https://openwrt.org/supported_devices
You might find / inquire about specific devices at the OpenWRT subreddit:
https://old.reddit.com/r/openwrt/
The Turris Omnia is priced above your preferred range, but is effectively a small server and has excellent capabilities. It runs a specifically-tuned and live-upgradable version of OpenWRT:
Maybe the thing that took me the most time was to decide which version to use or whether I should use openwrt vs tomato vs other competitors
Breaking stuff and then fixing it is the fast track for learning
If you're not a smart computer guy then maybe this isnt the forum for you
Yes, I've flashed routers in the past, including the Linksys WRT54G, and in some cases I've even built a dedicated PC to run as a router, back when that was a bit more in vogue.
But is it worth the time to do it yet again? Probably not. I'd rather get an Apple-like router that works perfectly out of the box, with sensible defaults and little configuration necessary, and which is regularly auto-updated with security fixes. That way I can spend my time on new things.
If you want a cheap rec that's easy to get OpenWrt on, get a Netgear R6220 off eBay. I've gotten 3 of them for $20 each or so.
So, forgive me for how this sounds, but the general HN user probably needs a reliable as possible internet link.
This is not to mention the security implications of having a non-open source router. Never trust a third party like that. Some even try to get you to use an app.
An actual misconfigured/buggy router is a bigger security concern for me than a potential back door. Also, what makes you think open source software matters if the hardware is closed? Do you have a pine router or something?
There was an article just the other day about how google is sunsetting a mesh router they built. That's what you get if you don't take the frankly small amount of time to wrench control of your hardware from its parent companies. You're worried about security? Bad news, if you're not doing your own updates, your security can and will be sunset.
But I get it, you don't wanna. Not much more to be said than that I suppose.
... Does pine make a router?
There are the other kind of HNer who are that pillar in xkcd Dependency comic, but for the former kind, OpenWRT as it is right now is just waste of their time.
Whatever issues you had are not the common path IMO. I've run openwrt essentially for as long as it's been a thing and the only instability I ever had was due to my ISP. I'm sure if you end up with some esoteric, poorly supported, or flaky hardware things can be different, but this is far from universal!
I never felt the 'instability', at least not when I limited myself to the basics a thing like that should do, and not trying to turn it into a server for all sorts of things.
(Edit: Though you can also do that, if you know what you are doing. That's the advantage of things like these!)
Depending on which hardware/SOC you have, DD-Wrt may be a better option.
Does not match my experience at all. My router would regularly go offline with the stock firmware which never happened after I flashed OpenWRT.
It's cloud-free, spyware-free, adware-free.
The default configuration works with the same basic configuration any consumer-grade system would require.
Extensive configuration capability is offered through either of two graphical front-ends, the basic Turris, the advanced Luci, or for those who prefer talking in words rather than gestures, a highly capable Linux system residing underneath.
If just one backup isn't enough for you then this article [1] about a developer at Gitpod who works remotely might be of interest. He has 6 redundant LTE and 5G connections on his van!
You can add additional rewritable onboard storage. And an LTE modem for mobile data.
This is something commercial routers get right, updates keep your settings. This requirement will cause you to delay if you use any of the complexity of the router and that leaves you open to attacks. IMO its not a great choice today due to this one fatal flaw.
Manual updates don't bother me, personally, but wifi throughput is definitely a pain point (my understanding is the lower speeds are due to FreshTomato doing more with the CPU than stock firmware does, which decreases the amount of CPU time that actual routing gets).
hostname# _
hostname# sho run
This is all it takes to backup ALL config. Also a short form of “show running-config”. If you follow best practices and take logs of all ssh connection it’s naturally there a second after.
Restoring? Just paste it on HyperTerminal. Cisco sues anyone who dares to replicate this exact behavior(e.g. Huawei-3Com), but similar commands exist for most professional network equipment such as Vyatta/VyOS’ `show configuration commands`.
I own one and it has not always been great. At one point their fork of OpenWRT was so different from upstream that upgrades were taking a long time and introduced lots of bugs.
Since the last major version or 2 though, they've upstreamed most of the drivers and custom code, so TurrisOS is just a few patches and packages on top of OpenWRT to better support the specific hardware and services, and it's been very stable.
One incredibly useful feature is BTRFS snapshots and the `schnapps` CLI to manage them. The hardware reset button can even be used to roll back to factory defaults, from where you can still access and restore any snapshot so it's very easy to unbrick the router if you make a mistake.
Add an M.2 NVMe card and you can run LXC containers (and in the next major release, even Docker).
https://openwrt.org/docs/techref/bootloader/pepe2k
https://github.com/pepe2k/u-boot_mod
No, seriously ;-) What you are thinking of is probably described here https://openwrt.org/docs/techref/hardware/switch and has a long history.
Basically it depends on having opensourced drivers, or at least specifications for the internals of the affected switcheroos, which wasn't the case for many chips for a long time, and still isn't for all of them.
Then there is the part of writing a unifying and usable abstraction for all of that, which also isn't fully there yet, at least not for every device under the sun.
Read up here: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/networking/switchdev....
In almost all cases, OpenWRT extends rather than restricts device capabilities.
That said: choose your hardware based on OpenWRT support if at all possible.
- Seems very badly out of date.
- Far more limited capabilities
- Much less clear upgrade capabilities / path.
If it works for you, then sure. I'd lean strongly to OpenWRT.
Much of my dd-wrt comments also applies to Tomato from what I've been able to sort.
dd-wrt and Tomato were built for systems as they existed a decade or two ago, notably the venerable Linksys WRT54G router. These work, but have highly constrained hardware.