How about OPNSense on open hardware of your choice, and passing messy wireless to separate AP?<p>OpenWRT is very good, but the installation and upgrades are not easy. There is a zoo of images for different hardware, installation options and tools. It has to run on small devices, so there are limitations. The documentation on Wiki is scattered and could be improved.<p>I had to search forums for weeks for a custom package installation for my router. Right now I have been trying to upgrade to the latest version via LUCI for a while, and it stucks. Probably have to wait for few weeks, go through CLI and maybe search forums again.<p>I just thought I am paying a hefty time price for a bit more expensive x86 mini pc and AP.
> How about OPNSense on open hardware of your choice<p>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.<p>This buys you much better performance and hardware compatibility relative to a BSD system, as well as lower resource usage and attack surface (no GUI or other unnecessary additions). WiFi support on BSD is bad, but on Linux you can use hostapd and almost immediately get an access point for free. And of course Linux is also better if you intend to run other stuff on the same hardware.
Your OpenWrt ecosystem knowledge seems oudated; upgrades are a solved problem since the advent of "Attended Sysupgrade": <a href="https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/installation/attended.sysupgrade" rel="nofollow">https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/installation/attended.sy...</a><p>It's been included in all suitable default image configurations starting with OpenWrt release 25.12.<p>I do run OpenWrt on my x86-based router, on my AP, and even on my managed switches, and have no regrets.
>OpenWRT is very good, but the installation and upgrades are not easy.<p>The solution is to use image-builder and bake your config into the image.
Upgrades are “owut upgrade” these days. Pretty straightforward.
You're right, it's interesting that this device isn't the most technically superior in hardware or software, and isn't the most casual user friendly. It seems to be targeting a segment I can't bucket other than loyalists. Maybe good hardware & software for the cost?
I agree on the upgrade story, though supposedly the recent move to apk will help in that regard.<p>I moved from pfSense to OpenWRT due to the really poor IPv6 support in pfSense. I don't use the AP capability either. How are things in OPNSense these days?<p>Particular pain points from pfSense was that it published global IP as DNS address to LAN clients and no way around it, so connectivity broke every time prefix changed, and no real support for specifying prefix-less firewall rules or similar, so couldn't really expose anything via IPv6 without pain.
They are working on an OpenWRT Two at the moment which will be Wifi 7.<p>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:<p><a href="https://openwrt.org/voting/2025-02-12-openwrt-two" rel="nofollow">https://openwrt.org/voting/2025-02-12-openwrt-two</a><p>Otherwise this router from GL.iNet has OpenWRT preinstalled, Wifi 7, 5x2.5G:<p><a href="http://www.gl-inet.com/en-gb/products/gl-be9300" rel="nofollow">http://www.gl-inet.com/en-gb/products/gl-be9300</a>
Hopefully, dual 2.5gbe too?
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.
Recycled 4 or so WRT54G variants a couple years ago I ran Tomato on for friend's small businesses and my home in early 2000's.
I'm pretty sure the software side of the project is a direct descendent from the WRT54G stack.<p>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.
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."<p>I used one 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 router/AP, connected the LAN from the client to the WAN on the router/AP, pur a directional antenna onto the "client", and pointed it down the road toward a big business who offered free wifi for Customers. We leeched off that until the real Internet service got installed.
Similar to XBMC at least for a long time.
$106usd or $84usd without a case and antennas. That’s a solid price. Wish it had more than 1gb ram - goddamn datacenters.
I have and love my OpenWrt One for my main router. I have two, so that I have a backup one I can switch to if the first one ever dies. It is the best device to run OpenWrt on as it is fully supported hardware that has great images/packages for it. Routing speeds/buffer/latency are great, everything just works, price is very reasonable.<p>I don't use it for my APs, but that is mostly because I already had 3 TP-Link routers setup as dumb APs using OpenWrt that have been working great. If I did it again, I'd buy OpenWrt Ones though. Although Deco mesh kits I've used have worked exceptionally well, and have become my recommendation for friends/family that don't want to do things like run arbitrary packages on their router/APs.
I switched from a Google Wifi to this and found it to be just as stable, but with better range/signal strength, and easier to apply the parental controls I want.
Just two Ethernet ports (1+2.5GbE), and it’s dual-band (no 6GHz)… I’m not sure who’s the target audience or what’s the use case.
A 5 port 2.5GbE switch would upgrade this to 5 total ports (4x 2.5GbE), and costs less than $100. If you only need 1GbE then it's even cheaper.<p>Outside of home-labs, it's rare for me to see <i>any</i> devices connected to the LAN side of a wireless router these days, and more than 1 (i.e. the non-portable device that is closest to the router) is exceedingly rare.
>Outside of home-labs, it's rare for me to see any devices connected to the LAN side of a wireless router these days<p>I would assume every gaming desktop computer would be?
I actually assumed <i>every</i> desktop would be...
Neither my parents nor my wife's parents have their desktop connected to their router. The cable modem isn't even in the same room as the desktop.<p>[edit]<p>If it matters, my mom no longer has a desktop (she uses a docked laptop now), but it is true of the docking station and was true of her previous desktop.
2.5 is the WAN, so your lan is only getting 1g anyway
It’s for developers as far as I understand, it’s not meant to buy as a consumer router. There is far better hardware you can get that runs OpenWRT.
