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They are working on an OpenWRT Two at the moment which will be Wifi 7.
OpenWRT runs on a lot of hardware and its a great way to extend the life of a router past the manufacturers patches as well as gain a lot of capabilities. I wouldn't buy a commercial router that wasn't supported by OpenWRT now.
The planned specs are here, they say it will be made by GL.iNet:
https://openwrt.org/voting/2025-02-12-openwrt-two
Otherwise this router from GL.iNet has OpenWRT preinstalled, Wifi 7, 5x2.5G:
Why 7 (802.11be) when the bandwidth isn't really used? Genuine question. The GL-BE9300 mentioned here clocks in well within WiFi 5 range even.
I've got 10Gbps fiber at home (egregious, I know), and the only OpenWRT router I found that can saturate it is the Turris Omnia NG[0]. The price tag is a notch up from others but it's legitimately one of the best pieces of hardware I've ever owned. A perf3 test against an in-town server was able to pull 800 Megabytes per second; the router is no joke.
If you have a thick line to your ISP, I highly recommend!
OpenWrt is a great piece of software(firmware) to prevent ISPs selling your browsing data to the advertisers. Although by now most ISPs are probably doing packet inspection.
It's easy to customize, I have a script to notify me when a new device connects to my router[1] and I also have a script to notify me when someone logins into my router[2].
Earlier I used to connect my openwrt router directly to the ISP's switch but now a days they've started to force their 'AI powered' router which is centrally managed. I now have to usee OpenWrt to defend against the ISP's router first and then the broader public network.
[1] https://abishekmuthian.com/openwrt-new-devices-connection-al...
As some not deep into networking, just home(lab) stuff, learning OpenWRT took some time. But now cannot think of buying a router not for OpenWRT, once I learn what is possible I want to use it.
Fot example from my ISP I can have two options for PPPoE connection, first is legacy IPv4 only but lacks IPv6, second is IPv4 but behind CGNAT and with modern IPv6. With OpenWRT, I am able to make two PPPoE connection over the same wire and have the best of both worlds.
Combining the WiFi with the router never made sense to me. Routers can last a long time and WiFi gets new versions with new capabilities every few years.
I would rather just connect a separate wireless AP to my switch, preferably also with PoE. And then I can upgrade and expand that as needed while leaving the perfectly fine router alone.
Hopefully, dual 2.5gbe too?
> I wouldn't buy a commercial router that wasn't supported by OpenWRT now.
Is there any closed-sourced firmware that exceeds OpenWRT performance on the same level of hardware?
I think that some proprietary firmware may have hardware optimizations that aren’t possible in a community-developed environment.
The Two at least seems to have some features to it. Albeit catering to home ethernet enthusiasts.
I would really love to see something like this with just 10 sfp cages, no switching all routed interfaces. A real open source alternative to mikrotik.
Off topic, but what amuses me about the "Wrt" name is that it was originally alternate firmware for the Linksys WRT54G router from 25 years ago. The name has stuck for whatever reason; I guess since only geeks use it and know what it is.
What a coincidence to see this on the front page!
I just received my OpenWrt One because I’m tired of dealing with the questionable quality of most routers.
And I don’t feel like resurrecting my old PC that I used as a router for a while. I stopped doing that because it’s loud. Pretty sure the power supply fan is about to fly off.
But Qualcomm WiFi pci card with giant antenna in a dirt cheap PC running ancient Ubuntu and a simple hostapd setup is so far the most reliable WiFi router I’ve ever had. I hope openwrt one is even better :-)
How about OPNSense on open hardware of your choice, and passing messy wireless to separate AP?
OpenWRT is very good, but the installation and upgrades are not easy. There is a zoo of images for different hardware, installation options and tools. It has to run on small devices, so there are limitations. The documentation on Wiki is scattered and could be improved.
I had to search forums for weeks for a custom package installation for my router. Right now I have been trying to upgrade to the latest version via LUCI for a while, and it stucks. Probably have to wait for few weeks, go through CLI and maybe search forums again.
I just thought I am paying a hefty time price for a bit more expensive x86 mini pc and AP.
$106usd or $84usd without a case and antennas. That’s a solid price. Wish it had more than 1gb ram - goddamn datacenters.
If someone is interested in open hardware running openwrt, also check out Turris.
I have been using them for years and I'm really happy. I recently bought the WiFi 6 upgrade kit for both of my turris. They "recently" released their latest version which is expensive but comes with WiFi 7 and 2.5 Gbps RJ45 and 10 Gbps SPF.
Since we're talking WiFi, I'll mention
The single best wifi reference I've found to date.
I have and love my OpenWrt One for my main router. I have two, so that I have a backup one I can switch to if the first one ever dies. It is the best device to run OpenWrt on as it is fully supported hardware that has great images/packages for it. Routing speeds/buffer/latency are great, everything just works, price is very reasonable.
I don't use it for my APs, but that is mostly because I already had 3 TP-Link routers setup as dumb APs using OpenWrt that have been working great. If I did it again, I'd buy OpenWrt Ones though. Although Deco mesh kits I've used have worked exceptionally well, and have become my recommendation for friends/family that don't want to do things like run arbitrary packages on their router/APs.
