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Introducing the LEDE project – A reboot of the OpenWrt community
- Zekio 10y agoMore of this type of projects is good, gives consumers/developers more choices.
- pferde 10y agoNot always. If a fork is made because some group wants to move in a different direction code-wise, it's good, because it gives users more choice. However, if the fork is made because of administrative reasons (as it seems to be the case here), then often all it does is muddy the waters and create confusion. We'll see how this one plays out.
- grandalf 10y agoWhile I'm excited about OpenWrt, why wouldn't the ecosystem move to Raspberry Pi at this point, considering that a Pi and multiple wireless NICs can be purchased for much less than a typical access point?
- voltagex_ 10y agoThroughput. The single Ethernet port on the Pi only gets somewhere between 30 and 40 megabits. Some smartphones can exceed this on WiFi and higher end Internet connections will definitely exceed this. That's for a single connection before you even get to NAT/firewalls/IPv6 and VPNs. Note that I haven't put the Pi3 through its paces yet but the extra CPU and RAM won't completely compensate for the USB/Ethernet limitations.
- malcolmputer 10y agoThey are really completely different ecosystems, each with their own use cases, but off the top of my head: 1. Raspberry Pi boards (and rpi-similars) don't typically break out the ethernet interfaces, and require a USB>Ethernet. 2. Raspberry Pi boards (and rpi-similars) don't typically have onboard wifi, this means you will be putting all of your traffic over USB, which as AC rollout happens you don't have enough bandwidth/latency with USB 2.0 3. Raspberry Pi boards (and rpi-similars) don't typically have multiple ethernet interfaces. A "Standard" OpenWRT router has between 2 and 5 onboard ethernet interfaces, a small power efficient processor, and between 1 and 6 onboard high power Wifi interfaces. Now, Monowall/pfsense can be a great route to go, but even then you don't use an Rpi because you want your interfaces hanging off of PCIe instead of USB.
- ae_keji 10y agoWhat about the Pi 3?
- malcolmputer 10y agoLooks like the rpi3 may have onboard ethernet and wifi, but it's still just one ethernet (100Mbit to boot) and single band wifi. The point still stands that a $30 router blows away a rpi in terms of network connectivity (which should matter for a router).
- scottlamb 10y agoSadly, no, the Raspberry Pi 3 still seems to do everything over the USB bus. It'd make an awful router. See https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/raspberry-pi-3-specs-benchmarks/ https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/raspberry-pi-3-specs-bench...: > The Raspberry Pi 3 shares the same SMSC LAN9514 chip as its predecessor, the Raspberry Pi 2, adding 10/100 Ethernet connectivity and four USB channels to the board. As before, the SMSC chip connects to the SoC via a single USB channel, acting as a USB-to-Ethernet adaptor and USB hub.
- mschuster91 10y ago> Sadly, no, the Raspberry Pi 3 still seems to do everything over the USB bus. It'd make an awful router Not exactly, the BT/WiFi chip is apparently running via SDIO. But yes, that doesn't help with the Ethernet situation. I don't get why Broadcom, when they already do a custom SoC, didn't include one or two MII lines and use a real Ethernet PHY instead.
- rjsw 10y agoThey wouldn't even need to buy in IP for the Ethernet MAC, they already have their own.
- revelation 10y agoOpenWRT is an embedded linux distribution that works similarly to something like the Yocto project. I don't see how it relates at all to one hardware vendor, with rather terrible track record on all things networking to boot.
- __jal 10y agoIn addition to what other folks said, a big part of the user base for OpenWrt and similar use standard hardware from the big consumer electronics firms. I can imagine someone maintaining a port for random experimental platforms (assuming the codebase is amenable that sort of thing; I have no idea), a large part of the point of it for a lot of users would be gone. But as others said, I can't imagine a Pi having anywhere near the throughput of the commodity AC APs I use at home at this time.
- tyingq 10y agoOpenWRT does run on the Rpi (https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/raspberry_pi_foundation/raspberry_pi https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/raspberry_pi_foundation/raspber...) But, the idea that it can run on a variety of platforms is one of the benefits. Rpi, for example, would be an odd choice as a base for a commercial hardware product, due to availability in volume, form factor, etc.
- newman314 10y agoDifferent projects and goals as someone else mentioned. However, it would be great if the *wrt projects could adopt the standardized update mechanism that OSMC has leveraged. It's made upgrading so much less painful. Personally, I use ddwrt and would like to see that project take the charge up on this.
- grandalf 10y agoMy comment is getting lots of downvotes. I'd argue: - All the routers (buffalo, linksys) I've installed OpenWRT on have ended up being fairly unstable and have required reboots. The only consumer grade wifi router I've tried that seems stable is the Apple Airport Extreme. - Most home users never come close to maxing out the throughput a pi can offer. - If not a pi, perhaps another open hardware device -- seems like one could be sold for under $50 with nic support that addresses all the max USB bandwidth concerns (it may already exist). - All the complexity of installing on random wifi router hardware (version maintenance, minimal storage space, etc.) seems prohibitive compared to the simplicity of a pi, risk of bricking the router, etc.
