Coming in at under $100 is a lofty goal, but if they make the hardware, I'll buy one. The Turris Omnia was close.
I've been using (and previously contributing) to OpenWrt for almost 10 years, it's an excellent project and deserves some spotlight, I really hope this gains some traction.
Great idea, but not a fan of the timing yielding a legacy (ARM) SoC.
RISC-V would be strongly preferred.
a legacy (ARM) SoC.
That is not what that word means. There will be more new ARM CPUs shipped next year than RISC-V CPUs. It is actively developed and improved. And this trend of people calling existing ISAs "legacy" when they're not is really annoying.
There will be more new ARM CPUs shipped next year than RISC-V CPUs.
Next year is 2025 for context. I wonder what data you're supporting this forecast on.
Have you heard the phrase "extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof"?
You're asking yjftsjthsd-h to furnish data to make a slam dunk conclusion that ARM-licensed CPU designs will out-sell RISC-V.
You realize Apple Silicon is ARM, right? And 99% of all smartphones that have been sold in the last decade, and indeed in 2023, are based on ARM cores?
We are talking hundreds of millions of devices being built and sold each year, just in the phone+PC space. That's ignoring all other verticals where ARM designs can be scaled up/down to meet.
I mean, gosh, even if virtually EVERY company in the world, EXCEPT Apple, chose to drop all ARM IP tomorrow and switch to RISC-V, there'd still be a good chance the statement "There will be more new ARM CPUs shipped next year than RISC-V CPUs." would still hold true in 2025: Apple sell a lot of computers in various sizes, you know :)
You're asking yjftsjthsd-h to furnish data to make a slam dunk conclusion that ARM-licensed CPU designs will out-sell RISC-V.
I think the statement that was made was slightly different: that there would be more newly shipping ARM parts than RISC-V parts (to show that ARM is still actively developed).
Which seems very likely, but is not quite a sure thing for 2025. (And it depends upon how we count: lots of RISC-V wins inside proprietary SoCs is probably not quite what we mean, but instead new RISC-V COTS parts we can put into our designs; but if you count the former RISC-V probably looks much better).
> You're asking yjftsjthsd-h to furnish data to make a slam dunk conclusion that ARM-licensed CPU designs will out-sell RISC-V.
I think the statement that was made was slightly different: that there would be more newly shipping ARM parts than RISC-V parts (to show that ARM is still actively developed).
I actually thought about it at the time and left it ambiguous because I believe both; I believe there are and will be more ARM designs, and I also believe there are and will be more physical ARM chips manufactured.
I believe there are and will be more ARM designs
Just out of curiosity, what does ARM designs mean here?
- New distinct processor cores available?
- New distinct parts I can buy at DigiKey and through other channels that include an ARM core?
- New distinct chips taped out using an ARM core, including vendor specific chips?
The latter is where I expect RISC-V to surge first. Probably not passing ARM in 2024, but threatening to do so. It's pretty easy to get rid of a license fee at this point unless you need extreme performance or are really picky about tooling.
ARM may not win on the first measure, either.
You realize Apple Silicon is ARM, right? And 99% of all smartphones that have been sold in the last decade, and indeed in 2023, are based on ARM cores?
Emphasis on "cores". Relative to each one of these application processor cores, how many embedded smaller cores doing specialized tasks do you think there are?
Are you aware RISC-V already has penetration there? Do you know how e.g. the popular Qualcomm SoCs have shipped a bunch of RISC-V cores for a while already?
Are you aware the companies behind popular alternatives to ARM such as Arc or MIPS have already embraced RISC-V?
In short, what makes you think that in 2025, most of these cores will be ARM?
I meant in the next year, but it's probably true of 2025 as well.
My primary basis is continually trying to get a Linux-capable machine with a RISC-V CPU, which remains difficult. Look at the number of SBCs released each year for the last... I dunno, 5-10y? A bit of x86, a lot of ARM, and at the very end a single digit number of RISC-V boards. Which still are slow, expensive, or both. Even if RISC-V ships exponentially more boards each year it won't break even until after 2025. If you wish to offer data to the contrary feel free.
Now, there's a possible argument for number of non-Linux-capable chips, but I don't know how to gauge that; the... Cortex-M0? I think? Is still a popular option AIUI. Likewise, if you have actual evidence feel free to share.
(None of this should be read as dislike for RISC-V; I want to use it, but the market doesn't yet agree, and even when it does take off the competition won't magically become "legacy" at a result.)
