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Comment by ramphastidae | Hacker News Reader

IMHO, skip OpenWRT. It is much more difficult to get working correctly than HN likes to admit. There’s a non-trivial chance you will spend hours and hours reflashing your router and reading forum posts until you eventually brick it. It’s just like Raspberry Pis. Theoretically the right choice but practically speaking a huge time sink and poor, unstable experience that is best left to hobbiest tinkering or networking professionals with a lot of spare time.

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Forgive me if this sounds arrogant, but I think the general HN user is capable of handling the relatively simple UI based download and flash required to use OpenWRT. Likewise, using a raspberry pi is probably trivial for most developers. If not, I'm being under paid.

I think most people are capable. It’s whether it’s worth it. I loved learning more about Linux and networking with it, and loved having automatic cell failover, but at the end of the day, it was too unreliable.

So, forgive me for how this sounds, but the general HN user probably needs a reliable as possible internet link.

Again, it's a download and a 'flash' in a GUI. Probably couldn't be simpler. As for reliability, my house has two of the same routers - one runs openwrt, the other runs the factory default (unfortunately it's not mine, so I can't just change it at will). Can you guess which is unreliable? It's the factory default.

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.

“Works on my machine” isn’t a very constructive response. You have a lot more work than that to do if you don’t get the right hardware. It’s decent if you don’t change the defaults, I guess but then what’s the point?! Try installing almost any package and sometimes it will just lock up.

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?

I wish! That'd be rad.

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?

Say you pick up an average HNer and if they couldn’t pick up a Pi make it do a barrel roll in couple days, you might be disappointed. But if you could give them an Amazon URL and he could set up a Wi-Fi infra with >95% SLA in 5 minutes, there can literally be cost difference measured at $10k range, for a minor detriment of having an annoying router in the household.

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.

I just don't believe this is true.

This is very different from my experiences. You need to spend a little time setting up any router, and the only meaningful added step for a basic working configuration when compared to stock is the flashing process. Once you have it working, in my experience, it's incredibly reliable.

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 don't really see what you're talking about. I've flashed all of my routers and _never_ had a problem.

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

Your post history says you use Dvorak and Vim, and were tinkering with your school’s network at 15, so I think my point stands :)

I would second the parent, I installed and use OpenWRT on my router without much issue. Flashing and configuring was quite easy, and really the most difficult part was actually getting the router because the local shops (MediaMarkt) don’t have many/any compatible routers.

If somewhat recently, which model, because MediaMarkt is also my main local option (RIP, Conrad)

Well, indeed you're right on this point but on the second hand flashing a router is just selecting the firmware and clicking on "Flash". I never had a bricked router. I didn't flash a lot, but at least 6 or so. Maybe I was lucky

Everyone should strive to this level of competence, and I like that some of the posts here (like advice for installing OpenWRT) kind of force it

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

Being efficient is part of being smart. Sadly the older you are the less time you have to spend time trying to fix things that you don't care about, and the less the knowledge you gain is worth to you (simply because you have less career- and life-span left to use it).

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.

Tomato, is that still going strong? I remember using it for its MLPPP capability. The QoS never worked that well with it as I recall.

FWIW I've had the opposite experience. The stock firmware on my TP-Link router was awful. It was a pain to update and I frequently had to reboot the thing because it decided to stop working. Installing OpenWRT took maybe 15 minutes and an hour or so of fiddling and setting up my port forwarding and static IPs. Now my router's uptime is measured in months (and that's only because of power outages)

Nothing in life has a 100% success rate. But I think the fact that most people recommend OpenWrt, shows that most people don't have these crazy problems. Buy well-supported hardware, follow the directions carefully, and you'll be just fine.

Certainly. But I had a very difficult time. I purchased an ASUS router recommended by the OpenWRT website, followed directions but struggled for hours, and eventually bricked it only to find out later via searching forum posts that some routers with that model number are not supported if they were made in a specific year (of course, this was discovered via trial and error by other frustrated forum members, no one had updated the original recommendations to reflect this, and installing the recommended firmware destroyed the router irreversibly).

Really irreversible, or could it be reflashed via so called 'JTAG-cable', and serial terminal, tftp, or maybe even https://www.flashrom.org/Flashrom (but then with other cables and plugs, because most likely directly writing into the chip without any intermediaries)?

I would personally avoid ASUS as they tend to use Broadcom NICs, which never have good free software support. If one was recommended, maybe it was an exception, but I'd still try to avoid ASUS.

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.

This was exactly what happened to me. Certain tp-link routers made specifically for Italy got bricked if you installed OpenWRT on them.

If you manage to brick your router by messing with OpenWRT, you're maybe better of with the factory default 'for dummies' interface. Most cheap plastics have something like 'recovery' built in. It's like rescue 'BIOS' becoming active after a while, or via some reset button push code, where it is accessible on a default IP, and reflashable via browser. This seems to be the case since at about 10 years? What sometimes is lacking, is the documentation about the specifics of factory defaults for different devices and revisions thereof.

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.

I think you just need to go in with an understanding of what a router and related things (access point, switch, modem etc.) actually are. Too many people think router is just "that thing that gives me internet via wifi". If you are one of those, you might not have a good time with OpenWRT or Pfsense etc.

The Turris Omnia is preconfigured with OpenWRT, specifically tuned to the hardware, and auto-updates.

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.

OpenWRT is the only thing I would recommend - all the consumer routers have turned to trash.

Eero is an exception there. Their quality is terrific.

> IMHO, skip OpenWRT. It is much more difficult to get working correctly than HN likes to admit.

Does not match my experience at all. My router would regularly go offline with the stock firmware which never happened after I flashed OpenWRT.

took about q5 minutes to setup. perhaps you chose the wrong router.

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