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Comment by bubblethink | Hacker News Reader

Openwrt is so nice. Despite small teams and budgets, they power so many routers and are also good at research and new features. The sqm/fq_codel stuff alone makes it worth running openwrt. If you are not familiar with it, go to dslreports.com and run a speedtest. If you get a poor bufferbloat score, openwrt can help. A lot of vendors (even big enterprise ones) use openwrt builds for their products, but don't provide updates, documentation or sources to their customers. You'll see a lot of devices running old openwrt in the wild.

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>A lot of vendors (even big enterprise ones) use openwrt builds for their products, but don't provide updates, documentation or sources to their customers.

Case and point, Ubiquiti networks is once again flagrantly violating the GPL. Their AmpliFi product is basically just a reskin of OpenWRT but they won't provide the source to it.

AFAIK their edgeos is based on vyos, but I have no experience with their amplifi line

It's based on Vyatta, they've had it going since before the split into Vyos but as I understand it there was some collaboration between projects as they are both forks of Vyatta.

Cite?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/8e0w38/mesh_wifi_...

It's been well over a year.

wrt bufferbloat: my internet is too fast (150 mbps) for a cheap router to effectively manage the connection, meaning that unless i pay 250€ for a router, I will just slow down my Internet needlessly.

I have 150 Mbps and a sub $50 router (ac-68u commonly sold by t-mobile on clearance as tm-1900) does fine with sqm without any significant loss in speed. Note that this has no open wifi drivers. So you'll need a separate AP, or use a more blob friendly distribution like dd-wrt. Or use two of these, one with blobs as AP and one without blobs running openwrt. That was a great combination under $100.

To be honest, that router costs 28 000 RSD ( https://www.gigatron.rs/ruteri/asus_dualband_wirelessac1900_... ) which translates in EUR to 236 EUR, so your point is not valid for outside of the USA. To get a feel for a router that costs exactly €50, see TP-Link MR3420 V5. Also, the router you mentioned (ASUS RT-AC68U has a dual core 800 MHz Broadcom processor and 256 MB RAM and 128 MB Flash storage, while most routers at 50€ have a 400 MHz Ralink/Mediatek Processor (single core) with 32MB (at most 64 MB) RAM and 4 or 8 MB SPI memory. ) I'm glad you happen to live in a country where you can obtain such a router for so little, I am not so lucky, so I use my ISP provided one that barely manages that 150 Mbps (thankfully with a Gigabit port (yes single LAN port)).

Yes, this is the discounted price because the hardware is a bit old. However, I think there are some decent affordable routers around the world. More so if you are open to ordering from China. I haven't been following the ultra cheap space too much, but you should definitely check out the forums. There are also APU2 boards (https://www.pcengines.ch/) that may provide a good bang for the buck. There's also old x86 hardware if you don't care about power consumption.

The only thing I've found that is acceptable to me is this: https://mikrotik.com/product/hap_ac2 (or "RBD52G-5HacD2HnD-TC", ... damn, don't they love the long-ass names). 128 MB RAM, Qualcomm processor quad core at 700 MHz (but ARM! :) ) and 5 gigabit RJ45 ports + Dual Band WiFi and a USB port! Plus, even if I can't get OpenWrt to work on it (though I prefer it), I can find my way with Mikrotik's RouterOS. I actually recently setup a PTP link at 3 km with 2 SXTsq's. Though I expected 100 Mbps, it only ended up being 72 Mbps stable, more than that and there's problems with the connection. I liked the old SXT more, you could put OpenWRT on it, the new ones use weird flash memory which OpenWrt can't write to...

edit: forgot to mention, it's 60€ brand new from a friend who works at a WISP

What is " 4 or 8 MB SPI memory "? Why using SPI to qualify memory ? Are you trying to something like SD and friends?

It's just the interface, serial peripheral interface.