Edit: Actually that last bit deserves more emphasis - while I believe what I wrote about numbers, it's secondary to the rest of the comment; RISC-V is great, but it in no way renders everything else "legacy" so long as they remain actively used and developed (the latter is important, but ARM continues to improve so the point stands).
continually trying to get a Linux-capable machine with a RISC-V CPU, which remains difficult.
It wasn't hard for me to get my VisionFive 2. It shipped within two weeks in early 2023.
OpenWRT is remarkable in how many architectures it supports, with both ARM and RISC-V available. This just happens to be one board and it uses ARM, but it could easily be moved to an official RISC-V one when available with enough support to meet their demand.
P.S. you don’t get to start calling things “legacy” just because you would prefer something else. ARM is clearly at a scale right now where that’s the sweet spot for cost/performance/availability right now.
ARM is legacy because it predates the open ISA standard.
I am interested in this, even if it is based on legacy ISA ARM, as I would rather a hacker-friendly router designed for OpenWRT.
This is relative to some consumer device off the shelf which is hostile to OpenWRT, needing trickery to just install. That is what I had in my previous location, and I would prefer this instead.
Maybe but I think going with middling ARM chip is more the right call then trying to pursue a RISC-V based chip. The OpenWRT folks don't have the needed logistics chain to distribute this at all, and it sounds like they're leaning hard on both MediaTek and the Banana Pi team for this. I don't know of anyone else off the top of my head that would give a bunch of open source devs working on a niche distro that kind of support.
That said, the VisionFive 2 is available. There's some people on the Openwrt forums working on trying to get OpenWRT to work; might not be a bad idea to reach out to them and see how far they've gotten.
I have a VF2. It does have strong CPUs (relative to A53) and 2x GbE, solving half of the problem.
The other half (wireless) could be solved by using the PCIe lanes. To do it well at scale, we'd need a new board designed for the purpose.
The Pi4A guys meant to release such a router device, but seem to have elected to do other devices instead. Shrug.
That's a weird way if putting it. By that logic, a current Gen Intel CPU is also legacy. It might be carrying a lot of legacy cruft, but calling it a legacy architecture seems just wrong.
Let's not mix microarchitectures and ISAs.
It is very possible to make a great modern implementation of a bad ISA full of legacy cruft; Zen4 is a good example of that. Intel get a participation award for trying.
It works great on x86 as well.
I run OpenWRT in a few locations. One of them is VM on a x86_64 fanless (SuperMicro) server hypervisor. The other is a VM on a x86_64 fanless CompuLab FitPC hypervisor.
Along with OpenWRT, those systems also run a PiHole VM (https://pi-hole.net/), and other VMs such as FreePBX (https://www.freepbx.org/).
I've seen religious zealots who are less adamant than some of the RISC-V fans. Do people really self-identify with an instruction set architecture so strongly?
I think a lot of people are really fed up with the status quo.
Management engines, millions of lines of hdd controller code, bios/firmware blobs that are basically opaque, etc are annoying and prevent me from having control over something I own.
Rightly or wrongly a lot of hope is being put into RISC-V as a way of improving the situation. The open nature of it might make it easier to break monopolies, to get control back of the hardware they own.
It's not about instruction set - its about open source. No different than the people who didn't get that Linux was a big deal because they compared OS features as if that was the primary driver.
It is weird indeed.
But, irrational zealotry can be surprisingly powerful: Linux would not have happened without it.
So while it may seem ridiculous at times, sometimes great good (and great evil) comes from this disguised will to power, and it is part of human nature.
If you are going to be a zealot, at least be a zealot for something useful.
More architectures is good.
I don't want to replace ARM with RISC-V. I want ARM and RISC-V to compete with each other, micro-architectural progress to continue, and to be able to pick the best part for each task.
More architectures is good.
I agree. This is why we need to support the new open standard architecture over the established proprietary one.
Well that's interesting. I see 2 possible outcomes, which aren't mutually exclusive:
1. They ship an excellent device. I mean, if they ship what they're describing, I'd buy it.
2. The commercial side of things corrupts and ruins the FOSS+community side of the project (see: CyanogenMod).
Hope the first one happens and the second one doesn't.
I think the second outcome is pretty much impossible. The device will be built and sold by BananaPi, which receives a license to the OpenWrt trademark in exchange for a $5-$10 donation per device sold. The OpenWrt project does not pay its developers, so the money will only be used to cover infrastructure costs.
As an OpenWRT user, I am very optimistic about this. I'm sure almost all users would fork in money for this instead of going for hostile mainstream companies.
