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OpenWrt 23.05

openwrt.org

21–30 of 84 posts

Re: OpenWrt 23.05

#21
I wish OpenWRT had LTS releases...

I'm still on 21.02.7 because they switched to nftables syntax for custom rules ("firewall.user") in 22.03 and I have a pile of them and haven't had the time to rewrite it all. This release means 21.02 will have no more security updates.

Re: OpenWrt 23.05

#22
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you recommend any specific model for such “bargain routers”?

I use an old Asus RT-N56U for great (Gigabit) switching performance. Wifi is only N, and you have to be careful, there are two HW revisions, that are indistinguishable from the outside. An alternative could be different TP Link devices, but I never tested these. For more modern purposes I use a Linksys WRT32X with divested[1] image, but you could also go for the 1900 or even 1200, depending on your needs... Maybe als…

I can't recommend the WRT3200 devices, the wifi stability is horrible

Re: OpenWrt 23.05

#23
Mandatory mention of the excellent adblocking plugins, for pi-hole-like DNS-based blocking of { ads, tracking, malicious sites, analytics, etc }, but built-in your router: https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/services/ad-blocking .

Featureful (or simple if you want simple and go for the simple plugin), plenty of blocklists to pick from, auto-updates, all the things! OpenWrt is awesome.

Re: OpenWrt 23.05

#24
I really want a 6E router that can run this. Only options right now are one that’s expensive and not readily available, and the other is a rebranded Zyxel one only available via a Norwegian ISP.

Re: OpenWrt 23.05

#25

Just updated all my devices, the stable support to the Wifi 6E is a great thing. OpenWrt is the best firware with the best community and support for home network devices!

What router are you using with 6E that supports this? Or is it a DIY thing with a WiFi card?

Re: OpenWrt 23.05

#26

OpenWrt is commonly used to breathe new (or better) life into consumer routers, but you can also run it on any x86 machine. I run it on a small, passively-cooled i5 machine* virtualized in Proxmox alongside Home Assistant. I originally ran OPNSense, then VyOS, but eventually went back to OpenWRT since it does everything I want/need with a simple interface. * https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/hzvfih/new_router…

Great comment, and same. Running it on Proxmox also enables running the router in a high-availability fashion quite easily too.. which is pretty neat.

I was running OpenWRT on my Xiaomi AX9000 (based on master but also IPQ807 specific forks), but everything OpenWRT is software-based so 1/ the AX9000's acceleration chips are idle & performance is quite limited (unless using one of the crazy experimental NSS builds where mostly everything is broken) 2/ the integration with the onboard switch itself is far from adequate, e.g. VLANS+batman-adv are quite broken - very few configurations yield a partially working network (e.g. randomly dropping ARPs).. and don't count of LACP to work even though it can be configured. That's forgiving the fact that we also have to manually patch the BDF files on OpenWRT for the AX9000 if you want the radios to be connectable, as OpenWRT do not want to ship with the correct BDFs for some vague legal liability reasons.

Used VyOS in Proxmox for a while too, but at the end of the day, the firewall boilerplate is quite huge (and can't easily be edited on the go in the house as necessary), tailscale is not natively supported, etc. Relatively sad to let go of IaaC and committing the configuration though, but somewhat manageable with snapshots.

Re: OpenWrt 23.05

#27

I really want a 6E router that can run this. Only options right now are one that’s expensive and not readily available, and the other is a rebranded Zyxel one only available via a Norwegian ISP.

Router name plz :-D

Re: OpenWrt 23.05

#28
post #21

I wish OpenWRT had LTS releases... I'm still on 21.02.7 because they switched to nftables syntax for custom rules ("firewall.user") in 22.03 and I have a pile of them and haven't had the time to rewrite it all. This release means 21.02 will have no more security updates.

It wasn't a pleasant task but when I ripped the band-aid off and converted my rules, I took it as an opportunity to reevaluate them and was able optimize a lot of them, converting to IPSSETs, tweaking them into CIDR ranges, pruning, etc and got a decent speed boost. Maybe that isn't applicable to you, but something to keep in mind.

Re: OpenWrt 23.05

#29
post #21

I wish OpenWRT had LTS releases... I'm still on 21.02.7 because they switched to nftables syntax for custom rules ("firewall.user") in 22.03 and I have a pile of them and haven't had the time to rewrite it all. This release means 21.02 will have no more security updates.

Ask chatgpt? Pretty good example of a thing it'll probably handle in a second.

Re: OpenWrt 23.05

#30

OpenWrt is incredible. My USG-3P died a few months ago, so I dusted off my old Asus router and made an unplanned switch to OpenWrt. This was meant to be a temporary solution until I could get a new UniFi device, but after setting it up and getting it working the way I want I'm more than happy to make this temporary solution into a permanent one.

If you do want the USG back, most of their failure modes (flash storage, PSU) are fairly easy to resurrect
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