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OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

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Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#311

Post by murphyslaw »

cduzz wrote: post #268
walrus01 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBH if I wanted a bunch of closed source 802.11ac (2017 era) AP purchased on eBay, I would go for Unifi stuff far before Cisco. There's a plethora of it available from decommissioned sites.

I didn't look at those; do they support running some controller thing in one of the APs to allow central management of all the nodes? Cisco's mobility express just runs on one of the APs and can fail over to another of the APs; it's a slick piece of software. And yes, it isn't open source, which is a real shame since cisco's killed it (as far as I can tell) and it probably represents an enormous and sophisticated inv…

I don't know if the one you're talking about is one of these, but in the many years I worked at Cisco they seemed to buy a company every few weeks. Many of them had decent products which Cisco then meticulously destroyed. Luckily there was always kit to preserve for future generations, which I dutifully stacked in my attic.

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#312

Post by 3abiton »

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 run OpenWrt on 2 of my routers. It's really amazing the level of control. Although, I am now building a better approach: a mini PC as a managed linux router replacing my ISP (no wifi). Then my 2 wifi routers for wifi.

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#313

Post by burner420042 »

cduzz wrote: post #198
burner420042 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't know why I've never tried just doing it the Cisco way. Thank you for the walk-through.

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#314

Post by inventor7777 »

drnick1 wrote: post #152
inventor7777 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. > Yo…

Ah, I see. Well, that does make more sense now. I guess just have a surplus of mini PCs so for me it makes more sense to run one routing box and one server box, but I know how much use cases vary.

I agree about Intel vs Realtek to some extent. My Lenovo M73 OPNsense actually has a 2.5G Realtek mPCIe NIC on the LAN side and it has actually been pretty great and reliable so far! Transmit maxes out early at 2.28Gbps-ish but receive is 2.47Gbps (Jumbo). However, the other week it glitched out and reported UP but was actually unresponsive. I'm still looking for an mPCI Intel i226-V version of the same thing...

The only downside to your solution is that most people (me included) would rather have auto generated configs so that you don't accidentally expose everything to Internet or break everything with an iptables rule, but that's down to experience I'm sure.

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#315

Post by CrimsonCape »

zkmon wrote: post #192

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.

Ask AI to generate you a UCI config for "".

Reading the raw config files in /etc/config is the opposite of the web UI. The config files are the bare minimum data. Very easy to read.

I have no idea of the wider scope of possibilities that could be written into the config files, but that's where the AI helps.

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#316

Post by CrimsonCape »

wwilson wrote: post #135

I’ve been running one for a while and love it. Have also built a Nix -> OpenWRT config language transpiler so that I can keep my router state in Nix files and have nice deterministic rollbacks etc. It’s been great!

I'd be interested in any more info you can provide. Do you have your router configs in flakes? I'm currently testing Nix in a proxmox VM.

I just finished writing a shell script to dump all the UCI config files to one text file using curly braces to bracket/separate each file with the intent of committing this to a repo. Then will be writing a little parser to chunk up the text file to the appropriate /etc/config structure that OpenWRT expects. So at any point I can then just checkout different git branches, run the parser, and bam the entire config has been written to the router over ssh.

Still trying to figure out if OpenWRT has some other state outside of the /etc/config directory.

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#317

Post by zamalek »

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

That router uses OpenWRT, but only official firmware can be installed. The Asus ZenWifi BT7 is currently widely recommended if you want to go OpenWRT Wifi7.

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#318

Post by ZenoArrow »

random__duck wrote: post #305
ZenoArrow wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An open hardware network-focused ASIC would be cool, but cost and long development times would likely be limiting factors. If you wanted to explore this further, starting with FPGA-based router components would be a good starting point. For example: https://github.com/open-sdr/openwifi

Can I do a "hold my beer" moment ? https://github.com/Essenceia/ethernet_switch_asic

That's cool, it's obviously not meant to compete with modern router ASICs but it's an impressive achievement for a hobbyist.

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#319

Post by xelxebar »

pidgeon_lover wrote: post #300
xelxebar wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently, WiFi is spotty on OPNsense. I did start looking into home grown options, but WiFi 7 with 10Gbit ethernet is no joke. Most hardware ends up being power-hungry and noisy. The Omnia NG is fanless, meaning quiet and power-efficient. It's also small and relatively stylish. The small hardware LCD is very handy, and everything Just Works. The whole package is just so well put together.

How much does it cost? I was spooked when there were no prices on the website and it says only "email for quote".

Turris doesn't sell directly, AFAICT. The product page has links to distributors under the Order Now heading. They're selling for 500 EUR or so.

Re: OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

#320

Post by xelxebar »

drnick1 wrote: post #298
xelxebar wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently, WiFi is spotty on OPNsense. I did start looking into home grown options, but WiFi 7 with 10Gbit ethernet is no joke. Most hardware ends up being power-hungry and noisy. The Omnia NG is fanless, meaning quiet and power-efficient. It's also small and relatively stylish. The small hardware LCD is very handy, and everything Just Works. The whole package is just so well put together.

Fanless is attractive on paper, but often means overheating and unreliable in practice. A large, slow fan in a bigger case is always better if you value reliability and a long service life. The best 10G router that you can buy is a low spec PC with a two-port 10G NIC. Make sure airflow is directed to the NIC (a PCI fan bracket is useful for that). WiFi is best handled by a dedicated access point, ideally the ceiling-…

In my stress tests, I've not seen any issues with overheating. My 10G ONU connects to the router over an ethernet cable, and the SFP+ module that plugs into does get quite warm, though not hot enough to be uncomfortable.
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