Also the USB-C UART and recovery read-only bootloader is a nice touch. Really looking forward to it.
One concern is just misplaced anger because some users misunderstand what this means for OpenWRT going forward, but I hope they'll be in the minority.
The OpenWrt project does not pay its developers,
This is actually surprising to me, but I guess the donation money isn't enough to pay developers. Would the surplus if infrastructure costs are covered go to developers or is it all going to a rainy day fund?
Maybe that money could be used for meet-up events and other activities that benefit the project and indirectly its contributors. That seems like a safe way to spend money without getting into trouble for paying some and not others, risking the open-source spirit of the project.
Yeah, it's probably not a great idea to pay developers with the donation money. I am not sure why I thought it was acceptable, but it is obvious now why this is a terrible idea.
Prolific devs could setup a Patreon/Librepay if they'd like, but that opens up its own can of worms like false expectations/entitlement of some donators. They might prefer not to do that for that reason alone.
Infrastructure costs for a project like openwrt could be nearly zero if the infrastructure was designed with cost in mind (site behind cloudflare, free tier in Aws/Google cloud for build bots, code on GitHub, etc).
You can probably run the whole thing for $100/year of unavoidable costs (eg. Domain registration).
free tier in Aws/Google cloud for build bots
I think you're significantly underestimating the kind of resources a project like OpenWRT needs.
(Source: involved with CI/CD pipelines for other, smaller, FOSS projects, and those already need much more.)
Also did CI/CD on OSS projects and highly agree with this - CI/CD is not free, especially if it involves anything hardware related, which is likely in at least some subset of OpenWRT's cases.
It’s been done before. A decade ago, DD-WRT shipped on Buffalo routers from the factory with some custom additions.
(1) https://www.buffalotech.com/products/airstation-highpower-n3...
I still have one or two of Buffalo routers with DD-WRT lying around. I think I installed it manually though. They were good value for the money.
Wish this thing had a second 2.5 GbE port instead of a 1 GbE port.
It is probably a SoC limitation... Feel free to suggest an alternative ;)
RK3588 can handle 2 2.5G ports. Would bump the price a bit, but also is a significant CPU upgrade so you are likely to get much better usable bandwidth with packet inspection and/or QoS.
That’s a pretty significant jump in complexity, the RK3588 is one of the most powerful SOCs available. A cool part, but I’m not sure it fits the OpenWRT use case
What's the complexity? They start at $70 or so in the RK3588S flavor, it's basically a CPU with a PCIe bus, the software, board complexity, and cost seems just about the same as the proposed OpenWRT solution.
These are $30+ with PMIC in China. Very expensive SOC. RK3566es are around $6.
Sure there's a bit of a premium, seems like a pretty big CPU and PCIe upgrade and would allow 2x2.5G.
1. that isn't going to help you get under the $100 price point
2. Mediatek might not be willing to provide their WiFi SoC if you are not using their compute SoC, and Rockchip doesn't have any WiFi chips.
The rk3588 is frankly a non-starter.
Seems odd, what's the point of an asymmetric speeds on a 2 port router? Dual 1G (cheaper) or dual 2.5G would make much more sense.
The WiFi is also >1Gbps.
Meanwhile, what router do you suggest, to be used with openwrt?
There isn't a wide consensus anymore, like there was with the buffalo model.
Integrated modem would be nice, but it is very difficult to find it.
edit: available in EU; Linksys E8450/Belkin RT3200 aren't available on Italy it seems.
Last time I checked the Linksys E8450/Belkin RT3200 was widely recommended.
The Linksys E8450/Belkin RT3200 is a solid and affordable router. UBI firmware support, hardware NAT offloading and DSA support for better VLAN performance. Less than perfect WiFi range.
If I was buying today, I would want something with more than 1GbE.
More generally, is there a good place to ask these questions? There are several under this post already with different requirements, and I have one too, with different requirements — I just want an edge gateway to route upstream and provide basic local network services (DCHP et al, and will turn off any radios) at low power. OpenWRT's hardware table seems not very useful; I can't, for instance, filter for at least two ethernet ports.
OpenWRT's hardware table seems not very useful; I can't, for instance, filter for at least two ethernet ports.
You could download the CSV dump of the hardware table [1] and filter in e.g. LibreOffice Calc.
I have very basic requirements: a solid router that runs, and has some free memory. Everytime that I try to find a replacement that has some wide consensus, I fail to find it. My router is now 15 years old... Some people in this thread have suggested Linksys E8450/Belkin RT3200, which aren't available in EU it seems. So, it's not easy. I'll wait 15 more years probably.