The firmware for routers like this is stored on SPI flash memory, and the size of the SPI flash chip determines how easily you can fit third-party firmware like OpenWRT on the router and how many compromises are necessary to do so. It's soldered on so not really user replaceable.

I am sorry mate, but this is not true. I have a connection that is 220 down and 12 up and my C7[-v2 can run SQM and I can get 190 down and 11.5 up. Set your Queue setup script to piece_of_cake.qos:

Again, a 128 MB RAM and 720 MHz CPU which is not Ralink/Mediatek. This is not a fair comparison. And the C7 costs 120€. http://www.netiks.rs/tp-link-ac1750-archer-c7

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/TP-Link-Archer-C7-AC1750-Wireless... £63 For MediaTek what about the c50? https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/TP-Link-ARCHER-C50-AC1200-Mbps-Wi... £23 I am not shure what ver this one is tho v1 and v3 of the c50 work with OpenWrt.

I'd rather not Mediatek, I'll try to find the C7 used or brand new but opened box on ads, if not, Mikrotik...

150 mbps can be managed easily by an Archer C7 or one of many other QCA ar71xx based routers, which can be picked up for under $50 nowadays.

The Netgear R7800, while a bit more expensive ($150), is still cheaper than the price you mention, and is very powerful and able to handle gigabit speeds easily.

Netgear R7800: Again, $150 in USA, €280 in Serbia, €250 in Hungary, etc...

Hungary is part of the EU, can't you order from germany or austria where it's 170€?

customs. i'm in serbia but i can get anything from hungary via a friend.

but this arrangement doesn't allow your hungarian friend to order from other EU countries?

technically no, it's only cheaper as he bribes the customs in serbia and gets VAT back in hungary. it's already as complicated as it gets.

ebay.com

Guess your customs are not equal 80-90%.

have a look at ubiquiti routers: their edge router lite is capable of handling gbit, and can protect against buffer bloat at up to 100mbits/sec. the only doznside is that they are harder to manage than the average consumer router

They cost about $100

will do, that and mikrotik. i think i can manage managing it fine, i've worked a small bit with mikrotik

For that matter, it looks like most of the Mikrotik routers can actually have OpenWRT installed on them, though not all of them have device-specific pages in https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_available_864?dataflt%5BBr...

Edit: wups, misremembered Serbia as Slovenia. More like 160 Euro in Serbia: http://www.sampro.rs/Proizvod.aspx?kid=162&pid=33332&name=Mi...

Edit2: Arrgh, and didn't read far enough on the thread before sticking my foot in it where you otherwise discuss the Mikrotiks.

(previously) Going up to the question of Slovenia higher in the thread, there's a Slovenian vendor who has the "hAP ac" (dual band, gigabit, SFP, USB port) for 121 Euro (https://www.virtua-it.si/izdelek/mikrotik-routerboard-hap-ac...) along with other less-capable and cheaper models.

Netgate makes some very nice appliances. For example:

https://www.netgate.com/solutions/pfsense/sg-1100.html

The edgerouter lite is quite old at this point and if the purpose is to use QoS to manage buffer bloat then the EdgeRouter X which is only like $50 would be faster. The edgerouter lite is of limited use for new installations nowadays.

After getting my TPlink router bricked and not having soldering skills for Serial UART. I got fed up and built my own router which never gets bricked:

I bought Orange Pi3 (38 USD) from AliExpress.

Orange Pi 3 H6 2GB LPDDR3 8GB EMMC Flash Gigabyte Ethernet Port AP6256 WIFI BT5.0 4*USB3.0 Support Android 7.0, Ubuntu, Debian https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/bfPcZFXS

It has Gigabyte ethernet Port and USB3 capable of delivering 5gbps. (Superspeed Mode)

And I bought 1300mbps WiFi dongle (15 USD) from AliExpress:

CF-WU782AC USB 3.0 1300Mbps Network Card Wireless WiFi Adapter+Dual Antenna High Speed 5Gbps Net card https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/cGawgQRQ

I used this to build a router. Setup Hostapd + dnsmasq

Alternatively run Pihole and your custom iptable rules

I get around 900Mbps (5Ghz AC network) on WiFi to all my rooms.

