27 ms·

OpenWRT turns 20; wants to launch their "first upstream supported" design

425 points by trelane 3y ago

carry_bit 3y ago
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.
- cchance 3y ago
  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.
  - carry_bit 3y ago
    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.
    - wtallis 3y ago
      If it was several years ago and on a router that was not too expensive, then there's a good chance it's CPU was still an ancient MIPS core or two, mated to vastly more modern radios. Cheap routers have only recently started moving to ARM cores with enough performance to actually do routing, traffic shaping, etc. at gigabit speeds. There were a ton of routers sold that could only get close to a gigabit of WAN to LAN throughput by offloading NAT to their built-in Ethernet switch.
prvc 3y ago
Any reason why they seem to consistently stay a generation behind the current one in their highest supported Wi-Fi standard?
- aesh2Xa1 3y ago
  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/modes https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/Documentation/mode...
frankjr 3y ago
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.
- kogepathic 3y ago
  BT Home Hub 5a, although you do need to disassemble it to flash. https://openwrt.org/toh/bt/homehub_v5a https://openwrt.org/toh/bt/homehub_v5a
- zerof1l 3y ago
  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.
EGreg 3y ago
What actual routers can I buy on Amazon and use OpenWRT to create totally customized captive portals in it? Please post the links!
- kccqzy 3y ago
  Anything that can run OpenWRT can have customized captive portals.
  - EGreg 3y ago
    What MAINSTREAM routers can I buy on Amazon which actually let me install OpenWRT or come with it?
    - M95D 3y ago
      There are two topics on OpenWrt forum about recommended hardware: https://forum.openwrt.org/t/whats-your-favourite-cheap-lede-openwrt-device/1362 https://forum.openwrt.org/t/whats-your-favourite-cheap-lede-... https://forum.openwrt.org/t/whats-your-favorite-enthusiast-lede-openwrt-device/4477 https://forum.openwrt.org/t/whats-your-favorite-enthusiast-l...
chpatrick 3y ago
OpenWRT is great and all but if I wanted a really customizable router I'd probably get a Mikrotik.
- sam_lowry_ 3y ago
  I am using half a dozen Mikrotik hAP AC flushed with OpenWRT. Best of both worlds.
poorman 3y ago
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.
_giorgio_ 3y ago
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.
- mimimi31 3y ago
  Last time I checked the Linksys E8450/Belkin RT3200 was widely recommended.
  - SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
    If I was buying today, I would want something with more than 1GbE.
  - highpost 3y ago
    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.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
  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!
  - alibert 3y ago
    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.
boringuser2 3y ago
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.
- kccqzy 3y ago
  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.
  - boringuser2 3y ago
    You can buy a Ruckus r610 for $40 from eBay. It's not a package deal, but router hardware for Pfsense or OpnSense, or even a Tp link or Unifi device isn't exactly breaking the bank. It's also vastly superior enough for the Open WRT to not be worth it. Does OpenWRT appeal to people with a low degree of knowledge, time or skill? Heck no. The most applicable scenario I can think of is someone who is very knowledgeable and has a lot of time but very little money, but OpenWRT exclusively as a device for people who live in India or Brazil is again not super compelling to *me* as a technological package. Though I respect conceptually that other people might have different perspectives, I live in a country with an average living standard, so I can't really share it.
    - MaKey 3y ago
      OpenWRT enables people to build mesh networks. I helped building some by being part of a Freifunk community and it was a great feeling - you get to tinker around with network stuff and in doing so help others (free wifi for everyone, yay!).
mushufasa 3y ago
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.
hedora 3y ago
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.
- wtallis 3y ago
  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.
  - hedora 3y ago
