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OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

openwrt.org

151–160 of 338 posts

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#151

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.

As some not deep into networking, just home(lab) stuff, learning OpenWRT took some time. But now cannot think of buying a router not for OpenWRT, once I learn what is possible I want to use it.

Fot example from my ISP I can have two options for PPPoE connection, first is legacy IPv4 only but lacks IPv6, second is IPv4 but behind CGNAT and with modern IPv6. With OpenWRT, I am able to make two PPPoE connection over the same wire and have the best of both worlds.

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#152
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How about OPNSense on open hardware of your choice 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…

But what if you don't want to tinker? I switched to OPNsense as a direct replacement for our Asus "WiFi routers", and it has been phenomenal, reliable, and does everything needed - when you just want it to work, it really just does. But when you want more advanced functions, there are tons of plugins and stuff that you can run natively, while still having a true CLI. I suppose it comes down to what you said - "if you…

> Is it a good idea to run all sorts of extra stuff on your literal firewall/router?

I don't see any reason not to. I run dozens on services, both bare metal and containerized (Podman) on my router/firewall. It doubles as an all-purpose home server with plenty of headroom to spare. It's just a computer that sits at the edge of my network, and running services meant to be exposed to the Internet on it is natural.

> You also said that Linux has much better performance vs BSD, which seems rather far fetched. Got any data for that?

I should have worded this more carefully. What tends to happen is that BSD has worse (or no) drivers, that's when BSD's performance can noticeably degrade vs. Linux. From memory, people online were reporting issues with Realtek chips. With Intel NICs, the routing performance should be broadly equivalent .

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#154
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

deleted.

Source? A cursory check on their website shows a Hong Kong and a US address. Some people seem to be claiming mainline China associations as well, which could be true, can't find anything on that in either direction. But Israeli, no can't find that. Sure you didn't confuse it with some other company?

Apologies, you are right.

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#155
post #110

$106usd or $84usd without a case and antennas. That’s a solid price. Wish it had more than 1gb ram - goddamn datacenters.

Without performing any work at all to optimize RAM usage: My all-singing, all-dancing OpenWRT router projects have always used less than 100MB of RAM. These days, they usually occupy less than 64MB. 1GB is a ton of RAM for this kind of application. :) What do you anticipate needing more for?

Blocky/pihole type stuff is what comes to front of mind, which probably fits but add anything else and now you’re hitting the limit.

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#156
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a home network 2.5 is plenty.

https://frontier.com/shop/internet/fiber-internet/7-gig 7gig WAN is widely available residentially at a reasonable cost.

it most certainly is NOT available at a reasonable cost in many places.

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#158
post #25

Off topic, but what amuses me about the "Wrt" name is that it was originally alternate firmware for the Linksys WRT54G router from 25 years ago. The name has stuck for whatever reason; I guess since only geeks use it and know what it is.

I'm pretty sure the software side of the project is a direct descendent from the WRT54G stack. LinkSys got sued to release the firmware as it was GPL linked. This dump got modified to make the WRT54G way more powerful than LinkSys ever planned but they got to sell the hardware for years more than would have been expected at the time.

Yeah, Linksys made a killing from this and the WRT54GS 2.0 because of OpenWRT.

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The planned specs are here, they say it will be made by GL.iNet: https://openwrt.org/voting/2025-02-12-openwrt-two Otherwise this router from GL.iNet has OpenWRT preinstalled, Wifi 7, 5x2.5G: http://www.gl-inet.com/en-gb/products/gl-be9300

Why do they always have to look like some unholy blend of a cybernetic spider and a Knight Rider? What happened to a plain unassuming looking piece of industrial hardware...

Because a modern wifi router requires a minimum of 6 antennas. 9 is even better.

This lends itself to a spider like design with just a ton of antennas sticking out of a box, or a trash can with the antennas hidden inside around the outside edge.

Do you have other ideas for how to lay it out?

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do they always have to look like some unholy blend of a cybernetic spider and a Knight Rider? What happened to a plain unassuming looking piece of industrial hardware...

Wifi 5-7 happened, now operating at 3 different frequency ranges (2.4, 5 and 6Ghz) and using techniques like beam forming and MIMO. All those antennas need to go somewhere. If you want plain unassuming looking hardware get dedicated wifi access points and place them all over the building. There are plenty of those shaped liked big smoke detectors. If you want single device there are also quite a few trash can shaped…

That complaint was about its styling, not number of antennas
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