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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.?

#101

Post by gwu78 »

Pipe dream: take over production of AirPort Extreme from Apple, release the hardware specifications to the public, and make it easy for users to install their own kernels, e.g., NetBSD.

Reality: as someone else said already, PC Engines or Soekris are the best you can do. They make the hardware and let users make the software. These companies appear to have some longevity. Easy to run user-compiled kernels of choice.

Ubiquiti is not an option if you want to compile your own kernels. The drivers are proprietary. They make the hardware and the software. Users assumed to be incapable? Apparently they cannot survive selling hardware alone. Longevity of this company is uncertain. Humble opinion only.

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

#102

Post by tlow »

rbritton wrote: post #90
mavrc wrote: post #70

I know others have recommended this already, but I would also say that your best bet is to buy some Ubiquiti hardware. An EdgeRouter X + UniFI Pro dual-band AP is on the order of $200 from Amazon and has way, way better functionality than SOHO hardware of same price point, with the principal issue that it is enterprise hardware, and is very much not point-and-click to set up. I think the tradeoff in functionality and…

I can second this. I recently upgraded my home network to an EdgeRouter PoE + Netgear R7000 (flashed to DD-WRT) and wish I would've gone with Ubiquiti across the board. That side of things was much, much easier to get configured how I wanted it than DD-WRT on the Netgear. The VLAN tagging in DD-WRT for that hardware only partially worked via the GUI configuration, and I ended up having to go in via the CLI to finish…

Pretty far out of my depth here, but I did the same w/ 3 Long Range Dual Band Pro APs and I'm quite pleased... so thirded.

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

#103

Post by tlow »

dawnerd wrote: post #82
mavrc wrote: post #70

I know others have recommended this already, but I would also say that your best bet is to buy some Ubiquiti hardware. An EdgeRouter X + UniFI Pro dual-band AP is on the order of $200 from Amazon and has way, way better functionality than SOHO hardware of same price point, with the principal issue that it is enterprise hardware, and is very much not point-and-click to set up. I think the tradeoff in functionality and…

Their recent firmware has made it pretty plug and play. Edge router has a nice wizard for setting up basic routing and the AC pro can be setup via their UniFi phone app. Shouldn't take you any longer than an hour to be fully setup.

This was a really nice experience. Just went through this as a total novice -- never setup these APs and I'm not super knowledgeable in this area, but setup was really easy via a nice iOS app. Important configuration options were all available and all 3 APs I'm running are using the same SSID with no problems.

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

#104

Post by toast0 »

mdasen wrote: post #13

I have the Asus RT-AC68U/TM-AC1900. I bought it from T-Mobile for $60 and flashed it to stock and then put Asuswrt-Merlin on it (but you can use Tomato or DD-WRT). It does take a little work to flash it to stock (like Telnet'ing into the router), but it wasn't bad and for $60 I ended up with a wonderful router. There are guides online for flashing it back to stock. If you're looking for information, I suggest SmallNe…

I recently got one of these, since I use a separate router and put it into access point mode, I didn't bother to flash it to 3rd party firmware, but it seems to work fine.

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

#106

Post by cvwright »

Diederich wrote: post #76
feistypharit wrote: post #18

I used to run a modified advanced tomato (advancedtomato.com) on a few Asus routers. But the build process is terrible and I got sick of maintaining it. Looked at openwrt and lede, but still a pain to maintain. I recently decided on the ubiquiti edge router x ($49), ac-lr access point($90), and pihole($50) on a raspberry pi for DNS. The pi also runs DNS crypt. But now everything gets regular updates and the firewall…

DNS crypt? The google came up with several possibilities.

Probably this one: https://dnscrypt.org/

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

#107

Post by bberrry »

mdasen wrote: post #13

I have the Asus RT-AC68U/TM-AC1900. I bought it from T-Mobile for $60 and flashed it to stock and then put Asuswrt-Merlin on it (but you can use Tomato or DD-WRT). It does take a little work to flash it to stock (like Telnet'ing into the router), but it wasn't bad and for $60 I ended up with a wonderful router. There are guides online for flashing it back to stock. If you're looking for information, I suggest SmallNe…

RT-N66U with Advanced Tomato here. Couldn't be happier

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

#108

Post by jaskerr »

mox1 wrote: post #91
jaskerr wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which MiniPC did you use? I'm considering a similar setup, so options to consider would be welcome.

Looks like it was a Gigabyte GB-BXBT-2807[1] I added a 32gb ssd drive and a USB Ethernet dongle as well (for 2nd interface). The box has wifi, but no driver support from FreeBSD. My WIFI is supplied via a UniFI AC LITE. 1. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856164...

Thanks. I've looked at the AC Lite and the AC PRO also, but haven't narrowed the search for a small box to run the router.

Seems the box you linked to has only 1 ethernet port. How do you connect to both WAN and AP?

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

#109

Post by TwoNineFive »

alimbada wrote: post #15
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.…

As an OpenWRT user it's a little worrying to find that many of the developers have left the project. Do you have any more info on why this happened?

All of the links here on the issue are good.

My personal take on the split is like this:

First off, OpenWRT as a project was very sick before the split. There was development going on with core stuff and bug fixes, but a lot of things were not getting done: Documentation, user-oriented outreach (forum, end-user help, new-dev help, etc), security response was a joke, and other many other issues. Some of the old core devs went AWOL and were really hard to reach and rarely made new commits or worked on the project, but they still had the keys to servers, DNS, and similar stuff.

Then one of the big dev servers over in Europe started going offline, and nobody knew why. Infrastructure like the user-forums, DNS, the bug tracker, and git/svn all would go down for HOURS or DAYS. People tried to reach out to the missing devs and got no reply... for DAYS.

That really kicked things off. People already were not happy with how the current set of project maintainers were running things. There were too few people with the keys to the kingdom and then when stuff broke, nobody was around to fix it.

The old devs are basically holding the name of the project hostage and preventing future progress.

So people forked and that's that.

The new LEDE Project has a lot of problems. I'm not a fan of how they have failed to scope out the project properly, but I think it's a better situation than the old OpenWRT project, which was dying a slow death. At least the new project has a chance at life instead of being smothered by the old devs who refused to share the keys to the kingdom with the active developers.

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

#110

Post by TwoNineFive »

drewg123 wrote: post #77
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.…

How is a potential user supposed to figure this out? If I go to what LEDE calls "ideal hardware for LEDE", at https://www.lede-project.org/toh/views/toh_available_864 , none of the above routers are listed (with the possible exception of the Netgear R7500, but there is no mention of v1/v2). I guess the docs are just out of date?

I am very sympathetic to your comment. The old OpenWRT and new LEDE did a really poor job of end-user interaction. There wasn't a list of recomended models which was kept updated. The regular documentation was often out of date. The forum was poorly administrated. Project goals were unknown. Lots of back-room dealing with little transparency of what project direction should be.

Hopefully LEDE will change this, but I'm not very optimistic. It's the same devs as before, and they didn't like dealing with end-users before, so why start now? It took LEDE over six months to set up and end-user forum, and they decided not to make a lede-user mailing list at all. Not very end-user friendly actions I'd say.

Note that I don't interact with DD-WRT, so that's why I don't make comments about DD-WRT.

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