house in Latvia, so it's kind of nice to get an AP from a Latvian company. :)

I just ordered the hAP AC non lite. I have a gigabit internet connection so I couldn't deal with the 100mbit ports. I'll get that and an RB3011uias-rm tomorrow! Got that because of some of the traffic shaping I'm planning on doing will need routerOS 5 and more processing power. I'm in the US and a huge fan of Mikrotik stuff, they don't get the exposure they deserve on threads like this. They also have a new cheaper w…

We just got some 100 Mbit fiber to the house and we don't do a ton of heavy file sharing so it'll be fine for us.

A stone's throw from the house is a field where we plan to have some activity in the spring and summer, so I'm thinking we could then get an additional outdoor wAP.

Yeah, finding out about Mikrotik at all took a fair bit of googling and researching but they seem cool!

Latvia has a bit of an electronical engineering tradition, especially in radio, as I understand...

Re: Ask HN: Best current model routers for OpenWRT, DD-WRT, Tomato, etc.?

#53

Post by Tharkun »

floatboth wrote: post #47
dublinben wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a good recommendation as anything other than a toy. The RPi doesn't have enough processing power to handle adequate speeds.

The Pi 2 should have enough power, the Pi 3 has more than enough. What they don't have is good I/O. USB 2.0 only. And the 100mbps Ethernet is attached through it.

YMMV, but 100mbps is not enough speed for me. That rules out the Pi.

Re: Ask HN: Best current model routers for OpenWRT, DD-WRT, Tomato, etc.?

#54

Post by nasduia »

darkblackcorner wrote: post #10

I think the Turris Omnia ( https://omnia.turris.cz/en/ ) looks fantastic, and plan on getting one when my budget allows. On further (re)inspection though it seems you'd still be tied to your ISP's router/modem :( Perhaps there's a good standalone/mPCI modem out there somewhere?

It is very good and the option to install a msata card is really useful.

Re: Ask HN: Best current model routers for OpenWRT, DD-WRT, Tomato, etc.?

#55

Post by Tharkun »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #28
fnj wrote: post #8

A router has nothing to do with providing WiFi. You should have a separate router and WAP. For the router, any fanless mini-PC with two ethernet ports. Run OpenBSD or pfSense.

I built a firewall/router out of this board, with Linux and shorewall. It took a trick with the installer to get it to go, but it's run for a couple of years now without hardly a thought. I love it. http://www.pcengines.ch/apu1d4.htm I agree with the separation comment, but you can buy a radio for this board, and make it do wifi as well. The case even has pre-cut holes for the antennas. I've thought about doing it ju…

I love the APU2, but it draws 5 times more power than my TP Link.

Re: Ask HN: Best current model routers for OpenWRT, DD-WRT, Tomato, etc.?

#56

Post by spherelot »

darkblackcorner wrote: post #10

I think the Turris Omnia ( https://omnia.turris.cz/en/ ) looks fantastic, and plan on getting one when my budget allows. On further (re)inspection though it seems you'd still be tied to your ISP's router/modem :( Perhaps there's a good standalone/mPCI modem out there somewhere?

I just received my Turris Omnia yesterday and I have to say that I'm very pleased with it. The build quality is good and it looks very nice in person. The web UI is snappy and everything was a joy to set up. The OS is based on OpenWRT so all the guides/documentation for OpenWRT works on Turris.

I previously used the Netgear R7000 "nighthawk" with DD-WRT and it worked just fine but the lack of updates and up to date documentation was very offputting. Somehow the whole setup felt like a massive hack.

I'm very surprised that there is no more talk about Turris Omnia here on HN. It's Open Hardware running Open Software. One would think that people here would be very interested in that kind of product.

Re: Ask HN: Best current model routers for OpenWRT, DD-WRT, Tomato, etc.?

#57

Post by jonstokes »

I've used OpenWRT in different incarnations over the years, and at this point my suggestion is to forget about OpenWRT and buy some Unifi hardware from Ubiquiti. You get almost the same amount of control from Ubiquiti's pro line, plus the hardware is really solid and it all Just Works.

Now that the enterprise-level Ubiquiti stuff is so insanely cheap, there's basically no reason IMO to fool around with open-source router projects.

Re: Ask HN: Best current model routers for OpenWRT, DD-WRT, Tomato, etc.?

#58

Post by FussyZeus »

FussyZeus wrote: post #5

I bought the Buffalo N300 not long ago: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IB8IVDQ/ref=oh_aui_deta... I've been extremely happy with this purchase, admittedly I'm a bit of a high-demand user (I host a number of minor services for myself and friends including TeamSpeak, minecraft, as well as operating two Xbox Ones) so I needed something with good port forwarding support and UPNP. Rock solid, straight DD-WRT interfa…

Clarification: I have no idea on the WiFi quality, I use an Airport Extreme in bridge mode behind it for Wifi. This serves 8 physical hosts and 6 virtuals over gigabit without fail, however, plus all the activity on the Wifi network.