    The MT7976C they're including is a 3x3 WiFi 6 chip, and you can buy them as a standalone module for ~ $25. I think the idea is that it's providing the access point radio. That's the part I'd suggest swapping out every few years. That might mean people are stuck with older bluetooth or a low performance WiFi radio or whatever on the SoC, but that won't impact performance much. (In the worst case, they could just disable the SoC radios to prevent RF interference with the "real" radio.)
    - wtallis 3y ago
      I think this is intended to offer simultaneous dual-band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) using two separate radios, as all decent APs for over a decade have done. The SoC provides one of the two radios, and the second is connected over PCIe. Whether your 2.4GHz or 5GHz radio more badly needs an upgrade in a few years can be hard to predict.
paulnpace 3y ago
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.
- kccqzy 3y ago
  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.
  - paulnpace 3y ago
    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.
    - branon 3y ago
      I've experienced this on OpenWrt as well. There's a backup/restore config files button but it's sort of a best-effort type of operation. If you are restoring across many versions and the config files are no longer sane, you will end up with a broken system. But the config files were restored exactly as advertised :) Thankfully all the config files are plain text and can be manipulated however you like. It is usually not too difficult to take working config while fixing or disusing problematic files.
hyperpl 3y ago
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.
elric 3y ago
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.
pseudosavant 3y ago
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.
tuckerpo 3y ago
The Turris Omnia is canonically the "OpenWRT" router even though it isn't from OpenWRT itself: https://www.turris.com/en/omnia/overview/ https://www.turris.com/en/omnia/overview/
- jmacd 3y ago
  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
  - sspiff 3y ago
    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.
- smith7018 3y ago
  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
  - tuckerpo 3y 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/ https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-b1300/ It is also the platform I personally use for OpenWRT development work.
- VikingCoder 3y ago
  I'm stunned that it's something that unavailable and expensive. I'd expect it to be some mass-produced cheap router.
mkskm 3y ago
Forum post: https://forum.openwrt.org/t/openwrt-one-celebrating-20-years-of-openwrt/183684 https://forum.openwrt.org/t/openwrt-one-celebrating-20-years...
napkin 3y ago
Yes. In a heartbeat. If only to support OpenWRT. 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/PC Engines fans experience with newer stuff.
M95D 3y ago
I looked at the specs. It's a BananaPi R3 mini with stuff added that nobody will ever use. I can't really find a use for such a device, unless you're the maintainer for some kernel driver used on that board. Compared to an ordinary router: 1) There's a bit more powerful CPU, barely enough for TOR or wireguard VPN. Doesn't say anything about hardware crypto. 2) There's 1 GB RAM, way too much for basic routing, barely enough for TOR, barely enough to run a webserver, but not both. 3) There's NVME storage as an option, but NVME is too small, too expensive, and MUCH too fast for a NAS with that kind of networking, and there's no USB3 or eSATA to connect external storage such as a large HDD or a DAS. 4) I assume that the wifi chip (only one?) is soldered. If the driver ever becomes unmaintained, like it happend with mwlwifi, you throw the router into the garbage. 5) It doesn't even have a network switch. 6) They plan to load it with various features (serial, USB debug, JTAG (ffs! why??)) that only devs will ever use, and only until they get it booting. No use for all that once it boots reliably. 7) Modbus? Who uses that!? I want mPCIe, GPIOs, I2c, SPI, serial (other than the debug port), RS485, you know... actually useful stuff! 8) And there's RTC on a device that 99.9999% of users will connect to the internet. Why? For the rare situations when it boots after a power failure before the ISP network is up? If it had SPI/I2c out, there are Raspberry Pi RTC modules that could be added for $1. 9) The price: 100$ is waaaay to much for something that's only a micro-router. GL-MT3000 is in the same price category and has USB3. My ideal router would have: - 2 GHz 4 core armv8 CPU, or at least 2 core armv7+vfpv3 - working frequency scaling and idle - hardware crypto (wireguard, openvpn, TOR), hardware CRC32 (for btfs), hardware XOR (for MD RAID) - RAM as SODIMM memory modules (even better if sold without them - recycle my own, upgrade any time) - at least 3 mPCIe slots for wifi 2.4G, 5G, and WWAN modem (even better if sold without them - recycle my own, upgrade any time) - 8 port switch with management - WAN port separate from the switch - eSATA with port multiplier support - USB3 with UAS support - GPIO identical to RPi, maybe one more serial port - mounting holes that fit an ordinary GPU cooler - temperature sensor on a wire - PWM LEDs - no GPU, no HDMI, no other video outputs Unfortunately, no such device exists.