- wtallis 10y agoThroughput is hardly the only meaningful performance limitation the Pi has, but it's already enough of a limitation to disqualify it. The RPi really just doesn't come close to being suitable as a router. Any open hardware device that is suitable for wireless router duty and fits within a $50 budget would have to be essentially a standardized PCB for a single-band Atheros ath9k SoC. It would provide almost no benefit over the dozens of commercial off the shelf products that use those chips and almost universally run OpenWRT flawlessly. The complexity of installing on any random device is almost entirely with determining what exactly is inside that device, since basically every vendor routinely changes everything inside the product without changing the model number. OpenWRT already has the infrastructure that solves the version maintenance problem, since they do automated builds of the OS and packages for all the various supported hardware platforms. Automatic updates have been implemented by at least a few sub-projects and are being held back mostly by the storage space problem. The hardware vendors are in the process of transitioning from NOR flash to NAND flash, so that problem will take care of itself over the next few years. The risk of bricking a router is probably a lot lower than you think it is. With almost everything, it's truly hard to screw up to an extent that flashing over TFTP won't fix. A lot of mainstream hardware is significantly more robust that that; I have a bottom of the barrel D-Link that provides a web interface in its bootloader for rescue flashing.
- easp 10y ago"Most home users" are never going to install OpenWRT on anything, RPi, or otherwise. Of those that do, it seems likely that they will max out the throughput of a RPi, especially now that >100Mbps internet is common place is some countries, and is becoming increasingly available in others (like the US). There are some RPi like boards with a single GigE, but they suffer from having smaller developer communities, and still come up short on IO when compared to a networking platform, which will typically have 1-2GigE lanes to the SoC, integrated 2 or 3 stream 2.4 GHz WiFi and a 1-2x miniPCIe interfaces. Right now, probably the cheapest most capable router is the Ubiqti EdgeRouterX for $50 (no wifi though). It has a 2 core/4 thread MIPS CPU that can do ~1Gbps NAT/ROuting with hardware offloads and ~500Mbps just using the CPU and DMA hardware.
- easp 10y agoThe RPi is tied to the 12-24 month product cycles of consumer electronics devices. That's great in that it means relatively frequent upgrades. Though at this point, the RPi3 is a very unbalanced system. Particlarly, as others have noted, with regards to network I/O. Router platforms are tied to the lifecycles of networking standards. The underlying standards change much more slowly, roughly ~5-10 years for major changes. The router SoCs and WiFi chips change somewhat more quickly, but not as quickly as consumer electronics SoCs. This slow rate of change is probably a good thing for OpenWRT/LEDE, because it means that there is more time for software support to mature for each hardware generation.
- ge0rg 10y agoIt is a real pity that the lack of developers is compensated by splitting developer focus on two different forks. If the reasons stated are true, let's hope it works out and strengthens embedded Linux, maybe even leading to a reunion like egcs/gcc.
- embeem 10y agoThis announcement comes as a surprise to all the other developers, myself included. - mbm (openwrt founder)
- pferde 10y agoThis all sounds to me like it was some kind of misunderstanding among the devs. I hope you guys can resolve this and remain together. While forks can be good, they are not always so.
- JeremyNT 10y agoOpenWRT is an impressive project and I've really enjoyed using it over the years. It's always disappointing to see a project you use and rely upon face this kind of challenge. With technical forks, you can usually at least appreciate the motivations, but with political forks it can be difficult to understand what or how things will be improved (especially for users who only see events from the outside). Best of luck to you and the rest of the team in resolving whatever issues are at play here.
- deelowe 10y agoI'm sorry man. Thank you for what you guys have provided. I still have my wrt54g (v2?) as well as a wrt54gl. I remember modding those routers with friends adding usb ports, expanding storage and all sorts of other things. I have several friends who became ccnps because of openwrt. Regardless of what happens with this, thanks again. You guys rock!
- saganus 10y agoOpenWRT is awesome. Thanks for the hard work!
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- ausjke 10y agoA long time openwrt user here. What puzzles me the most is that, those who are forking openwrt are the the majority group of core developers for openwrt, so I don't know why they are leaving the project they're in control in the first place. It seems a few core developers left behind are also in shock, nobody knows why, and there is no dispute in the community that led to the split either, truly a mystery.
- dman 10y agoMaybe this is the first step towards launching a commercial offering?
- ausjke 10y agothis is something to be found out
- tyingq 10y agoIf so, this blurb from the about page seems interesting: "LEDE is also an alternation of the phrase to lead, describing an introductory section of a news story that is intended to entice the reader to read the full story."
- mcbridematt 10y agoGiven that OpenWRT is the reference distribution of choice for networking chipsets these days, the reference goals do seem to be focused on making it better for that. The last couple of OpenWRT releases have moved fast, in the future OpenWRT could move closer to the cutting edge without the pressure of users who want long term stability?