Re: Ask HN: Best current model routers for OpenWRT, DD-WRT, Tomato, etc.?

#59

Post by tbronchain »

Very interesting question I've asked myself a year ago. I ended up buying an old Netgear WNDR3800 for $15, and put OpenWRT on it. And it works great! It has enough ROM to install most of the services you would probably need need (ssh, iptables, smb, shadowsocks, dnsmasq, time machine, dyndns, are running altogether perfectly well) and enough RAM as well. OpenWRT itself isn't perfect, and I had to setup an package building environment on my machine to install some packages (typically shadowsocks) on the latest stable build (currently 15.05.1). But it works. And it works great. Speed is good, and I don't see anything I would have to complain about that disturb my needs/usage. I like the modularity and I love having a real Linux I can ssh to as router.

I've been quite interested to read about the fact developers from OpenWRT are moving to LEDE. Maybe it could be worth it to wait - as I said, OpenWRT isn't perfect and I'm sure a lot of improvements can be done. I haven't tried LEDE though. But I think, for a small office/home network, just getting an (reasonably)old/cheap yet powerful, compatible hardware and put OpenWRT on it is quite a good solution at the moment.

Re: Ask HN: Best current model routers for OpenWRT, DD-WRT, Tomato, etc.?

#60

Post by minxomat »

zhan_eg wrote: post #31
TwoNineFive wrote: post #7

The first thing you need to know is that the OpenWRT project is basically dead and that 95+% of the developers went over to the LEDE Project. However, LEDE has not yet published a stable release yet. You can get nightly builds that are in pretty good shape though. I would highly recommend an ipq806x-based system, if you can afford it. Almost always matched with qca9880 radios. These are modern 802.11ac wave2 systems.…

Hey, thanks for the great advice - here[0] is a comparison chart on Up/Downlink profiles and others from SmallNetBuilder for the first six models listed. Do you have any real-life comparison of range/stability (and with what load on them?) on those models as from experience I know that raw comparison data on Wi-fi differs from reality. Both this and some other Trendnet models I checked are not Wi-Fi Certified - has t…

On the contrary, I use the Archer C7 as my main router and in my experience, it is by far the best router I've ever had (having previously used FritzBox, Speedport, Technicolor, Netgear etc.) Here's a quick rundown of what happened: The part of the city I live in was upgraded to fibre for free (Fiber 200, with 180 down and 90 up guaranteed) and I needed a router that could handle that. The way Fiber 200 works is pretty simple: The provided optical end terminal converts the incoming fibre line to Cat5e. It then creates a VLAN, with separate IDs for TV, VoIP and Internet. So you need a router with unbounded VLAN ID config. Of course you can pay the $150 for the ISP provided one. But I didn't need VoIP, so the Archer C7 seemed perfect. Anyway:

Received C7 with old world-wide firmware. Immediately upgraded to the latest firmware, not realizing that this new version is region locked (no problem so far though). Tried to configure the VLAN for my Internet, realize that my ISP uses non-standard VLAN IDs which exceed the limit of the firmware. Call TP-Link (Germany). I was very surprised to speak to an actual engineer immediately. He knew the problem and recompiled the current beta firmware (with support for higher VLAN IDs) and sent it to me

Now we run into the first problem: You can't flash beta firmwares after upgrading to the region-locked one.

Call again - another very helpful engineer. He recommended flashing OpenWRT in recovery mode (FTP upload) and then flash the beta firmware from there. Flashed LEDE instead of OpenWRT (because I had it on hand), without any problems. Now I don't have any use for OpenWRT or LEDE. The functionality of the standard C7 firmware is more than enough for me. So I flashed the beta and everything worked.

Here are a few other points about this router:

- I pushed the internal switch to maximum capacity multiple times, even using unreasonable packet rates. The C7 doesn't even break a sweat.

- I use the built-in media server to stream music to my Dumb-TV. Works great.

- At one time, a friend brought his laptop over, which turned out to be infected. The C7 banned his device immediately, after it exceeded the DDoS protection limits I set.

- I never had any downtime on this router.

- WiFi performance is exceptional (up to 450M).

In conclusion: I would recommend the Archer over any router in this price range any day. The painless flashing of OpenWRT and LEDE makes it even more awesome. Add to that the awesome and competent support experience. And by the way: You receive an actual paper manual on how to request the GPL'd code that's used in the stock firmware.

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