I can make a vote against x86 in a virtualized environment like ProxMox. Setup is just way harder than it needs to be and there are a lot of gotchas.
I’m looking as well. Although now it seems like I should just buy this BPi when it is available. I would like to go back to ARM on my router… just nothing Broadcom!
What is harder? I have a setup just like that. Create VM, use open wrt image as disk Vm, configure some passthrough for the nics and press start?
Updates are as easy as other device (press button on web interface or use openwrt cli)
IMO, owrt runs best on x86 (it’s your usual Linux kernel after all) and you get the best support and performance. You also avoid a lot of all the bugs related to embedded development with custom SoC, internal switch, vlans, flash layout, possibility of brick, bootloader stuff, etc.
The Turris Omnia is canonically the "OpenWRT" router even though it isn't from OpenWRT itself: https://www.turris.com/en/omnia/overview/
I would love to buy into OpenWRT but I need a mesh router due to the size of my house. Do you know of the recommended hardware? I couldn't find anything the last time I searched a year or two ago
Yes! The GL-iNet B1300 is a cheap, powerful 802.11ac mesh router that is fully supported by OpenWRT: https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-b1300/
It is also the platform I personally use for OpenWRT development work.
I use a Beryl as a travel router (connects to Hotel or Plane Wifi, you authenticate the captive portal, then it creates a separate wifi network and opens a VPN tunnel). It's such a great little device for less than $100 and allows me to keep things a bit more secure, avoid config for each device, and on planes it allows us to split a higher capacity plan. All OpenWRT
While this and other GL.iNet devices use OpenWRT (with their own custom UI/frontend), they don't contribute to the OpenWRT project in terms of code or funding, many of their devices are incompatible with mainline OpenWRT releases, and software updates are few and far between.
I have one of these myself, they're handy devices, but I wouldn't go and recommend them as good OpenWRT devices.
What is m.2 2042?
The M.2 standard allows module widths of 12, 16, 22 and 30 mm
Notice no 20 mm width is allowed as part of the M.2 standard. The device specs are likely a typo.
Probably M.2 2242 (22mm x 42mm) with a typo.
2042 would be 20mm wide and 42mm long.
That's unlikely to be what was meant. It's probably m.2 2242, a shortish but "normal" drive size in the embedded space.
I wish them best luck, but it would fall in a similar league of boards like the NanoPi R5S, which is hard to beat in price.
https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/product...
On the other hand, they would sell it with direct support for real OpenWrt, while many other manufacturers, including FriendlyElec, often publish franken-Linux distros that force users to resort to others such as Armbian and DietPi to be sure their OS doesn't become obsolete and unsupported in a few years.
tbf openwrt is also an unusual linux distro, just a very widely used one.
The difference is that OpenWrt has the entire source code available, and unlike those franken-distros, it is built as vanilla linux + a set of patches. As long as there is enough interest, anyone can rebase these patches on top of a newer mailine kernel. For example some Ubnt XW boards recently got an update to 23.05 after being stuck on 19.07.
I don't feel like it really needs to compete on price though. As long as it's not totally unreasonable, I (and I assume other OpenWRT enthusiasts) would gladly pay a premium for a device that includes truly first class OpenWRT support.
What is the intended purpose of an openwrt banana pi?
I associate openwrt with router firmware/software, so I would expect a lot of ethernet ports (more than two). Or use it as a wifi router/access point, when I only need one port. If I would want to do any networking tricks, I would fall back to a rpi/banana pi, which wouldn't do routing or wifi.
I'm only curious. I have two rpi's in my drawer doing nothing.
I imagine it’s intended to be combined with an Ethernet switch. One or two (potentially bonded) Ethernet ports can carry a lot of VLANs.
That's how basically all consumer routers work: an SoC with about two Ethernet interfaces, at least one but usually both connected to a managed Ethernet switch chip, using separate VLANs for the WAN and LAN ports. Routing both Ethernet ports through the switch chip is usually done so that the switch can do some NAT offload.
The sort answer: "network services".
Longer answer:
1) providing basic networking (default gateway, connection to upstream provider)
2) basic security: firewalling + natting
3) basic network daemons, and "daemons": DNS, DHCP, IPv6 autoconf, and a nice new one: 802.11s ("network mesh": keep wifi at 5 bars by kicking people off their access point if another access point can provide a better connection)
4) more advanced networking stuff: VPN (l3vpn, l2ptp, l2ptmp, mesh vpn), cloud connections/vpns, WAN connections, redundancy (downstream and upstream, l2 and l3, ...)