- wtallis 10y agoIt could be that they just didn't want to cause any trouble with attempting to broaden the scope of OpenWRT to more general embedded development rather than a networking focus.
- RichardLake 10y agoThe devs have put up their meeting notes. http://meetings.lede-project.org/lede-adm/2016/lede-adm.2016-03-30-11.05.log.html http://meetings.lede-project.org/lede-adm/2016/lede-adm.2016... There is some discussion starting around 1230. My reading is that they thought that the OpenWPT reputation re: development matters was poor.
- revelation 10y agoThey have a point, maintaining something based on OpenWRT is extremely painful if you are not very in tune with the development. I remember one instance where they just switched the entire package feed stuff around and didn't bother porting all old packages over. Or when core packages move around willy-nilly. Another instance was when they changed over to a new freaking libc (musl). That's the kind of thing for major releases, and the fallout was that stuff like hwclock suddenly segfaulted.
- lindadarnell 10y agoI don't like it
- Animats 10y agoNow if they could just get rid of Linux underneath and use something with better security. L4, maybe. After all, this is for embedded devices which basically run one program.
- stephengillie 10y agoThey could use BSD underneath, like JunOS and Netscaler run on. But maybe an operating system is too large in scope. You're right that these devices only run one application, why use a tool (operating system) that can run many applications? It's a bit like running a hypervisor for only one operating system. There are benefits, true.
- jlgaddis 10y agoWell, there's the kernel, which handles flinging packets between interfaces, filtering, etc., but your average router has lots of services it provides as well: DHCP, DNS, file/print sharing via USB ports, etc.
- stephengillie 10y agoRight, and the Kernel could just provide those. No need to write something to load extra code from storage and run it.
- easp 10y agoLoading even more functionality into the kernel is at odds with security, stability and maintainability. Its also not going to save much/any in the way of resources.
- easp 10y agoA big part of the OpenWRT project is hardware support for wireless chipsets and SoCs. Sure, they could move all that to BSD, but then if they wanted to do that, why didn't they do that in the first place, rather than working on Linux?
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- symlinkk 10y agooh boy more fragmentation! I wish the devs behind OpenWrt, dd-wrt, and LEDE would just work together for god's sake. OpenWrt is far from complete. the documentation alone is terrible.
- embeem 10y agoAgreed, but the irony in that statement is that the OpenWrt developers who started LEDE are also DD-WRT developers.
- creshal 10y agoIndeed. I increasingly find myself just biting the bullet and using x86 machines with Debian/Arch instead of OpenWRT. The quadrupled hardware cost is more than offset by having well-documented software.
- DominikD 10y agoIt's interesting to compare contributors from both LEDE[1] and OpenWRT[2] sites. Most of the folks involved in LEDE seem to be from Germany. With OpenWRT devs mostly from DE to begin with, this fork may end up as something interesting. Hope it's not another libav/ffmpeg snafu. [1] https://www.lede-project.org/about.html https://www.lede-project.org/about.html [2] https://dev.openwrt.org/wiki/people https://dev.openwrt.org/wiki/people
- pmorici 10y agoInteresting. I've always found OpenWRT a lot easier to use for embedded development than alternatives like OpenEmbedded even if I didn't care about the Wireless or Router focus of the project.
- patrickg_zill 10y agoWhat I can tell you, is that I found it very difficult to find what the situation was on the Netgear router that I wanted to work with. A series of well-designed pages that would help me find the latest info, with notes of workarounds or "no it won't work" would have saved me a lot of Googling to find posts, then having to look at the date of each post to work out the chronology; and would go a long way to helping with adoption. I was very pleased with OpenWRT even 5-6 years ago! I am sure that things are better now.
- Hydraulix989 10y agoI really don't understand why there needs to be a newly forked router firmware project every few years. Back in my day, we used DD-WRT, and it worked.
- the-dude 10y agoThey went over to the dark side.
- randomchars 10y agoHow so?
- the-dude 10y agoTried to go commercial, relicensing a community effort. Not sure if this is what sparked OpenWRT into existence.
- chris_wot 10y agoWhat are the benefits of using procd? And are you going to fork that also? What's the scope of this project - really very interested...
- bluesign 10y ago"AGREED: 4/6 attendees agree to create and agenda and finding a date on the mailing list (jow_laptop, 13:05:51)" [1] First major disagreement :) [1] http://meetings.lede-project.org/lede-adm/2016/lede-adm.2016-03-30-11.05.html http://meetings.lede-project.org/lede-adm/2016/lede-adm.2016...
- ksec 10y agoSlightly Offtopic, are there anything similar based on FreeBSD / BSD?
- nissimk 10y agoThere are several listed here, but most of them only work on x86, not consumer routers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_router_and_firewall_distributions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_router_and_firewall_...
- patrickg_zill 10y agoConcerning those who complain about the fork - Debian has spawned Ubuntu and many other distros. RedHat has spawned CentOS and Scientific Linux. Is anyone arguing that this has destroyed Linux?