51–60 of 338 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This thing has no practical purpose. This is wrong. OpenWRT is fostering several manufacturers that are using OpenWRT as the factory platform for their products. This is a reference design (one of several, this particular one from 2024 is now dated and newer designs are available,) provided by OpenWRT, and they've thoughtfully made it available to anyone that might want one: you can just go buy some with no NDA bul…
This sources PoE using a third-party daughter board which is mechanically way too big to package into any production access point. So no, that part of a reference design would never be used. > get your developers moving in your lab or doing UI development or whatever This is what the industry has been clamoring for among a sea of existing hardware: More garbage UIs glued atop of copy-pasted forgotten hardware. I am a…
Strange. A good engineering manager would see that "way too big" PoE daughter board design as exactly what one would want in a reference design that will be used to test and integrate your preferred PoE solution. Power product life cycles are so short and availability problems so frequent that a good engineering manager knows that their engineers will be reworking power solutions with some regularity.
A good engineering manager would also know that UI development for commercial products is not optional. The engineering manager will expect that marketing will want branding at the very least, that differentiating features will need to be surfaced, etc., and that all of this will need to be integrated into build, test and the package system, and QA'd on real hardware. Basic stuff for an engineering manager.
How about OPNSense on open hardware of your choice, and passing messy wireless to separate AP? OpenWRT is very good, but the installation and upgrades are not easy. There is a zoo of images for different hardware, installation options and tools. It has to run on small devices, so there are limitations. The documentation on Wiki is scattered and could be improved. I had to search forums for weeks for a custom package…
It's been included in all suitable default image configurations starting with OpenWrt release 25.12.
I do run OpenWrt on my x86-based router, on my AP, and even on my managed switches, and have no regrets.
How about OPNSense on open hardware of your choice, and passing messy wireless to separate AP? OpenWRT is very good, but the installation and upgrades are not easy. There is a zoo of images for different hardware, installation options and tools. It has to run on small devices, so there are limitations. The documentation on Wiki is scattered and could be improved. I had to search forums for weeks for a custom package…
Yes, it's a possibility, but if you want to tinker, I think a plain Linux distro like Debian is better. Turning it into a router is literally a couple of kernel parameters and a few iptables rules to set up NAT. Nowadays that's less than fives minutes of work with Claude.
This buys you much better performance and hardware compatibility relative to a BSD system, as well as lower resource usage and attack surface (no GUI or other unnecessary additions). WiFi support on BSD is bad, but on Linux you can use hostapd and almost immediately get an access point for free. And of course Linux is also better if you intend to run other stuff on the same hardware.
They are working on an OpenWRT Two at the moment which will be Wifi 7. OpenWRT runs on a lot of hardware and its a great way to extend the life of a router past the manufacturers patches as well as gain a lot of capabilities. I wouldn't buy a commercial router that wasn't supported by OpenWRT now.
https://openwrt.org/voting/2025-02-12-openwrt-two
Otherwise this router from GL.iNet has OpenWRT preinstalled, Wifi 7, 5x2.5G:
How about OPNSense on open hardware of your choice, and passing messy wireless to separate AP? OpenWRT is very good, but the installation and upgrades are not easy. There is a zoo of images for different hardware, installation options and tools. It has to run on small devices, so there are limitations. The documentation on Wiki is scattered and could be improved. I had to search forums for weeks for a custom package…
Upgrades are “owut upgrade” these days. Pretty straightforward.
...which I tried doing, a week or so ago, for a minor point release update within the 25.12.x series. And then the router went out to lunch and didn't come back.
Getting it going again wasn't so bad as such things go. My router has a huge advantage here in that it's a Raspberry Pi 4, so it's easy to remove/replace/re-do the flash device and start over.
(Except: I get all out of sorts when I need to do Internet stuff to fix my Internet connection while that Internet connection is absent.)
Gigabit / 2.5 Gbit connectivity is already obsolete. Any modern product must have 10gbe WAN with the hardware to back up NAT at that throughput.
Gigabit / 2.5 Gbit connectivity is already obsolete. Any modern product must have 10gbe WAN with the hardware to back up NAT at that throughput.
They are working on an OpenWRT Two at the moment which will be Wifi 7. OpenWRT runs on a lot of hardware and its a great way to extend the life of a router past the manufacturers patches as well as gain a lot of capabilities. I wouldn't buy a commercial router that wasn't supported by OpenWRT now.
Hopefully, dual 2.5gbe too?
You can get a Wifi 7 device and 2x2.5GBps with Wifi 7 support already with the Asus BT8 and a few other devices. Asus's bootloader firmware flasher will take the initial OpenWRT image so its really quite simple to get going.