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OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

openwrt.org

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Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#161

Post by MrDrMcCoy »

mike_d wrote: post #159
vsviridov wrote: post #99

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...

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?

My radio knowledge is not up to par, but couldn't a phased array antenna setup allow for friendlier form factors?

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#162

Post by mike_d »

VorpalWay wrote: post #148
Aspos wrote: 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?

It looks like the person you replied to deleted their comment, but I assume it was about GL-iNet being a Chinese company.

They have a tiny Hong Kong office that handles marketing as well as a US office for technical support, but the entirety of engineering and manufacturing is in Shenzhen and Chengdu.

Because they provide a hosted site-to-site VPN service they are obligated to hold a B13 license. One of the conditions of which is the ability for the Chinese government to request access to devices worldwide.

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#163

Post by rnxrx »

hyperbovine wrote: post #121
pizlonator wrote: post #100

What a coincidence to see this on the front page! I just received my OpenWrt One because I’m tired of dealing with the questionable quality of most routers. And I don’t feel like resurrecting my old PC that I used as a router for a while. I stopped doing that because it’s loud. Pretty sure the power supply fan is about to fly off. But Qualcomm WiFi pci card with giant antenna in a dirt cheap PC running ancient Ubuntu…

"Enterprise class" wifi routers from ten years ago sell on eBay for about 1/5th as much, and work just as well for most home or small business applications.

It's worth being careful here: a lot of the affordable enterprise-class routers from 10+ years ago aren't as fast as cheap consumer hardware - like the OP or just a decent mini PC. The primary arguments for the enterprise-class gear are around feature availability and certain aspects of reliability (redundant power/fans, better heat tolerance, higher quality components). It's also worth remembering that this kind of gear tends to be built for dedicated environments: loud fans, higher power draw/lack of power saving features, etc.

Beside the potential performance and environmental issues the other big downsides tend to include firmware availability - either because download from the site requires a login on the vendor's site or, increasingly commonly, the gear has hit LDOS and images just aren't posted. Obviously there are other "unofficial" places for such images, but the risk/legality are a whole other (potentially serious) question.

There's an additional issue mapping the requirements of home networking to enterprise gear: Ethernet switches are lousy firewalls (little or no NAT, primitive built-in security, DLNA/mDNS and friends aren't really sane options, etc). Finally, even at "1/5" the price the gear may still be quite a bit more expensive than other options. And if it's not expensive, it's usually because nobody wants it any more because of the issues mentioned above (being near- or beyond- LDOS).

FWIW this is from someone who literally built a commercial-class machine room in his house with dedicated AC, subpanels, commercial UPS, etc for data center class Ethernet, Fibre Channel and Infiniband switching as well as carrier-grade routers and still runs "enterprise" grade WLAN and switching and can lay hands on as much as I could reasonably want without too much drama or cost... Going down this road can absolutely be amazing if you either have a.) the background to properly source and run the hardware/software or b.) have a driving desire to learn how to do so or c.) have some very atypical requirements for home networking. Otherwise it tends to not be something to be done lightly.

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#164

Post by jandrese »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #45
boobsbr wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still have a WRT54GL sitting in a box somewhere.

The best model of the WRT54G line. I would snag them at thrift stores for cheap to use for silly utility functions. I always referred to that particular model as "The highly-coveted WRT54GL." I used a pair to provide Internet access at a Customer's construction site back in 2010. Cell phone hotspot wasn't a thing for me yet. We took a pair of WRT54Gs, configured one as a WiFi client, the other as a bog-standard route…

It seems crazy to me that Linksys didn't look at the success of the WRT54GL and the higher prices they commanded and decide to just keep doing that. Why every company feels the need to roll their own firmware that is buggy, slow, crashy, and doesn't implement half of the promised functionality properly is still baffling to me.

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#165

Post by HumblyTossed »

vsviridov wrote: post #99
WithinReason wrote: post #55

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...

Right?

I guess they think consumers need them to look like this crap.

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#166

Post by bloqs »

vsviridov wrote: post #99
WithinReason wrote: post #55

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 shocking amount of consumers buy things based purely on how they appear and the gamer adjacent aesthetic looks surprising and advanced to consumers. Unassuming business boxes are much harder to sell via the visual marketing

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#167

Post by protocolture »

PaulKeeble wrote: post #17

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.

The Two at least seems to have some features to it. Albeit catering to home ethernet enthusiasts.

I would really love to see something like this with just 10 sfp cages, no switching all routed interfaces. A real open source alternative to mikrotik.

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#168

Post by protocolture »

pizlonator wrote: post #100

What a coincidence to see this on the front page! I just received my OpenWrt One because I’m tired of dealing with the questionable quality of most routers. And I don’t feel like resurrecting my old PC that I used as a router for a while. I stopped doing that because it’s loud. Pretty sure the power supply fan is about to fly off. But Qualcomm WiFi pci card with giant antenna in a dirt cheap PC running ancient Ubuntu…

>I just received my OpenWrt One because I’m tired of dealing with the questionable quality of most routers.

My latest 3 home routers have been mikrotik, mikrotik and juniper.

And the Juniper is still in there, just running as a switch. The old juniper srx sucks at uPNP but is otherwise still a fantastic router if I wanted to swap back to it.

Middle tier mikrotik took a power surge and lost 50% of its ports. It still routed just enough for me to get a replacement.

Latest tik is doing great.

I dont see what the One offers me at all tbh.

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#169

Post by simoncion »

IgorPartola wrote: post #114
stoltzmann wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>OpenWRT is very good, but the installation and upgrades are not easy. The solution is to use image-builder and bake your config into the image.

All of that is a nope. The solution is that a router should have a standard unattended upgrade system built into it that is on by default and pulls from the stable release stream, preserves your configuration automatically with a 100% guarantee of it working, automatically falls back to the last known working image if the update fails, and has a way to notify you of what’s going on with it. This must work out of the…

> The solution is that a router should have a standard unattended upgrade system built into it that is on by default...

Mmm, no. Unexpected downtime for infrastructure is godawful... just ask Windows Home users.

OpenWRT has a "Click a button to upgrade" thing, just like just about every consumer/prosumer-grade equipment does. [0] It also has a command-line tool that one can use to automate upgrades, for environments where the phrase "production grade" is actually an important thing to think about. [1]

[0] https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/installation/attended.sy...> [2]

[1] https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/installation/sysupgrade....> [2]

[2] Those documents mention that you need to install some things to get operator-initiated upgrades. As of March, the button to click is installed by default, and the CLI tool is installed on systems that have enough disk space for it. [3]

[3] https://openwrt.org/releases/25.12/notes-25.12.0#integration...>

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#170

Post by Damogran6 »

I'd like something bigger than 1gb for the LAN port...yeah, most of my stuff is quick from a wifi standpoint, but I don't want the hardwired stuff to be second class citizens.

Looking at one of these when TP-link stops patching my Wifi. https://www.toptonpc.com/product/2x10g-sfp-solid-firewall-mi....

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