- mjevans 3y ago
  3: As a consumer, NVME drives are an off the shelf easy to source item. All of the storage cases you specify are better served by a 'full server', even if that is a desktop device running 'x86_64' OpenWRT. 8: RTC is SURPRISINGLY very important for E.G. Initial TLS / HTTPS connections and bootstrapping secure connections. It's also a serious quality of life aspect that doesn't cost that much to add. Surely you've seen the hell caused by Microsoft's attempts to fix this problem wreaking havoc with connection failures. 5: I suspect that was more to fit the form factor of an existing off the shelf case, and dangling a dumb-switch off the internal port is a reasonable option. This is annoying but I understand the reasons and tradeoffs. I see using this device as a router for E.G. grandma's / friend / other family. Where someone tech literate buys the thing that does 99.9% of the desired work for a lot less headache and that you know will see updates because it's supported from day 0 by OpenWRT / the community. Wifi 6E, with the upper band frequencies, might be enough to convince me to get it too.
trelane 3y ago
LWN article that I got the link from: https://lwn.net/Articles/957255/ https://lwn.net/Articles/957255/
snvzz 3y ago
[flagged]
- dang 3y ago
  Can you please stop posting repetitively about RISC-V? We've been getting complaints about it becoming a tedious pattern. You've also posted some good unpredictable comments so I don't want to ban you, but basically anything that an account does that becomes predictable is what we're trying to avoid here. One way to not be predictable is to include unique, relevant information in your comment, as opposed to posting something shallow. Another way is to just post on a variety of different things, without too much of a pattern.
- mlyle 3y ago
  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.
  - snvzz 3y ago
    >More architectures is good. I agree. This is why we need to support the new open standard architecture over the established proprietary one.
- orev 3y ago
  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.
  - anonymousiam 3y ago
    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/ https://pi-hole.net/), and other VMs such as FreePBX (https://www.freepbx.org/ https://www.freepbx.org/).
yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
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.
- xattt 3y ago
  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-n300-open-source-dd-wrt-wireless-router https://www.buffalotech.com/products/airstation-highpower-n3...
  - avtolik 3y ago
    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.
- nbd168 3y ago
  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.
  - rany_ 3y ago
    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?
mcsniff 3y ago
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.
- CyberDildonics 3y ago
  Why would $100 be difficult? Router hardware is basically ancient arm cpus with five gigabit ethernet ports and wifi.
  - justin66 3y ago
    Because everything other than the ancient arm CPUs and ethernet ports requires expertise and capital.
    - CyberDildonics 3y ago
      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?
      - applied_heat 3y ago
        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
        CyberDildonics 3y ago
        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 $30 routers on amazon. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082HH24YY/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082HH24YY/
gloyoyo 3y ago
What is m.2 2042?
- nfriedly 3y ago
  It's a connector for an internal SSD. As others have said, it was probably supposed to read "m.2 2242" which is physically in-between the size of the 2230 drives that the Steam Deck uses and the 2280 ones that most modern desktops and laptops use.
- Borealid 3y ago
  2042 would be 20mm wide and 42mm long. That's unlikely to be what was meant. It's probably m.2 2242, a shortish but "normal" drive size in the embedded space.
- p1mrx 3y ago
  Probably M.2 2242 (22mm x 42mm) with a typo.
- anonymousiam 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.2
  - NewJazz 3y ago