5) more advanced security stuff: 802.1x, stateful firewalls, inspecting firewalls, IDS, ...
6) server networking stuff: proxy, reverse proxy, statefull firewalling, load balancing, ...
7) more advanced daemons (on network devices it's mostly proxying for redundancy and/or load balancing): File sharing, SMTP, WebDAV, Active Directory, payment protocols, ...
Now a lot of these OpenWRT can't provide, but you'd be surprised and their support for new things goes up every year.
I use OpenWRT and what I have wished for is a configuration file as robust and simple as the one for pfSense. Version upgrades amount to a migration headache.
I've been using the attended sysupgrade and I guess I'm lucky that there's no migration needed at all. All settings are preserved.
Also, I think the configuration file is already robust enough; you can edit them using a text editor like vim or edit them using the UI or edit them using the CLI tool. I cannot think of anything to make the configuration file even more robust.
The pfSense config works on all versions to perfectly restore the configuration.
At least on the hardware I've owned, OpenWRT has to be reconfigured after version upgrade or else it becomes unstable.
That's fantastic news.
OpenWRT-based cheap travel routers have been a life-saver for me during my trips, specially to countries behind Iron Curtain firewalls.
I'll buy at least one as soon as it comes out.
How does a travel router help in this case? Preconfigured VPN?
(Asking out of total ignorance)
Sounds like he's using it as a site-to-site VPN
Does anybody have a recommendation for a router which is supported by OpenWrt and has a functioning VDSL2 modem? I know I could get a standalone VDSL2 terminator or use another proprietary VDSL2 router in bridge mode in front of the OpenWrt based one, but that just means that the abandoned / buggy / vulnerable firmware lives one box further in my network.
I would also be interested to connect my DSL cable directly to a device with OpenWRT on it that doesn't cost $500+. I currently have a separate device as my modem, DrayTek Vigor 166. In case someone is wondering who's still using VDSL in 2024, that would be most of Germany.
BT Home Hub 5a, although you do need to disassemble it to flash.
I'd love to see a 10g version... but it probably doesnt make sense for like 95% of the people, both in terms of specs and finantially (2x price? You probably want 2 10g ports too).
yea, dualport 10gig and not underpowered soc would probably require active cooling
I would have pointed you towards the BPI-R4, but they haven't quite got the accessories around it out the door yet. (Ie. The 802.11be radio add-on card and the case are not available yet)
Hopefully you would actually be able to get a full speed transfer between the Ethernet ports; I had to go back to the factory firmware on my router in order to take full advantage of my 1 gigabit Internet connection.
Did you have hardware acceleration enabled on, i dont think it is by default as most people dont need it and its not always supported.
It's been a few years at this point; everything I was able to find towards that effect was enabled from what I remember.
If they're able to deliver what's in the email I'll be picking one up.
I know price is a big differentiator, but why not cooperate with Omnia Turris? https://www.turris.com/en/products/omnia/
I see this as being the Corolla to Turris's Unimog. The Omnia is a sliders-to-the-right dreambox with every possible interface, it has a freakin' SFP slot, three miniPCIe slots, I mean, wow.
As a result, it's capable of 99% of jobs, but it's only the best choice for about 2% of them. For most things, the Omnia is tremendous overkill and nowhere near cost effective. Therefore it suffers low sales volume, and the price never comes down.
This new box might only be capable of 75% of jobs, but it should be a good cost-effective choice for quite a lot of them. It still won't be the cheapest, but it'll be reasonable, and they should sell truckloads of them.
as you said, price.
the turris devices are tinker friendly, feature rich and high quality - and not cheap.
truth be told, the aio router-server embedded thing seems very difficult because peoples expectations vary widely and the whole ids/dpi and media-server stuff gets somewhat more demanding at gigabit speeds than what unoptimized stacks can accomplish with commodity low-power hardware.
What actual routers can I buy on Amazon and use OpenWRT to create totally customized captive portals in it?
Please post the links!
Anything that can run OpenWRT can have customized captive portals.
What MAINSTREAM routers can I buy on Amazon which actually let me install OpenWRT or come with it?
Any reason why they seem to consistently stay a generation behind the current one in their highest supported Wi-Fi standard?
Yes, it's mostly support from the Linux Kernel. The Linux kernel driver(s) need to support the Wi-Fi generation and need to support the mode(s) for use as more than a client device.
https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/Documentation/mode...
