829
Open source router firmware project OpenWrt ships its own entirely repairable hardware
(www.theregister.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2024
829 points (98.7% liked)
Technology
59750 readers
2806 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It’s a router, not a switch.
Well the router I use today has 4 ports (and a built in modem for that matter, but I don’t use that).
I understand I can use a switch, but that means I’ll have to buy a switch in addition to this to replace my router.
Which is not a bad thing, it’s more unix if you will. Router is a router, switch is a switch.
You provide your own switch and you choose the features: port count, port speed, vlan, etc — or get a 10€ switch if you don’t care. When a port breaks you replace the switch alone.
Multifunction tools are generally a tradeoff where you buy immediate convenience and pay with more ewaste and more money in the long run.
Good point.
I also wanted to chime in with the perennial point that while this device is a pure expression of the OpenWrt project, they also support hundreds of other devices including, amazingly, a number of large switches, so if you wanted to ditch the separate route appliance altogether you could get all the features with only switch hardware.
The audience of this router most likely already has a standalone switch within their network.
I have 3 but they’re not close to the router. (What I’m saying is: I’m likely target audience, but I don’t have an additional switch nearby, since so far any router I had also had a built in switch.)
But yeah, I get it. Modularity makes sense for repairability.
Yet for 98% of everyone else, you either need more than 4, or you only need one or two. You got a house full of proffesional gamers that can't have an extra 15ms of latency?