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OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

openwrt.org

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Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#191

Post by speed_spread »

guywithahat wrote: post #115
IgorPartola wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case it is not, an old PC with a dual port Intel NIC running OPNSense is so far the best router I have ever used. I mean rock solid performance with near zero maintenance beyond adjusting VLANs and setting up a 6in4 tunnel over the past 5 years solid. My home network is larger, more diverse, and more complex than what I suspect most people have, with several hundred devices and yet I log into the OPNSense UI maybe…

I don't disagree, however using an old PC as a router almost certainly wastes an enormous among of power. An old non-gaming PC could use 70kWh of power a month if running continuously (as a router would), which is around 11 a month and almost 140 a year. At that price you could just buy a nice router, or an OpenWrt One which will possibly also have newer, faster WiFi standards (WiFi 6)

[dead]

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#192

Post by zkmon »

Flashed my TP-LINK router last week with openwrt bin file, to get wifi to ethernet bridge. Working awesome.

There are too many settings. Feels like Gimp (vs paintbrush). But once figured out, it works well.

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#194

Post by burner420042 »

cduzz wrote: post #181
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...

I have been extremely happy with cisco 3802 access points purchased on ebay for $25 each. Sure, it's only wifi5, but they're pretty solid and you can just deploy a swarm of them. And they don't look fugly. It is a tremendous shame that cisco hasn't opensourced / unlocked this generation of kit.

Documentation for how to set these up without the cisco control platform being present is hard to come by.

You have any docs on how to set these up? I believe a firmware change is required.

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#195

Post by kalleboo »

guywithahat wrote: post #115
IgorPartola wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case it is not, an old PC with a dual port Intel NIC running OPNSense is so far the best router I have ever used. I mean rock solid performance with near zero maintenance beyond adjusting VLANs and setting up a 6in4 tunnel over the past 5 years solid. My home network is larger, more diverse, and more complex than what I suspect most people have, with several hundred devices and yet I log into the OPNSense UI maybe…

I don't disagree, however using an old PC as a router almost certainly wastes an enormous among of power. An old non-gaming PC could use 70kWh of power a month if running continuously (as a router would), which is around 11 a month and almost 140 a year. At that price you could just buy a nice router, or an OpenWrt One which will possibly also have newer, faster WiFi standards (WiFi 6)

For some real numbers, I picked up a 2018 generic office PC (Core i5-7500) used for $50 as a backup machine to run linux on when my laptop was in for repairs, and it idles at 14 W, vs the OpenWrt One which appears to run at 5.5 W.

So that's 10 kWh/mo for the PC vs 4 kWh/mo for the OpenWrt One.

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#196

Post by ssl-3 »

jandrese wrote: post #164
EvanAnderson wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Companies roll their own, I think, because of a combination of Not Invented Here and secret-sauce binary blobs. They work within the script that the chipset/radio maker gives them to follow.

---

They don't often offer inexpensive, deliberately-hackable units like the WRT54GL, I think, because of support costs.

And by "support costs," I don't mean that it was expensive to hold users' hands while they installed custom firmware -- that's never been a service that has been provided.

Instead, I mean that there are people who start goofing with this stuff and run out of skill when hacking close-ish to the metal on this kind of hardware. They don't know how to get themselves out of a jam and unbrick their device.

So they find a way to lie their way into getting an RMA and get the device replaced under warranty, and that's expensive for companies to deal with.

(Those people fucking suck.)

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#197

Post by toast0 »

linsomniac wrote: post #88
baggachipz wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I loved it because it allowed me to boost the signal above FCC-approved power requirements and saturate my house with that sweet 2.4GHz connection everywhere.

It is basically always better to run more APs at lower power in the areas where you need coverage, than to boost the power. Especially today with the radio spectrum being so congested. Despite this, I could expect 3-5 people to hunt me down at PyCon when I was running the wireless to tell me that I had misconfigured the wifi because it was set to low power. More reports of that than reports of wifi not working, IIRC.…

> It is basically always better to run more APs at lower power in the areas where you need coverage, than to boost the power.

Only if your clients are competent at roaming.

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#198

Post by cduzz »

burner420042 wrote: post #194
cduzz wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been extremely happy with cisco 3802 access points purchased on ebay for $25 each. Sure, it's only wifi5, but they're pretty solid and you can just deploy a swarm of them. And they don't look fugly. It is a tremendous shame that cisco hasn't opensourced / unlocked this generation of kit.

Documentation for how to set these up without the cisco control platform being present is hard to come by. You have any docs on how to set these up? I believe a firmware change is required.

Unfortunately you need to use the cisco software / firmware. The access points run linux but they're locked down like crazy with signed firmware blobs and such.

That said, the cisco firmware for this specific generation of access points is actually free and trivial to get -- create yourself a cisco account and go to downloads and download the 3802 "mobility express" firmware. The last ME firmware came out in 2024 and all this equipment and software is now totally unsupported by cisco so don't run PCI transactions at home... I'd also avoid running their captive portal or some of their other weird features...

Actually setting it up is a bit of a chore but it is a full featured "enterprise" (cough) AP management system with all the knobs and twiddles you could ask for.

It's really only a good idea if you don't value your time (like me) or if you have a sprawling plaster house where you want to have lots of cheap access points instead of a couple super fast ones.

Lastly, for better or worse, I haven't been able to make my kid's switch 2 work on the network.

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#199

Post by mintflow »

Bpi does a nice job on open source hardware and openwrt integration, but only 2 ports in this model is really good?

Just update my bpi-r3 purchased years ago from 24.x to 25.12, it need a bit of extra work because the sfp interface is renamed(though I never used that), and i finally just do plain sysupgrade only and add some required packages because i run a customized fd.io vpp build on the bpi-r3, connected via vhost-net backed tuntap, it works well, I never regret bought this machine, with current agent stuffs, i think bpi r3 model may be more fun to play with

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#200

Post by ehnto »

WithinReason wrote: post #55
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 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

I have really liked my GL.iNet travel router, also with OpenWRT. I didn't think I would need a travel router but they're pretty handy.

I didn't realise routers like theirs existed, and had been paying through the nose for your standard brands like TPLink and hoping it didn't get popped.

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