    The M.2 standard allows module widths of 12, 16, 22 and 30 mm Notice no 20 mm width is allowed as part of the M.2 standard. The device specs are likely a typo.
    - anticensor 3y ago
      And then there is EDSFF's E1.S 30110 (30112 really).
neilv 3y ago
> GPL compliance: 3b. "Accompany it with a written offer ... to give any third party ... a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code" I'm guessing it will also be a tag from `git.openwrt.org`, from the same development and release process that continues to support numerous other consumer devices, and keep them up to date. It might be good to clarify this, since people who've seen a lot of open source projects can imagine ways this could go bad. I have a very favorable impression of the OpenWrt project, and I'm looking forward to this being a good thing.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hjdev 3y ago
I hope it doesn't get dirty like what cyanogenmod did before. btw, Under 100$ would be excellent price for me. I would definetly buy it
kingsleyopara 3y ago
Wish this thing had a second 2.5 GbE port instead of a 1 GbE port.
- NewJazz 3y ago
  It is probably a SoC limitation... Feel free to suggest an alternative ;)
  - sliken 3y ago
    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.
    - NewJazz 3y ago
      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.
      - Namidairo 3y ago
        > Mediatek might not be willing to provide their WiFi SoC if you are not using their compute SoC There are some China-only ZTE devices that do this, but they obviously have a different order volume and scale that makes it possible. (The main SoC is replaced with a ZXIC one, a ZTE subsidiary)
    - quailfarmer 3y ago
      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
      - sliken 3y ago
        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.
agilob 3y ago
I know price is a big differentiator, but why not cooperate with Omnia Turris? https://www.turris.com/en/products/omnia/ https://www.turris.com/en/products/omnia/
- myself248 3y ago
  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.
- geraldhh 3y ago
  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.
notadeveloper 3y ago
Is there a link to the hardware design yet? Or is it just the announcement only? I tried googling but found nothing.
- 22c 3y ago
  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.
p1mrx 3y ago
* USB (device, console): Holtek HT42B534-2 UART to USB (USB-C port) * Power: USB-PD-12V on USB-C port Does that mean dual USB-C ports, or will the console host also need to supply power?
lloydatkinson 3y ago
Two Ethernet sockets makes this a very attractive option.
shmerl 3y ago
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.
nomercy400 3y ago
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.
- brirec 3y ago
  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.
  - wtallis 3y ago
    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.
- candiodari 3y ago
  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.
squarefoot 3y ago
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&path=69&product_id=287 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.
- JeremyNT 3y ago
  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.
  - pseudosavant 3y ago
    I will absolutely pay $100 for that router with top notch openwrt support. Not cheap, but very reasonable.
- chx 3y ago
  oh these are very interesting I have been looking for an open source replacement for the Elecom WRH-583BK2-S is there anything in there? It's a W65 x D35 x H20.5 (mm), dual LAN, 802.11ac router.
- geraldhh 3y ago
  tbf openwrt is also an unusual linux distro, just a very widely used one.
  - zekica 3y ago
    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.
gotbeans 3y ago
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).
- Namidairo 3y ago
  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)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- geraldhh 3y ago
  yea, dualport 10gig and not underpowered soc would probably require active cooling
mehdix 3y ago
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.
- mglz 3y ago
  How does a travel router help in this case? Preconfigured VPN? (Asking out of total ignorance)
  - madspindel 3y ago
    Sounds like he's using it as a site-to-site VPN
  - rainbowzootsuit 3y ago
    Bring it with you "home network setup" with devices pre shared keys and only authentication to a portal one time or an Ethernet port. Also let's you share one paid-for connection—on an airplane for example.
amq 3y ago
Having a reasonably powerful router from 2016, the only thing that would motivate me to upgrade is Wi-Fi 6E (6 GHz).
globular-toast 3y ago
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?

