cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/123708
For that price I recommend an EU built router that comes with a modified OpenWRT but also allows installing vanilla one - Turris Omnia. It is also very modular an can be upgraded (e.g. with 5G)
On top of the other comments about price, last i checked, it doesnt support higher than 5ghz which was the deal killer for me, i almost bought it, hell i almost backed the project on whatever funding platform they were using, then that was revealed and i just forgot about it.
OpenWRT is cool, but I prefer OPNSense because unlike OpenWRT, you can actually upgrade OPNSense in its UI without requiring linux partition surgery.
What are you talking about? Upgrading on OpenWRT only takes the new ROM image uploaded thru the Web UI.
The in-place upgrade process leaves a lot to be desired, in my experience. I understand why routers with limited storage capacity wouldn’t be able to support it, but the lack of A-B partitioning support for x86 and ARM builds in 2024 is really stupid.
If an upgrade introduces a regression and breaks, my family is stuck without internet while I spend a few hours re-flashing an old release and making sure everything still works.
This, right here, has been my experience every time.
Also when you run a complicated setup with over a dozen VLANs, policy routing for failover internet on specific vlans, and nat66 support due to secondary internet only giving you a /64, yeah… not fun having to set all that up because the updater breaks, yeah… no.
The Linksys WRT3200ACM has A/B firmware support, but unfortunately that router is starting to get a little outdated. Saved me from a couple bad upgrades, but unfortunately it died on me about 4 months ago. I updated to the Banana Pi BPI-R3, which has been great for my network speed, but was a lot more complicated to set up.
Every single time I’ve setup OpenWRT, keeping it updated was much more painful than anything else, even ASUS WRT-Merlin was easier to keep updated.
OpenWRT is a different scope than opnSense.
I have a few OpenWRT devices to cover WiFi in my home and definitely an opnSense on top of them for wan access and all the fancy stuff.
OpnSense can’t to WiFi access point, thanks to BSD limited WiFi cards support, and definitely cannot fit on cots devices like OpenWRT can.
As well as indeed opnSense is a better choice than OpenWRT for edge devices.
While OpenWRT would do opsSense job, at least in part, the opposite is not true.
That’s why I wrote an Ansible playbook, to configure and update my router and access points. It’s nice having this almost as infrastructure-aa-code, with all configuration changes under version control with a clear commit message. The script is available at https://github.com/danielvijge/openwrt-configuration-ansible, but do make some changes to match your configuration. I keep my network configuration (inventory file) in a separate, private GitHub repo, as that contains passwords etc.
I personally just buy MikroTik routers. Yeah, they’re not FOSS AFAIK, but they work really well and there are a ton of guides and whatnot. They also have a good assortment of hardware, so finding the right fit for my network is pretty easy.
If I ever decided to go away from MikroTik, I’d probably DIY my own router instead of going w/ something like OpenWRT. I did my time w/ DD-WRT, Tomato, and OpenWRT, and honestly, I prefer my MikroTik router.
I once setup MikroTik routers… they were cool, but the ipv6 implementation required manual intervention - this is not something you want with an isp that dynamically rotates their ipv6 addresses often. Once I discovered pfSense/OPNSense, it was so much better in configurability and ease of upgrade, as those OSses are FreeBSD-based and designed to run on PCs.
Industry “conventional wisdom” often argues that FCC requirements somehow conflict with the software right to repair. SFC has long argued that’s pure FUD.
i mean, it is at conflict with right to repair. having to accept harmful interference to be certified means that repairability suffers simply because the device needs to be made to break.
I don’t think that’s what accepting harmful interference means. It means more like, if there is noise in the channel, the device won’t just up its own power to clobber the noise, even if not doing that will somehow break it or otherwise make it not work right. It doesn’t mean you have to build the device so that some kinds of interference will cause it to break.
I really like the spirit of this, but the price and features are just okay considering there are other companies designing similar and better products with more flexibility and around the same price. I may pick up a board to work on it, still, but I’ll buy the Inet package with the same hardware and more Ethernet ports for $99 if given a choice.
What other hardware at this price point would you consider for running openwrt?
Crap, I literally just bought a GL.iNet GL-MT600 Flint 2 which runs GL.iNet skin over OpenWrt & it has an option in its settings to switch direcrly to OpenWRT if you prefer, or you can also flash OpenWRT onto it yourself too.
Interesting, but at $160 the GL-MT600 is nearly twice the price of the OpenWrt One.
Good to know about though! My whole reason for asking for alternatives is I’ve had a great experience with dd-wrt in the past, and I’m sick of ubiquiti, so I’m looking ahead for my next router.
Other routers have run OpenWRT straight from the factory before (various GL.iNet devices come to mind, not to mention the OG Linksys WRT54G – it may not have been called “OpenWRT” as such, but OpenWRT descends from that firmware).
In what way is this device “designed specifically” for OpenWRT that those were not?
Linksys WRT54G
The Linksys WRT54G did not run OpenWrt by default and the original OS does not even remotely resemble OpenWrt. What OpenWrt did use from the original OS was the Broadcom wireless driver because it was closed source (and a similar kernel version, so the driver could be used), since there was no driver in the mainline kernel.
But to try to answer the question, this device has been designed by the OpenWrt developers to fit their needs (and their users needs). Other routers running some variant of OpenWrt on them by default were designed by companies unrelated to the project. They most likely used OpenWrt because it was convenient to them. Their intentions weren’t usually the same as the OpenWrt team’s (repairability, easy to unbrick, etc.). Not that there is anything wrong with that. I like GL.Inet routers.
I fail to see how a single port GbE LAN would suffice when other devices got more than that.
I would prefer more LAN ports as well, but how does that relate to what I said? I never said they intended to build or should build a device that fits all use-cases.
