OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

peddling-brink

This is the official shop page afaict: https://www.bpi-shop.com/products/banana-pi-openwrt-one-rout...

williadc

I switched from a Google Wifi to this and found it to be just as stable, but with better range/signal strength, and easier to apply the parental controls I want.

drdaeman

Just two Ethernet ports (1+2.5GbE), and it’s dual-band (no 6GHz)… I’m not sure who’s the target audience or what’s the use case.

kennywinker

$106usd or $84usd without a case and antennas. That’s a solid price. Wish it had more than 1gb ram - goddamn datacenters.

baggachipz

Off topic, but what amuses me about the "Wrt" name is that it was originally alternate firmware for the Linksys WRT54G router from 25 years ago. The name has stuck for whatever reason; I guess since only geeks use it and know what it is.

ChrisArchitect

Some previous discussion around the launch in 2024: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42285689

PaulKeeble

They are working on an OpenWRT Two at the moment which will be Wifi 7. 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.

mindslight

There is definitely beauty in having a separate router device that chugs on just fine regardless what happens to the rest of your network. But I got bored with the constantly-churning embedded culture, bespoke OS's (sorry, OpenWRT), and VPNs generally want more CPU than what purpose-built "routers" have. So I just went back to the old way of using a plain Linux machine as the gateway (now virtualized, with NixOS and nftables) and couldn't be happier. WiFi AP is done by that same physical machine (not virtualized) and by two other amd64 machines that double as Kodi boxes. When you learn netfilter/iproute2, that experience carries to anything else you might switch to.

aborsy

How about OPNSense on open hardware of your choice, and passing messy wireless to separate AP? 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.

ryandrake

As someone who knows very little about WiFi, I always thought it sucked that if you wanted to go from 802.11this to 802.11that, it always requires brand new hardware with a different WiFi chip that implemented the new standard. Is there a good reason that software-defined 802.11 doesn't exist and that every new standard requires a different radio+SoC?

t1234s

Are these for sale in the US?

pseudosavant

I have and love my OpenWrt One for my main router. I have two, so that I have a backup one I can switch to if the first one ever dies. It is the best device to run OpenWrt on as it is fully supported hardware that has great images/packages for it. Routing speeds/buffer/latency are great, everything just works, price is very reasonable. 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.

tcdent

Gigabit / 2.5 Gbit connectivity is already obsolete. Any modern product must have 10gbe WAN with the hardware to back up NAT at that throughput.

hylaride

Does it have hardware PPPoE offloading? Because it's a huge issue for those of us stuck with old-school telecoms for our fibre connections. Doing PPPoE at gigabit speeds needs something that can handle it.

itsrobreally

I have one of these and love it, especially after I once bricked it during a manual software update and got to use the dip switch reset to reflash it using the ROM. 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.

timedude

I have one of these for a few months now. Works like a champ. Firmware updates are very easy now through the web interface.

henryoman

where to buy?

random__duck

Next step: open source hardware ASIC for the open router ?

buredoranna

Since we're talking WiFi, I'll mention https://www.wiisfi.com/ The single best wifi reference I've found to date.

arwhatever

I became interested in OpenWrt when I noticed that the cloud portal for my ISP reported to me the names and types of devices that were associated to my home access point/router. Suddenly I want to put every IPS device into dumb bridge mode, and run my own damn router.