425 points by trelane 3y ago

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.

cchance 3y ago
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.
- carry_bit 3y ago
  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.
  - wtallis 3y ago
    If it was several years ago and on a router that was not too expensive, then there's a good chance it's CPU was still an ancient MIPS core or two, mated to vastly more modern radios. Cheap routers have only recently started moving to ARM cores with enough performance to actually do routing, traffic shaping, etc. at gigabit speeds. There were a ton of routers sold that could only get close to a gigabit of WAN to LAN throughput by offloading NAT to their built-in Ethernet switch.

prvc 3y ago

Any reason why they seem to consistently stay a generation behind the current one in their highest supported Wi-Fi standard?

aesh2Xa1 3y ago
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/modes https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/Documentation/mode...

frankjr 3y ago

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.

kogepathic 3y ago
BT Home Hub 5a, although you do need to disassemble it to flash. https://openwrt.org/toh/bt/homehub_v5a https://openwrt.org/toh/bt/homehub_v5a
zerof1l 3y ago
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.

EGreg 3y ago

What actual routers can I buy on Amazon and use OpenWRT to create totally customized captive portals in it? Please post the links!

kccqzy 3y ago
Anything that can run OpenWRT can have customized captive portals.
- EGreg 3y ago
  What MAINSTREAM routers can I buy on Amazon which actually let me install OpenWRT or come with it?
  - M95D 3y ago
    There are two topics on OpenWrt forum about recommended hardware: https://forum.openwrt.org/t/whats-your-favourite-cheap-lede-openwrt-device/1362 https://forum.openwrt.org/t/whats-your-favourite-cheap-lede-... https://forum.openwrt.org/t/whats-your-favorite-enthusiast-lede-openwrt-device/4477 https://forum.openwrt.org/t/whats-your-favorite-enthusiast-l...

chpatrick 3y ago

OpenWRT is great and all but if I wanted a really customizable router I'd probably get a Mikrotik.

sam_lowry_ 3y ago
I am using half a dozen Mikrotik hAP AC flushed with OpenWRT. Best of both worlds.

poorman 3y ago

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.

_giorgio_ 3y ago

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.

mimimi31 3y ago
Last time I checked the Linksys E8450/Belkin RT3200 was widely recommended.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
  If I was buying today, I would want something with more than 1GbE.
- highpost 3y ago
  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.
SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
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!
- alibert 3y ago
  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.

boringuser2 3y ago

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.

kccqzy 3y ago
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.
- boringuser2 3y ago
  You can buy a Ruckus r610 for $40 from eBay. It's not a package deal, but router hardware for Pfsense or OpnSense, or even a Tp link or Unifi device isn't exactly breaking the bank. It's also vastly superior enough for the Open WRT to not be worth it. Does OpenWRT appeal to people with a low degree of knowledge, time or skill? Heck no. The most applicable scenario I can think of is someone who is very knowledgeable and has a lot of time but very little money, but OpenWRT exclusively as a device for people who live in India or Brazil is again not super compelling to *me* as a technological package. Though I respect conceptually that other people might have different perspectives, I live in a country with an average living standard, so I can't really share it.
  - MaKey 3y ago
    OpenWRT enables people to build mesh networks. I helped building some by being part of a Freifunk community and it was a great feeling - you get to tinker around with network stuff and in doing so help others (free wifi for everyone, yay!).

mushufasa 3y ago

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.

hedora 3y ago

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.

wtallis 3y ago
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.
- hedora 3y ago
  The MT7976C they're including is a 3x3 WiFi 6 chip, and you can buy them as a standalone module for ~ $25. I think the idea is that it's providing the access point radio. That's the part I'd suggest swapping out every few years. That might mean people are stuck with older bluetooth or a low performance WiFi radio or whatever on the SoC, but that won't impact performance much. (In the worst case, they could just disable the SoC radios to prevent RF interference with the "real" radio.)
  - wtallis 3y ago
    I think this is intended to offer simultaneous dual-band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) using two separate radios, as all decent APs for over a decade have done. The SoC provides one of the two radios, and the second is connected over PCIe. Whether your 2.4GHz or 5GHz radio more badly needs an upgrade in a few years can be hard to predict.

paulnpace 3y ago

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.

kccqzy 3y ago
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.
- paulnpace 3y ago
  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.
  - branon 3y ago
    I've experienced this on OpenWrt as well. There's a backup/restore config files button but it's sort of a best-effort type of operation. If you are restoring across many versions and the config files are no longer sane, you will end up with a broken system. But the config files were restored exactly as advertised :) Thankfully all the config files are plain text and can be manipulated however you like. It is usually not too difficult to take working config while fixing or disusing problematic files.

hyperpl 3y ago

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.

elric 3y ago

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.

pseudosavant 3y ago

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.

tuckerpo 3y ago

The Turris Omnia is canonically the "OpenWRT" router even though it isn't from OpenWRT itself: https://www.turris.com/en/omnia/overview/ https://www.turris.com/en/omnia/overview/

jmacd 3y ago
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
- sspiff 3y ago
  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.
smith7018 3y ago
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
- tuckerpo 3y 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/ https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-b1300/ It is also the platform I personally use for OpenWRT development work.
VikingCoder 3y ago
I'm stunned that it's something that unavailable and expensive. I'd expect it to be some mass-produced cheap router.

mkskm 3y ago

Forum post: https://forum.openwrt.org/t/openwrt-one-celebrating-20-years-of-openwrt/183684 https://forum.openwrt.org/t/openwrt-one-celebrating-20-years...

napkin 3y ago

Yes. In a heartbeat. If only to support OpenWRT. 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/PC Engines fans experience with newer stuff.