As someone who knows very little about WiFi, I always thought it sucked that if you wanted to go from 802.11this to 802.11that, it always requires brand new hardware with a different WiFi chip that implemented the new standard. Is there a good reason that software-defined 802.11 doesn't exist and that every new standard requires a different radio+SoC?
Radio modulation / coding (at least for 802.11) benefits greatly from paralelism (lots of matrix multiplication etc).<p>I imagine that using an ASIC is way more cost efficient vs using a CPU.
One example is the introduction of MIMO, a technique to send multiple data streams in the same frequency band in parallel. This requires multiple antennas, i.e. hardware which wasn't there in the previous wifi version. Note this was 2009.
This is the official shop page afaict: <a href="https://www.bpi-shop.com/products/banana-pi-openwrt-one-router.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.bpi-shop.com/products/banana-pi-openwrt-one-rout...</a>
Are these for sale in the US?
There is definitely beauty in having a separate router device that chugs on just fine regardless what happens to the rest of your network. But I got bored with the constantly-churning embedded culture, bespoke OS's (sorry, OpenWRT), and VPNs generally want more CPU than what purpose-built "routers" have. So I just went back to the old way of using a plain Linux machine as the gateway (now virtualized, with NixOS and nftables) and couldn't be happier. WiFi AP is done by that same physical machine (not virtualized) and by two other amd64 machines that double as Kodi boxes. When you learn netfilter/iproute2, that experience carries to anything else you might switch to.
Some previous discussion around the launch in 2024:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42285689">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42285689</a>
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This thing has no practical purpose. The whole point of OpenWRT is to run it on cheap commodity hardware. This ticks none of those boxes.<p>It has two Ethernet ports, no switch. WHY?<p>Inexplicably can be powered via PoE, makes no sense if its purpose is to hang off your ISP's gateway (which almost certainly lacks PoE supply). PoE feature will never be used. You're not attaching this monstrosity to the ceiling.<p>It's utterly gigantic due to inefficient PCB layout.<p>Why is right to repair important for a throwaway router? Given what will usually fail are the hard to source ASICs.<p>By the time it breaks it will be obsolete anyway. As pointed out elsewhere in this thread they are already working on a successor.<p>There is so much better hardware out there manufactured in volume for cheaper.<p>It was likely a fun engineering project for someone but the business case isn't there.
> Inexplicably can be powered via PoE, makes no sense if its purpose is to hang off your ISP's gateway<p>No, this is supposed to replace the ISP-provided junk entirely. It will save you money and close a nasty backdoor (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TR-069" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TR-069</a>).
There are no cheap commodity routers that can run OpenWrt, have modern Wi-Fi features, and are reasonably available (in the sense that you could buy one if your router fails).<p>OpenWrt is vastly superior to the proprietary software in commodity routers. Proprietary software gates software features behind more expensive models, even though the cheap hardware can handle them.<p>You also get software updates. Your hardware doesn't become a paperweight when the manufacturer refuses to fix a known, actively exploited vulnerability.<p>You'll get new features, for free.<p>> You're not attaching this monstrosity to the ceiling.
I would hide it, but whatever.<p>The enclosure is open source as well. You can build/print your own enclosure if you'd prefer, or get any enclosure for the Banana Pi BPI-R4.<p>They can't just ship a board without an enclosure, because it won't pass certifications.
> This thing has no practical purpose.<p>This is wrong. OpenWRT is fostering several manufacturers that are using OpenWRT as the factory platform for their products. This is a reference design (one of several, this particular one from 2024 is now dated and newer designs are available,) provided by OpenWRT, and they've thoughtfully made it available to anyone that might want one: you can just go buy some with no NDA bullshit and get your developers moving in your lab or doing UI development or whatever. The not-cost-optimized PCB is what you want for this, in addition to the ample RAM+Flash. The "useless" POE is another aspect of this: access points use POE ubiquitously, which is a key OpenWRT use case.
This sources PoE using a third-party daughter board which is mechanically way too big to package into any production access point. So no, that part of a reference design would never be used.<p>> get your developers moving in your lab or doing UI development or whatever<p>This is what the industry has been clamoring for among a sea of existing hardware: More garbage UIs glued atop of copy-pasted forgotten hardware.<p>I am an engineering manager. My job is to poke holes in money-burning projects.
Open hardware is nice. I love that you can take a commodity router and claw back some control, but why not start with that control in the first place?
But you can already do that with existing hardware that is 4x capable at the same price point, and runs OpenWRT.<p>A reference platform makes no sense for OpenWRT as by its nature it runs on dozens upon dozens of different hardware, all which are different and must be tested independently.
It will take time to build up to a point where it's competitive on paper, it's insane that you're comparing a first-gen product from a rag-tag crew to the hardware produced by behemoths that have thousands of engineers and billions of dollars to play with.<p>Where my use cases don't permit it I won't use this, but if it fits I would rather buy an open-hardware device at ~10x the price of an equivalent proprietary device not out of charity but because that is how much more value it provides to me at equivalent hardware performance.
I think the purpose is to have a simple to hack on reference platform for developers. The problem with commodity hardware is the super short lifecycles (many of them stop selling before theres an OpenWRT port), they are locked down and the manufacturers will frequently make tons of internal revisions.