Is there a link to the hardware design yet? Or is it just the announcement only? I tried googling but found nothing.
The thread mentions it, it's basically a MediaTek MT7981B with some extra components. It would be interesting if they can get all the things they mention in the < $100 price range that they're aiming for.
The $100 price tag is much less important to me than long term production runs. I hope they take a page from the pcengines playbook, and arrange to build this with minimal changes over a 5-10 year period.
For instance, I can imagine them holding all specs constant except that they ship a new wifi radio every 2-3 years.
This would allow other open source projects to target it and be rock solid. For instance, my pc engines openbsd router is something like 8 years old and has never crashed.
I’d happily pay a $50-100 premium to get a brand new board that’s fast enough, but that had all the bugs worked out the last few years.
It looks like at least one of the radios is on the same SoC as the CPU, Ethernet, etc., so swapping out just the radio every few years isn't quite feasible. Such highly-integrated WiFi SoCs are pretty standard for this price range, and getting a processor with enough PCIe and Ethernet to use only external MAC+PHY solutions is a lot more expensive.
Personally, OpenWRT doesn't really sell me nowadays as having a ton of value.
For a router, you can feasibly use an off the shelf prosumer device like Unifi, or, more compellingly, an actual robust OS like OpnSense, PfSense, Sophos or Untangle.
As for access point capability, that should really be segmented, and any off the shelf Ruckus, Aruba, Unifi etc. will always outperform the drivers available to OpenWRT. I'm a staunch advocate of an eBay ruckus 510 or 610, which will be very little in terms of cost and also your best home access point ever.
It's nice that it's open source and all, but in terms of raw performance or value-add, I don't see it. Open source for the sake of open source is... well, another discussion.
I agree that OpenWRT isn't absolutely the best, but anything you have mentioned above (prosumer devices like Unifi, or separate APs like Ruckus, Aruba) will cost far more than a simple consumer level combined router-and-AP with OpenWRT.
You probably don't see it because you are used to spending big bucks on your networking equipment whereas most people will spend $50 and then install OpenWRT to wring the most value out of it.
LWN article that I got the link from: https://lwn.net/Articles/957255/
Nice! But it would be even better to have SFP+ options too.
Looks like there is some progress now for running OpenWRT on Asus RT-AX89X.
NVMe seems like overkill for a router of this level, but in practice getting M.2 drives is a lot easier/cheaper than eMMC. And while microSD can work, it doesn't have the reliability, write durability, and random IO of a 'real' drive.
I would buy one for sure!
WiFi is always a problem with flashing random devices. If they can build a device that has stable WiFi with external antennas, it would be a game changer.
* USB (device, console): Holtek HT42B534-2 UART to USB (USB-C port)
* Power: USB-PD-12V on USB-C port
GPL compliance: 3b. "Accompany it with a written offer ... to give any third party ... a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code"
I'm guessing it will also be a tag from `git.openwrt.org`, from the same development and release process that continues to support numerous other consumer devices, and keep them up to date.
It might be good to clarify this, since people who've seen a lot of open source projects can imagine ways this could go bad.
I have a very favorable impression of the OpenWrt project, and I'm looking forward to this being a good thing.
Yes. In a heartbeat.
Since the demise of Soekris and PC Engines, I don't know of good alternatives. I'd like to be excited about newer ARM-based, power sipping routers- but which ones aren't so cheaply made? The aformentioned companies hit that sweet spot- a 2-3x cost premium for industrial quality and an open approach. They were devoted to hardware and wasted no energy on branded forks of OpenWRT.
I'm curious to try some Teltonika products like the RUT series. They seem sparsely documented on the OpenWRT wiki, though.
Curious to hear any Soekris/ALIX/WRAP fans experience with newer stuff.
I've used dd-wrt on my home routers in the past -- I bought a pre-flashed linksys router from FlashRouters, a support company affiliated with the project. The router worked fine for a year and then started dropping connections. Then, it took a lot of time for me to debug whether it was a software or hardware issues (it was hardware after all).
To replace it, I saw that Asus routers use a custom wwrt by default. And if you want to truly control it, there's an open source project that lets you adjust it more (Merlin).
I bought an Asus router and haven't looked back.
Two Ethernet sockets makes this a very attractive option.
Would absolutely love to buy this and throw OpenBSD on it. Not all proposed hw appears to be supported yet but if this gains traction then that might be enough of a catalyst.