M95D 3y ago

I looked at the specs. It's a BananaPi R3 mini with stuff added that nobody will ever use. I can't really find a use for such a device, unless you're the maintainer for some kernel driver used on that board. Compared to an ordinary router: 1) There's a bit more powerful CPU, barely enough for TOR or wireguard VPN. Doesn't say anything about hardware crypto. 2) There's 1 GB RAM, way too much for basic routing, barely enough for TOR, barely enough to run a webserver, but not both. 3) There's NVME storage as an option, but NVME is too small, too expensive, and MUCH too fast for a NAS with that kind of networking, and there's no USB3 or eSATA to connect external storage such as a large HDD or a DAS. 4) I assume that the wifi chip (only one?) is soldered. If the driver ever becomes unmaintained, like it happend with mwlwifi, you throw the router into the garbage. 5) It doesn't even have a network switch. 6) They plan to load it with various features (serial, USB debug, JTAG (ffs! why??)) that only devs will ever use, and only until they get it booting. No use for all that once it boots reliably. 7) Modbus? Who uses that!? I want mPCIe, GPIOs, I2c, SPI, serial (other than the debug port), RS485, you know... actually useful stuff! 8) And there's RTC on a device that 99.9999% of users will connect to the internet. Why? For the rare situations when it boots after a power failure before the ISP network is up? If it had SPI/I2c out, there are Raspberry Pi RTC modules that could be added for $1. 9) The price: 100$ is waaaay to much for something that's only a micro-router. GL-MT3000 is in the same price category and has USB3. My ideal router would have: - 2 GHz 4 core armv8 CPU, or at least 2 core armv7+vfpv3 - working frequency scaling and idle - hardware crypto (wireguard, openvpn, TOR), hardware CRC32 (for btfs), hardware XOR (for MD RAID) - RAM as SODIMM memory modules (even better if sold without them - recycle my own, upgrade any time) - at least 3 mPCIe slots for wifi 2.4G, 5G, and WWAN modem (even better if sold without them - recycle my own, upgrade any time) - 8 port switch with management - WAN port separate from the switch - eSATA with port multiplier support - USB3 with UAS support - GPIO identical to RPi, maybe one more serial port - mounting holes that fit an ordinary GPU cooler - temperature sensor on a wire - PWM LEDs - no GPU, no HDMI, no other video outputs Unfortunately, no such device exists.

mjevans 3y ago
3: As a consumer, NVME drives are an off the shelf easy to source item. All of the storage cases you specify are better served by a 'full server', even if that is a desktop device running 'x86_64' OpenWRT. 8: RTC is SURPRISINGLY very important for E.G. Initial TLS / HTTPS connections and bootstrapping secure connections. It's also a serious quality of life aspect that doesn't cost that much to add. Surely you've seen the hell caused by Microsoft's attempts to fix this problem wreaking havoc with connection failures. 5: I suspect that was more to fit the form factor of an existing off the shelf case, and dangling a dumb-switch off the internal port is a reasonable option. This is annoying but I understand the reasons and tradeoffs. I see using this device as a router for E.G. grandma's / friend / other family. Where someone tech literate buys the thing that does 99.9% of the desired work for a lot less headache and that you know will see updates because it's supported from day 0 by OpenWRT / the community. Wifi 6E, with the upper band frequencies, might be enough to convince me to get it too.

trelane 3y ago

LWN article that I got the link from: https://lwn.net/Articles/957255/ https://lwn.net/Articles/957255/

snvzz 3y ago

[flagged]

dang 3y ago
Can you please stop posting repetitively about RISC-V? We've been getting complaints about it becoming a tedious pattern. You've also posted some good unpredictable comments so I don't want to ban you, but basically anything that an account does that becomes predictable is what we're trying to avoid here. One way to not be predictable is to include unique, relevant information in your comment, as opposed to posting something shallow. Another way is to just post on a variety of different things, without too much of a pattern.
mlyle 3y ago
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.
- snvzz 3y ago
  >More architectures is good. I agree. This is why we need to support the new open standard architecture over the established proprietary one.
orev 3y ago
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.
- anonymousiam 3y ago
  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/ https://pi-hole.net/), and other VMs such as FreePBX (https://www.freepbx.org/ https://www.freepbx.org/).

