OpenWRT runs on a lot of hardware and its a great way to extend the life of a router past the manufacturers patches as well as gain a lot of capabilities. I wouldn't buy a commercial router that wasn't supported by OpenWRT now.

I just received my OpenWrt One because I’m tired of dealing with the questionable quality of most routers.

And I don’t feel like resurrecting my old PC that I used as a router for a while. I stopped doing that because it’s loud. Pretty sure the power supply fan is about to fly off.

But Qualcomm WiFi pci card with giant antenna in a dirt cheap PC running ancient Ubuntu and a simple hostapd setup is so far the most reliable WiFi router I’ve ever had. I hope openwrt one is even better :-)

OpenWRT is very good, but the installation and upgrades are not easy. There is a zoo of images for different hardware, installation options and tools. It has to run on small devices, so there are limitations. The documentation on Wiki is scattered and could be improved.

I had to search forums for weeks for a custom package installation for my router. Right now I have been trying to upgrade to the latest version via LUCI for a while, and it stucks. Probably have to wait for few weeks, go through CLI and maybe search forums again.

I just thought I am paying a hefty time price for a bit more expensive x86 mini pc and AP.

https://www.turris.com/en/

I have been using them for years and I'm really happy. I recently bought the WiFi 6 upgrade kit for both of my turris. They "recently" released their latest version which is expensive but comes with WiFi 7 and 2.5 Gbps RJ45 and 10 Gbps SPF.

https://www.wiisfi.com/

The single best wifi reference I've found to date.

I don't use it for my APs, but that is mostly because I already had 3 TP-Link routers setup as dumb APs using OpenWrt that have been working great. If I did it again, I'd buy OpenWrt Ones though. Although Deco mesh kits I've used have worked exceptionally well, and have become my recommendation for friends/family that don't want to do things like run arbitrary packages on their router/APs.

It ran pretty well for me as a travel router I cobbled together from a Raspberry Pi and Netgear A7500 USB dongle for a stay in a short-term rental where the infrastructure network was shared with other units. More recently I have been trialing their CM5-based model with Wi-Fi 7 and 2.5GbE PoE for use as primary home Wi-Fi.

1: https://www.supernetworks.org 2: https://www.supernetworks.org/security-labs.html

When I was visiting my mom a few years back in my hometown, I converted her cheap plastic Xiaomi Mi router into an ordinary router using the OpenWRTInvasion exploit. That router then bridged a remote SIP phone to the main LAN, which was connected to the internet through another plastic router that had also been turned into an ordinary router, again thanks to OpenWrt.

That project is fantastic, and the people behind it are doing great work. Can't recommend them highly enough.

Looking at one of these when TP-link stops patching my Wifi. https://www.toptonpc.com/product/2x10g-sfp-solid-firewall-mi....

Just update my bpi-r3 purchased years ago from 24.x to 25.12, it need a bit of extra work because the sfp interface is renamed(though I never used that), and i finally just do plain sysupgrade only and add some required packages because i run a customized fd.io vpp build on the bpi-r3, connected via vhost-net backed tuntap, it works well, I never regret bought this machine, with current agent stuffs, i think bpi r3 model may be more fun to play with

I wish it had more ethernet ports but I've managed to live with that. I'd be up for buying an OpenWrt Two as a backup or to replace this if it has even one more LAN jack.

Got cheaper version without case - designed simple box with cutouts and 3d printed it out.

I can say it works flawlessly. I'm very happy about it. Previously I was using openwrt on different consumer-grade routers and I always had some issues, even when selecting supported devices.

Suddenly I want to put every IPS device into dumb bridge mode, and run my own damn router.

Just excellent, some pretty smart people in the Openwrt forum as well if you have problems.

After some time though, I eventually moved over to using OpenBSD directly. My small brain has a much better understanding of all the moving parts compared to that of OpenWrt :P

There are too many settings. Feels like Gimp (vs paintbrush). But once figured out, it works well.

The board linked to in the post doesn't have 10 G LAN, only 10 G WAN unlink. So what do people who have a 10 G internet connection do?

I'm not in the US. I can't Amazon. I don't want to spend the equivalent of 1k USD just to get 3 devices in a brainless mesh that covers my ~125sqm place made of insane amounts of radio blocking concrete.

I no longer want to maintain my network, to have network. I want things that just work. The Orbi did that for me - but the costing makes me think abut the future, and not finding a painless solution. I guess that's the tradeoff.

To wit, I also want the mesh comms on another channel (i.e 6Ghz, rather then the 2.4/5.0) and the computers/IOTs/etc isolated from that. Perhaps cheap tri-band is insanely wishful thinking. It sure seems that way.

I would also highly encourage people to buy a wired only router, and something like a ubiquiti u7 lite or u7 pro AP, and separate the functions of router and AP.

The ubiquiti unifi controller package is really straightforward to install for basic SOHO use on a base Debian stable system.

The implications of this are going over my head (and TFA should explain it better). I gather that 2230 is a form factor 22x30mm and there's also a 2280 M.2 SSD form factor.

Is this just saying that there's a missing mounting post? So it wobbles? You can't use a certain form factor?

I bought it, turned it on and flashed it out of the box lmao

I like the idea of having their own hardware but it is not easy to get, so buying normal ones and flashing them still the best option.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42285689

So I thoroughly destroyed the router and e-wasted it. I honestly never want an open-source router OS ever again.