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Comment by boringuser2 | Hacker News Reader

Personally, OpenWRT doesn't really sell me nowadays as having a ton of value.

For a router, you can feasibly use an off the shelf prosumer device like Unifi, or, more compellingly, an actual robust OS like OpnSense, PfSense, Sophos or Untangle.

As for access point capability, that should really be segmented, and any off the shelf Ruckus, Aruba, Unifi etc. will always outperform the drivers available to OpenWRT. I'm a staunch advocate of an eBay ruckus 510 or 610, which will be very little in terms of cost and also your best home access point ever.

It's nice that it's open source and all, but in terms of raw performance or value-add, I don't see it. Open source for the sake of open source is... well, another discussion.

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I agree that OpenWRT isn't absolutely the best, but anything you have mentioned above (prosumer devices like Unifi, or separate APs like Ruckus, Aruba) will cost far more than a simple consumer level combined router-and-AP with OpenWRT.

You probably don't see it because you are used to spending big bucks on your networking equipment whereas most people will spend $50 and then install OpenWRT to wring the most value out of it.

You can buy a Ruckus r610 for $40 from eBay.

It's not a package deal, but router hardware for Pfsense or OpnSense, or even a Tp link or Unifi device isn't exactly breaking the bank.

It's also vastly superior enough for the Open WRT to not be worth it.

Does OpenWRT appeal to people with a low degree of knowledge, time or skill? Heck no.

The most applicable scenario I can think of is someone who is very knowledgeable and has a lot of time but very little money, but OpenWRT exclusively as a device for people who live in India or Brazil is again not super compelling to *me* as a technological package.

Though I respect conceptually that other people might have different perspectives, I live in a country with an average living standard, so I can't really share it.

OpenWRT enables people to build mesh networks. I helped building some by being part of a Freifunk community and it was a great feeling - you get to tinker around with network stuff and in doing so help others (free wifi for everyone, yay!).

Free wifi of all things is probably on the lower end of my list when it comes to helping people.

Huh, why? Internet access is close to a human right these days, IMHO.

> The most applicable scenario I can think of is someone who is very knowledgeable and has a lot of time but very little money

Yup. That was me as a high school student. Or rather, I wanted to be very knowledge, and did have a lot of time and very little money. OpenWRT was perfect to get started with tinkering with networking.

> As for access point capability, that should really be segmented, and any off the shelf Ruckus, Aruba, Unifi etc. will always outperform the drivers available to OpenWRT. I'm a staunch advocate of an eBay ruckus 510 or 610, which will be very little in terms of cost and also your best home access point ever.

This. Your comments about open source are relevant but IMO these days with work from home, tons of devices, larger/more well constructed homes, increased traffic for anything/everything, etc managed APs are just the way to go.

I'm a big advocate of OpenWRT but many years ago I got sick of fiddling with basic connectivity on a regular basis and dropped a few hundred dollars on a standard Unifi setup. I haven't touched or thought of my "pipes" since - to me there's nothing worse than being deep flow into a project and then having to fiddle with some router or access point because it's being flaky, dropping packets, negotiating slower link speeds, etc. It's much better than factory firmware in most cases but that's a pretty low bar.

Ubiquiti has had some controversies with data access, cloud stuff, etc but I just can't be bothered to care. For $100 x $NUM APs and a docker container to run the controller it just works.

Unifi has been truly game changing for me in terms of making wifi ethernet level reliable, predictable, and consistent - everywhere without needing to take on yet another level of deep expertise in Wifi.

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