I hope it doesn't get dirty like what cyanogenmod did before. btw, Under 100$ would be excellent price for me. I would definetly buy it
I used OpenWRT on an actual Linksys WRT device back in the day. These days I use separate components for my home network: Huawei modem, pfSense router/firewall, Unifi wifi, unmanaged switches. This gives me more control (and more learning opportunity) but obviously I see the benefit of the "all in one" type devices OpenWRT supports in many applications.
Back then I didn't really understand routing etc. and just used OpenWRT as plug and play. But is it actually a good alternative to the above component-based setup when just a single device is desired?
I might be interested, depending on the power consumption, and on whether or not it has enough resources to run a DNS server (for reasons of ad blocking mostly). Don't particularly care about the price tag, would easily pay twice the target price.
OpenWRT is great and all but if I wanted a really customizable router I'd probably get a Mikrotik.
Having a reasonably powerful router from 2016, the only thing that would motivate me to upgrade is Wi-Fi 6E (6 GHz).
If they're selling it at cost, ~$100 is not so unrealistic. It's similar in specs to the GL-MT3000 from GL.iNet which retails for $109, albeit without some of the price-increasing niceties like NVME, redundant recovery flash, or built-in usb-to-serial converters: https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-mt3000/
G.iNet is wholly based upon OpenWRT. They get the benefit of the free software and can undersell because they don't need to support it. I know I'm oversimplifying, but it's at least partially true.
I'm a big fan of OpenWRT. I switched to it after running pfSense for a lot of years. Anyone can donate to the project here: https://openwrt.org/donate
Fully agree, I debated editing my comment to recommend against purchasing it. I bought the aforementioned device after hearing that GL.iNet sells their devices with very minimally modified OpenWRT and that a stock image is freely available, and only after going to set it up did I learn that they no longer publish things like their uboot and kernel trees, and that the stock openwrt image for the device was community contributed. It's very frustrating and I regret purchasing from them.
That being said, a huge portion of the consumer-oriented router brands are based on openwrt/buildroot today, so they're far from the only group guilty of benefitting from openwrt without contributing things back.
https://github.com/gl-inet/uboot-source-for_mtk
https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/23.05.2/targets/media...
https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/23.05.2/targets/media...
https://forum.openwrt.org/t/trouble-flashing-vanilla-openwrt...
I just got one of these. It is certainly supported! I am now running my own homebrewed build of openwrt 23.05.2I updated the gl-inet firmware to the latest 4.4.6, and then flashed vanilla openwrt 23.05.2 through the luci web interface.
I played around with the uboot flasher which takes an img file. I haven't played around enough with it yet to unpack the images to see if they are different formats or not.
It sounds like you are doing the right things. I guess check the hashes to make sure the files are intact? I haven't tested other versions or snapshots.
Did you just use the sysupgrade image from the firmware selector? How long did it take to fully flash? Yes, for the vanilla firmware, I used the sysupgrade version from the firmware selector, 23.05.2.I don't remember how long it took, but it wasn't very long. I think about 5 mins or less. I had a serial console as well, so it was easy to see that some activity was going on.
Well, I just reflashed the GL.iNet image from uboot and then flashed the OpenWrt sysupgrade image from luci again just like before so I could try to ssh and read dmesg before messing with UART and it just... worked... no idea whyI'm not sure what to make of your comment, what is this in reference to? The last commit on the uboot tree you've posted was 4 years ago...
I realize that 23.05 is supported on the device, but my point is that it was entirely done by individual contributors from outside of GL.iNet, not contributed by the company itself. It sucks because GL.iNet sort of built a reputation off of being the openwrt router brand, and used to be in relatively good standing, but have shifted their approach since. Now they benefit off the reputation they built previously, because of people like me who assume they're still doing that before making purchases.
This is certainly true. SoC vendors often base their SDK on a fixed version of OpenWrt and then add proprietary patches on top. Then sell the SoC + SDK to a device vendor that adds additional proprietary patches and sells the device.
The issue with this is that the only way to fix security issues is to back-port them to the exact kernel version the SoC used as a base, and after a year or two, they completely drop support and you're left with a device that has known security vulnerabilities you can do nothing about.
How many old routers are still in use that are used as part of a botnet?
As a small contributor to OpenWrt, I don't like the whole: release one version of their proprietary fork of OpenWrt and then just do security fixes on top of that.
If they really want to focus on hardware and base everything on top of OpenWrt, it would be easier for them to upstream as much as possible and let the community handle updates. Even donating would be less expensive. It would be somewhat of a win-win situation IMO.