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago

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.

xattt 3y ago
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-n300-open-source-dd-wrt-wireless-router https://www.buffalotech.com/products/airstation-highpower-n3...
- avtolik 3y ago
  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.
nbd168 3y ago
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.
- rany_ 3y ago
  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?

mcsniff 3y ago

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.

CyberDildonics 3y ago
Why would $100 be difficult? Router hardware is basically ancient arm cpus with five gigabit ethernet ports and wifi.
- justin66 3y ago
  Because everything other than the ancient arm CPUs and ethernet ports requires expertise and capital.
  - CyberDildonics 3y ago
    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?
    - applied_heat 3y ago
      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
      - CyberDildonics 3y ago
        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/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082HH24YY/

gloyoyo 3y ago

What is m.2 2042?

nfriedly 3y ago
It's a connector for an internal SSD. As others have said, it was probably supposed to read "m.2 2242" which is physically in-between the size of the 2230 drives that the Steam Deck uses and the 2280 ones that most modern desktops and laptops use.
Borealid 3y ago
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.
p1mrx 3y ago
Probably M.2 2242 (22mm x 42mm) with a typo.
anonymousiam 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.2
- NewJazz 3y ago
  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.
  - anticensor 3y ago
    And then there is EDSFF's E1.S 30110 (30112 really).

neilv 3y ago

> 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.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

hjdev 3y ago

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

kingsleyopara 3y ago

Wish this thing had a second 2.5 GbE port instead of a 1 GbE port.

NewJazz 3y ago
It is probably a SoC limitation... Feel free to suggest an alternative ;)
- sliken 3y ago
  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.
  - NewJazz 3y ago
    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.
    - Namidairo 3y ago
      > Mediatek might not be willing to provide their WiFi SoC if you are not using their compute SoC There are some China-only ZTE devices that do this, but they obviously have a different order volume and scale that makes it possible. (The main SoC is replaced with a ZXIC one, a ZTE subsidiary)
  - quailfarmer 3y ago
    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
    - sliken 3y ago
      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.

agilob 3y ago

I know price is a big differentiator, but why not cooperate with Omnia Turris? https://www.turris.com/en/products/omnia/ https://www.turris.com/en/products/omnia/

myself248 3y ago
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.
geraldhh 3y ago
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.

notadeveloper 3y ago

Is there a link to the hardware design yet? Or is it just the announcement only? I tried googling but found nothing.

22c 3y ago
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.

p1mrx 3y ago

* USB (device, console): Holtek HT42B534-2 UART to USB (USB-C port) * Power: USB-PD-12V on USB-C port Does that mean dual USB-C ports, or will the console host also need to supply power?

lloydatkinson 3y ago

Two Ethernet sockets makes this a very attractive option.

shmerl 3y ago

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.

nomercy400 3y ago

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.

brirec 3y ago
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.
- wtallis 3y ago
  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.
candiodari 3y ago
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.

squarefoot 3y ago

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&path=69&product_id=287 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.

JeremyNT 3y ago
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.
- pseudosavant 3y ago
  I will absolutely pay $100 for that router with top notch openwrt support. Not cheap, but very reasonable.
chx 3y ago
oh these are very interesting I have been looking for an open source replacement for the Elecom WRH-583BK2-S is there anything in there? It's a W65 x D35 x H20.5 (mm), dual LAN, 802.11ac router.
geraldhh 3y ago
tbf openwrt is also an unusual linux distro, just a very widely used one.
- zekica 3y ago
  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.

gotbeans 3y ago

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).

Namidairo 3y ago
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)
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geraldhh 3y ago
yea, dualport 10gig and not underpowered soc would probably require active cooling

mehdix 3y ago

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.

mglz 3y ago
How does a travel router help in this case? Preconfigured VPN? (Asking out of total ignorance)
- madspindel 3y ago
  Sounds like he's using it as a site-to-site VPN
- rainbowzootsuit 3y ago
  Bring it with you "home network setup" with devices pre shared keys and only authentication to a portal one time or an Ethernet port. Also let's you share one paid-for connection—on an airplane for example.

amq 3y ago

Having a reasonably powerful router from 2016, the only thing that would motivate me to upgrade is Wi-Fi 6E (6 GHz).

globular-toast 3y ago

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?