61–70 of 84 posts
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oh, one other thing.. upgrading openwrt on x86 isn't as nice as other devices with a squashfs root. I can upgrade packages, but I don't think that I can really upgrade it without re-installing everything.
You can actually if you didn't expand your partition and keep the default layout. Use the firmware builder to build a customized image with your needed packages. Edit: ah I didn't see that you run openwrt on baremetal...
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I can't recommend the WRT3200 devices, the wifi stability is horrible
32X is a real device name (the gaming router)... 3200ACM is another device. But did you try divested? It has patches for wifi...
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.
https://wiki.nftables.org/wiki-nftables/index.php/Moving_fro...
But it might not cover all of your existing iptables rules.
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.
OpenWRT is great for taking bargain routers on eBay (which can be had for as little as £5 and yet have fast CPUs and support modern WiFi radios) and making them into proper homelab gateways with VPN, VLANs, DNS proxies etc. I would often do this for friends who wanted VPN access to their home network but didn't want to fork out for a router that would offer this out of the box. I would find it amusing when an ISP's s…
Would you recommend any specific model for such “bargain routers”?
Setting up a Wireguard VPN is way easier. They seem to backport anything that matters. They are sometimes marketed as travel routers, but they work fine as your main one. They just don’t take up a lot of space.
https://www.amazon.com/GL-iNet-GL-SFT1200-Secure-Travel-Rout...
If you want better than that? You should use a raspberry pi 4/5, with an extra gigabit USB adapter, as your router, and setup some routers as “dumb APs”. That way you can upgrade your wireless without messing with your core network and services.
Also RP4/5 are both fast enough to software route at gigabit speeds with advanced QoS management. My latencies don’t change if my connection is loaded or not.
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If you do want the USG back, most of their failure modes (flash storage, PSU) are fairly easy to resurrect
My Asus router, when using OpenWrt, can't keep up with my internet connection, so I'm putting (admittedly minimal) effort into finding a suitable upgrade with the intent to keep the Asus as a backup. I've also looked at installing OpenWRT on my USG, but only the snapshot version is available and the process is fairly involved[0] so I haven't really explored this. At this point though, I'm not likely to go back to Uni…
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Noob question, sorry. > also run it on any x86 machine With the stock wifi chip and antenna? Or would I need to upgrade? Asked another way: my old PC can be the "server"? Just like any wifi base station?
Intel WiFi chips work as acess points only in the 2.4 GHz band. You can add an "Alfa Network AWUS036ACM" USB WiFi adapter as something that works in the 5 GHz band, but please don't expect more than 400 Mbps from it.
It's supposed to perform a scan and then set the country that is advertised by nearby APs. The obvious problem is that it won't work if there are no other wifi networks, or if one is trasmitting the wrong country. Also you have to manually run the scan, before the radio is unlocked, but virtually all AP softwares don't know how to handle this properly and get stuck in a loop.
In any case, they're terrible in AP mode even after unlocking the 5GHz band, because are locked to a single VAP and are not dual-band (I mean, not at same time).
OpenWRT is great for taking bargain routers on eBay (which can be had for as little as £5 and yet have fast CPUs and support modern WiFi radios) and making them into proper homelab gateways with VPN, VLANs, DNS proxies etc. I would often do this for friends who wanted VPN access to their home network but didn't want to fork out for a router that would offer this out of the box. I would find it amusing when an ISP's s…
Would you recommend any specific model for such “bargain routers”?
My only gripe is that I wish it had a better CPU. Currently using CoDel the CPU maxes out at 750Mbps.
If you straddle the worlds of preferring a "normal" router to a custom built box but also want to keep your configuration history in git I think OpenWRT may be the best option.
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.