Would you care to go into why you chose it over pf/Opn Sense? Considering that you have to reinstall so it's not automatic, what makes it enough better to make the change worth your while?
I'm currently running OpnSense for my personal routing and firewalling needs, and considered OpenWRT a few weeks ago (for linux driver support, but that's another story). In the end, I changed my nic and kept opnsense.
They are not running stock openwrt and openwrt devs refer to their firmwares as "frankenwrt".
I've been using OpenWRT forever (WRT54G era) and only buy devices that can run OpenWRT. GL.iNet is my go-to out-of-the-box OpenWRT recommendation for others looking for a router. Their UI is a lot easier to use than LuCI for most things. I had a RPi-based Wireguard VPN setup to a family member's house, but I switched it out with a GL.iNet because their UI for managing Wireguard devices is so much easier. Especially since I can access it using their Goodcloud management portal from anywhere.
I hope OpenWRT pulls off having their own device. That would definitely be an upgrade from GL.iNet. But compared to getting a completely non-open firmware like every other GL.iNet competitor, even their versions of OpenWRT are a major step up.
There are a few of their devices that have upstream support in OpenWRT. But it is like buying any other device for running stock OpenWRT in that regard - you have to do your homework to make sure you get something compatible.
I still have OpenWRT running on a RPi4 'router' and 3 TP-Link routers as APs on my network. But still wish I could get GL.iNet's Wireguard management in Luci...
I have tried two G.iNet devices. One completely stopped turning on, and the other the specs were so low it could barely keep up.
A few times a year I go looking for projects to support. It's tricky because I don't want to give money to a project that has tens of thousands of dollars in their account—I'd rather give to some smaller projects or indie devs!
See for example the audited financials of projects hosted by the Software in the Public Interest (SPI), where many do have tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars already https://www.spi-inc.org/treasurer/reports/202311/#index4h3
I would totally buy this device if they make it happen. My current router is about four years old and runs OpenWRT.
Are they complying with the license terms? I guess I don't understand why it would be considered a negative for them to build a product based on OpenWRT.
Why would $100 be difficult? Router hardware is basically ancient arm cpus with five gigabit ethernet ports and wifi.
Because everything other than the ancient arm CPUs and ethernet ports requires expertise and capital.
First, that doesn't make sense when there are full modern system boards that sell for a fraction of that individually.
Second, why would you need something different that what routers are already doing? They are just trying to sell their own openWRT routers, the hardware has existed for a decade at or below $100, why would it be difficult for them to meet that?
They aren’t just trying to sell a router, they are trying to make available a fully open router without blobs right from boot, that is unbrickable, and selling it essentially at cost
Where are the numbers here? How does what you are saying connect to what is being talked about in a concrete way? You are talking about software and saying it has to cost $100 or more while there are $30 routers on amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082HH24YY/
This is more or less discussed in the link. They started looking at BananaPi products as a starting point, but have some requirements that existing boards don't fulfill. One in particular that probably precludes all of the $30 boards you're talking is:
"that this router isabeautiful (sic) example of excellent GPL/LGPL compliance"
If you get up to mass-scale production quantities, $100 might be feasible. I imagine small-scale production with little up-front capital and no guaranteed market might be lot more challenging. It's not software, you're going to need large orders to get good prices.
I think about Meego/Jolla phone and tablet, Ubuntu Phone, Kobol Helios and tons of other projects that have either failed or are struggling due to market size and ecosystem.
I've been running a Turris Omnia for the last few years, which I've been fairly happy with. Network performance is about average and the platform as a whole is certainly due for an update, but stability has been great, it receives regular upgrades, and I'm happy to pay more for a project that has an open mindset. Not sure many feel the same way about commodity network hardware though.
Even brand new routers, with all their markup, shipping included, that can already run openwrt, can be $64
https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-AC1750-Smart-Router-Gigabit/d... https://openwrt.org/toh/netgear/r6350
Here is a new router for $30 with 5 gigabit ports and usb 3.0 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082HH24YY/
Anything with radio involves a ton of expensive certification work.
With something like a rpi that sells millions of units, that can be spread over way more units than something like this that (optimistically) gets sold to a few thousand nerds and that's it.
Call me crazy but I recall the Turris Omnia was 350 € last time I looked (~3 years ago). It could also take a fiber line as input, right?
Sounds about correct! I have one that I bought in 2018 but I remember it being more like 450+ € at the time.
I have had a fiber line connected during the whole time and it has served me well (I haven't done much customizing on it though, I have to admit. It's just the router for my home network).