Build your own router!

Why do you guys still buy overpriced routers? What advantage do you've over my custom built one?

A couple of reasons. First, up until recently you couldn’t buy good hardware to build your own router, that was cheap and had gigabit or faster Ethernet. Second, support. If something happens to me or I am traveling, I want others to be able to figure out wtf is going on. Third is that I might want more than one AP and I might want to install them in places that are not great for home built looking hardware.

My current setup is a TP-Link router with OpenWRT, and UniFi access points for Wi-Fi. The UniFis are really nice because they are PoE, so I only need to run a single wire to where they are installed.

That’s not to say that what you did was wrong. It’s super cool! Just not a one size fits all solution.

It does sound nice, does it handle multiple clients? Not a ton, but most of the day I have around 10 clients connected.

I'd really like to upgrade from my aging RT-N66U

I've tested it with 20 devices, works fine

Sounds good, but all these noname Chinese boards literally have no support and no updates. If something serious like KRACK attacks will come - good luck to patch it all.

Wifi over USB? Thanks, nope.

What's wrong with USB WiFi if it has USB3, capable of 5Gbps?

Usb 3 is duplex.

I don't understand the bias against USB either. USB 3 is pretty good for this kind of thing.

Just to add up, an old and obsolete atom-based netbook is a super powerful platform for OpenWrt that you may already have lying around. If it's not too old and you tweak the BIOS and configure power management, it will draw not too much electricity. x64/x86 OpenWrt targets work great, you just need to be careful with the WiFi hardware regarding driver compatibility. Consult wikidevi.com and OpenWrt wiki. It may even be possible to use an integrated wifi.

If it's not enough, you can try to run OpenWRT inside a VM/LXD container and use a host OS for the greater good. It's lots of fun!

Thanks for the tip on the dongle.

This is a provocative comment although it begs the question:

Can you easily run OpenWRT on Orange PI 3 immediately after purchase?

If not, I think that could be a factor in why someone might pay more. They might want to leverage the work of OpenWRT developers.

I too recently picked up another pocket-sized SBC with Gigabit Ethernet. Compared to Orange Pi 3 it has two additional Ethernet ports, better antennas (no dongle needed), more TF card storage (128GB vs 64GB), well-tested OpenWRT support and everything to build from scratch is on Github. Like Orange Pi 3 it uses U-boot and one can easily recover from accidental bricking without opening it up.

Also has customer support, automatic updates and an additional GUI which are not things I needed but probably increased the price.

Orange Pi 3 has a GPU, HDMI port and jacks for audio and composite video. Is the buyer intending to "build a custom router" paying for specs she does not need?

What is the estimated power consumption for Orange Pi 3?

What are some examples of "overpriced routers"?

Imagine for the sake of argument we posted specs for various SBC's here without giving the "brand name" and let readers bid on what they would be willing to pay. Assuming readers could not see each others' bids, how widely would the bids vary?

Is each spec worth the same to each buyer? Do all buyers have exactly the same needs?

> I too recently picked up another pocket-sized SBC with Gigabit Ethernet. Compared to Orange Pi 3 it has two additional Ethernet ports, better antennas (no dongle needed), more TF card storage (128GB vs 64GB) and well-tested OpenWRT support.

What is it that you purchased?

I had the same reaction. This was one of the strangest omissions. I was certain there was going to be a neat plot twist at the end...

I like GL.iNet routers: small, inexpensive and come with OpenWRT. I was very happy with my AR300M until it started getting unstable after a few months: need to hard reboot it every couple of days. Not sure if I'm unlucky or if it's inherent to inexpensive routers.

Maybe one of https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_available_864?dataflt%5BEt....

How did your TPLink get bricked, as a matter of interest?

Installing openwrt got it bricked.

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