For the more rookie people, check out routers that are based on openwrt and have rookie GUI.
OpenWRT is great and powerful but unless you are trying to level your networking skills, it can turn into a biatch real quick beyond basic set up.
this post was submitted on 29 May 2025
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Privacy
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That's interesting like which devices? Could you elaborate
GliNet makes great openwrt based devices, they have their own more userfriendly front end, but allow power users to enable acess to the standard openwrt features and packages under the hood.
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Also powerful but I reckon if you're at this level then you already know about it; https://opnsense.org/
As a matter of fact I heard about them but I don't know much about OPNSense. Do they support devices other than ones they sell? They seem to be rather about professional environment not home network am right?
It supports any x86 device you throw at it. I'm running it on a hodgepodge PC I built out of scrap.
Damn I'm sold next step I gonna look into them
Basically OpenWRT is for dedicated, purpose built hardware, highly compact and essentially "embedded". OPNSense is for running a (potentially much more capable) firewall on x86/x64 (even if it's a small specimen like N100 or whatever). They fill a somewhat different role.
Well explained. I get it now
I have Opnsense running on a tiny N100 mini PC from AliExpress for myself, but for my elderly parents I have a OpenWRT based solution from Banana Pi. They insist on always switching off their power completely when they leave the house, and I think OpenWRT handles that much better.
You can use on any computer really (with network connections of course).
I use on a minisforum PC with 2 NICs attached to it. For this solution is usually needed APs (which tends to be better in general, just more expensive). There are people that even use opnsense with proxmox (which is a VERY advanced use case) to have the machine for more things.
One interesting detail: with opnsense you can actually have on the same machine adguard for DNS installed as a service for opnsense (and use opnsense to actually force all DNS to to there, as long is not doh, but that is a bit of a different story).
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Even if you don’t care about privacy, OpenWRT is insane. You can do nutty things. Highly recommended
Any recs for a OpenWRT-supported router? The list is pretty deep
It comes down to specs and your needs but these are a must in my opinion:
- having atleast 128 mb of storage or some way to expand it.
- 256 mb of memory or more
- suppot WiFi 6 or better 6E or 7
- Support for mesh protocols if you need it
- Decent multi core chipset if you gonna run intensive tasks on it (like VPNs or DNS filtering) etc.. the list goes on but like I said It really comes down to your needs ( on a side note consider read the details and installation guide page before buying some brands and models are easier than others to tinker with for sure)
This is a helpful starting place, thanks!
You're welcome. Sorry I didn't named some specific devices but that's because device availability and price changes drastically region to region so something maybe a great deal where I live but that may not be the case for you or the other way around.that said Xiaomi and some Hauwei maybe tp-link devices are the best bang for the buck in my corner of the world look into those maybe that's the case for you too. Also Here is the new version of the table of hardware with more details
I'm using a Linksys MX4300 I got from woot for like $20, seems pretty good.
Well, GL iNet 's router software is based on OpenWRT, so all of their's. The UI of nicer, so I just leave their version on there; go through the "advanced settings" menu item to get the LuCI interface.
https://forum.openwrt.org/t/best-newcomer-routers-2024/189050/2 this comes right from their forum and is a good list
Glinet is leading.
I am surprised considering they are china based. I guess with foss software it aint as much of an issue?
As long as there are no hardware backdoors openwrt should overwrite firmware/software ones.
What I did when I was looking for a newer router to run OpenWRT was to look at their supported hardware list, narrow down to the ones with recent WiFi protocol support (in my case, WiFi 6), then compared prices. I was able to buy a used Belkin router for $20 on Ebay that did the trick.
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I don't see LibreCMC (https://librecmc.org/) mentioned anywhere in this thread, so correct that.
Unlike Open WRT, LibreCMC is recognised by GNU to be a fully free Linux distribution, and you still get the time-honoured LuCi web administration interface.
LibreCMC runs on much fewer devices as OpenWRT, which can be a feature for those who are overwhelmed by the length of OpenWRT's list.
I don't recommend GL.inet routers. I have the Marble and it is slower than my ISPs router. It has a thing called network hardware acceleration, and it breaks my home server. Services just stop working well with it. So I keep it turned off. When I reported the issue they said it is working for them and came up with a completely hypotical setup..
With AdGuard enabled it frequently froze and I had to reboot it. For some reason even without AdGuard name resolution is noticeably slower. Doesn't matter if I use my ISP's DNS or not.
Also, DynDNS doesn't support custom names, so I installed an alternative service for mywire.org.
Overally, this box came with drawbacks, but no doubt about it is hackable in the good way.
I would like to try openwrt's own router, next time.
I just bought the openwrt one a couple of minutes ago after using networkd+hostapd+nixos as my router for more than 2 years.
Congrats. It's definitely a nice device for 89$ and you support the project at the same time. Unfortunately it's not available here.
I remember the majority of routers in the past could not handle many half-open connections which had very negative impact on torrenting. Asus routers were the only ones that didn't have that limit and i stuck with them since. Is that still a problem that exists?
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How does DD-WRT fare? I've been using that, but I only have old routers. I mean, old. But I only have mobile data, so they're mostly for playing around. Except for the one which supports Wireguard in DD-WRT. That's very useful as a client. Unfortunately, it's also the least stable one, rebooting every few minutes and eventually ending up in a bootloop after 1 to 2 hours.
I've got I think 8 routers now, 6 of them have Wi-Fi, 1 has 802.11n (the unstable one), the rest peaks with 802.11g.
Sorry I don't know much about DD-WRT to be honest. I myself have a Google WiFi mesh pack of three devices which I bought second hand for about 30$. They are excellent value in my opinion so maybe look into that if you're interested
I use both OpenWRT for my newer router and DD-WRT for an older router (802.11n) that's being used for my building's HOA. Both work great for me. No stability problems. However, I'm not using Wireguard with either of them. It's mostly fairly basic functionality.
The long term strategy is to run a proxmox host as your Layer3 platform and install a virtual owrt instance there. Then you are relieved of the HW drama that surrounds owrt. Obviously a second proxmox host is needed for your backend servers, I'm not advocating for a singular VM platform. Once you virtualized your router, you can comfortably experiment with pf,opn,fire,vya ..platforms.
Oh and skip Mikrotik, those people are so in love with their routerOs they fail to see its going to be their headstone .. bigger than John Holmes'.
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