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Comment by koolba | Hacker News Reader

I'm in the market for a couple new WiFi routers and would love to get one that is running either OpenWrt or LEDE. Any specific recommendations from the HN crowd on which one to pick up?

The table of hardware[1] on the LEDE site has a ton of info but filtering through 100s of devices manually doesn't seem very doable. Would love if someone would just suggest one or two devices, preferably something they've use themselves. All I really care about are Gigabit LAN and the latest Wi-Fi (5Ghz N?) so no USB storage, NFS, etc.

[1]: https://lede-project.org/toh/start

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Archer C7v2 has long been preferred as a nice and stable router. USB is slow and NAT caps out at around ~500mbps but is otherwise very good (there are a few patches around that improve this slightly). The WiFi driver for 802.11ac has improved stability(no crashing after 2 days) in trunk but has not been backported to stable yet. Range is also excellent (in my opinion).

If faster USB is needed, the recommendation is the Linksys WRT series of routers (new ones). Avoid the WRT1900ACv1 (keep rebooting, watchdog driver bug i think). WiFi is pretty stable now. One really nice benefit of these routers is that most of the drivers have been upstreamed in the kernel and thus get love from the kernel community (enhancements and bug fixes). Not so with the other popular routers.

I used to run DD WRT, but got tired of fighting weird issues. Looks like from the comments to your post there are still issues out there. I ended up switching to a ubiquiti AC Pro for WiFi and am about to buy a USG to replace my old router. If all you are looking for is rock solid performance and reliability that is still fairly flexible I’d go with Ubiquiti. If you want to tinker or are really passionate about running open source then obviously LEDE is a decent choice.

I run stock LEDE on Archer C7v2 and have had zero problems with it (I ran OpenWRT before LEDE made a stable release). I could buy a Ubiquiti gateway and AP, but C7v2 is less expensive and gives me an appreciation for embedded device programming. I have had trouble experimenting with advanced features such as band steering, mesh and multi-WAN/load balancing in OpenWRT/LEDE though, so if you plan on using those, I agree Ubiquiti is a great choice.

AIUI the Archer C7 requires some tricks to get around recent FCC enforcement which bans citizens from installing their own router firmware, cf. https://pappp.net/?p=1525

I recently flashed a new C7v2. Needed to flash the ...-EU.bin variant but otherwise no problems.

just the recent ones. OTOH it may be easier in LEDE/new OpenWrt. I don't have the recent ones so can't confirm or deny.

I've been using LEDE on my C7v2 for 6 months now and have not had any issues. I switched firmware because the mac address reservation for dhcp wasn't working in the official firmware.

Anyone know about the C7v3? Conflicting advice about whether it can be flashed with open firmware.

the v4 can

Is there a similar ADSL/VDSL edition?

There are almost no good modem+router combo devices on the market. There also aren't open-source drivers for the modem half of any modern modem+router combo boxes, so they won't be fully functional with OpenWRT.

My selection guide

VPN needed?

- yes: WRT1200AC (OpenVPN: 50 Mbit/s, WireGuard: 100+ Mbit/s)

- no: continue (OpenVPN: 12 Mbit/s, WireGuard: 24 Mbit/s)

Gigabit needed?

- yes: Archer C7

- no: TL-WR841N

Whoa, I've never heard of WireGuard. Looks like a huge performance boost over OpenVPN.

I currently use OpenVPN in bridge mode between all my OpenWRT routers.

Performance boost yes -- and security boost too. Here's the paper if you're interested in the nuts and bolts: https://www.wireguard.com/papers/wireguard.pdf

Also, stickers: https://lists.zx2c4.com/pipermail/wireguard/2017-May/001338....

Just like everyone else, I would also recommend an Archer C7 of whatever revision is the latest stable tested unit. As someone mentioned, the FCC recently clamped down of this, pushing mfgs to include protections against allowing the consumer to easily replace the original firmware. TP-LINK has been locking things down a bit more as off the past few years. Love my C7 w OpenWRT, great choice for a sub $100 device with tons of flexibility.

I've been using Dlink DIR 860L and it's been working flawlessly with LEDE, 1 gigabit LAN (even NAT'ted), AC wifi. The main advantage of this device is the price (I think it was the cheapest router with gigabit LAN on the market), but now it's gotten a bit old.

I particularly like the QoS features of LEDE.

Afaik, the SoC that is used in this device is the only recent-ish such system on the market with fully open source/free radio firmware (but you need to make sure to get the correct revision, as D-Link changed its innards at least once without renaming the model). I can highly recommend it from my day-to-day experience with it, running Lede 17.01.

I haven't received mine yet, but I've read that you have to get the latest snapshot lede to profit from some WiFi performance bug fixes.

I run LEDE stable on two WRT 1900 ACS routers with good results. USB storage / Syncthing, WireGuard, ad blocking were all quick and easy to set up.

Also, great news on the merge, hoping the documentation will get unified at some point as well.

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