I've recently been test driving SPR[1] which is a security-oriented distro for Wi-Fi routers. The team behind it are serious about Wi-Fi security and have a research lab[2] that has been credited with several CVEs in the likes of Apple's network stack. The headline feature is strong device isolation for semi-trusted guest and home automation devices, and the software stack is based around containerized and audited Go daemons.
It ran pretty well for me as a travel router I cobbled together from a Raspberry Pi and Netgear A7500 USB dongle for a stay in a short-term rental where the infrastructure network was shared with other units. More recently I have been trialing their CM5-based model with Wi-Fi 7 and 2.5GbE PoE for use as primary home Wi-Fi.
1: https://www.supernetworks.org 2: https://www.supernetworks.org/security-labs.html
I switched from a Google Wifi to this and found it to be just as stable, but with better range/signal strength, and easier to apply the parental controls I want.
I use opnsense with an aliexpress n100 router. It works very well and I enjoy it. But upgrades scare the crap out of me. I've only had 1 upgrade where things went bad. I have zfs snapshots and everything, but just because its a headless unit, I get super anxiety upgrading the system waiting for the beeps for it to come back online.
This is the official shop page afaict: https://www.bpi-shop.com/products/banana-pi-openwrt-one-rout...
As someone who knows very little about WiFi, I always thought it sucked that if you wanted to go from 802.11this to 802.11that, it always requires brand new hardware with a different WiFi chip that implemented the new standard. Is there a good reason that software-defined 802.11 doesn't exist and that every new standard requires a different radio+SoC?
Just two Ethernet ports (1+2.5GbE), and it’s dual-band (no 6GHz)… I’m not sure who’s the target audience or what’s the use case.
I have one of these and love it, especially after I once bricked it during a manual software update and got to use the dip switch reset to reflash it using the ROM.
I wish it had more ethernet ports but I've managed to live with that. I'd be up for buying an OpenWrt Two as a backup or to replace this if it has even one more LAN jack.
There is definitely beauty in having a separate router device that chugs on just fine regardless what happens to the rest of your network. But I got bored with the constantly-churning embedded culture, bespoke OS's (sorry, OpenWRT), and VPNs generally want more CPU than what purpose-built "routers" have. So I just went back to the old way of using a plain Linux machine as the gateway (now virtualized, with NixOS and nftables) and couldn't be happier. WiFi AP is done by that same physical machine (not virtualized) and by two other amd64 machines that double as Kodi boxes. When you learn netfilter/iproute2, that experience carries to anything else you might switch to.
Does it have hardware PPPoE offloading? Because it's a huge issue for those of us stuck with old-school telecoms for our fibre connections. Doing PPPoE at gigabit speeds needs something that can handle it.
I'd love to see more OpenWRT hardware that was capable of 2x2.5, 2x5 or 2x10gbit without any wifi, preferably in a case that can be rackmounted without too much trouble (so keeping it under 1U height). I'm currently running a stack of Zyxel T5600's, which are quite capable arm64 openwrt boxes. Those in a rackmount but with sodimm support or in 8+GB ram versions (and some sata/nvme storage, USB3) would be amazing.
Some previous discussion around the launch in 2024:
OpenWRT is amazing. Other than the usual security stuff one of the most overlooked use cases was scheduling other devices. Router is always on and with eatherwake it can orchestrate turning on other networked devices. I also run rtl sdr to capture local weather reports.
OpenWRT is used as base for a surprising amount of edge devices.
I have similar board, from same producer - BananaPi BPI-R3 Mini.
Got cheaper version without case - designed simple box with cutouts and 3d printed it out.
I can say it works flawlessly. I'm very happy about it. Previously I was using openwrt on different consumer-grade routers and I always had some issues, even when selecting supported devices.
I'd like something bigger than 1gb for the LAN port...yeah, most of my stuff is quick from a wifi standpoint, but I don't want the hardwired stuff to be second class citizens.
Looking at one of these when TP-link stops patching my Wifi. https://www.toptonpc.com/product/2x10g-sfp-solid-firewall-mi....
I became interested in OpenWrt when I noticed that the cloud portal for my ISP reported to me the names and types of devices that were associated to my home access point/router.
Suddenly I want to put every IPS device into dumb bridge mode, and run my own damn router.
Didn't they position it as a "development board" that happens to be a router?
Personally I find vanilla Sinovoip (aka "BananaPi") products to be more interesting. OpenWRT One adds strange connectors but for some reason removes R2/3/4's cellular-focused PCIe-but-actually-USB slot, M.2 slot, and leaves just one LAN port.
I have a Cisco MR18 router that bridges my LAN to my remote NAS. It would have become e-waste if not for OpenWrt.
When I was visiting my mom a few years back in my hometown, I converted her cheap plastic Xiaomi Mi router into an ordinary router using the OpenWRTInvasion exploit. That router then bridged a remote SIP phone to the main LAN, which was connected to the internet through another plastic router that had also been turned into an ordinary router, again thanks to OpenWrt.
That project is fantastic, and the people behind it are doing great work. Can't recommend them highly enough.
Bpi does a nice job on open source hardware and openwrt integration, but only 2 ports in this model is really good?
Just update my bpi-r3 purchased years ago from 24.x to 25.12, it need a bit of extra work because the sfp interface is renamed(though I never used that), and i finally just do plain sysupgrade only and add some required packages because i run a customized fd.io vpp build on the bpi-r3, connected via vhost-net backed tuntap, it works well, I never regret bought this machine, with current agent stuffs, i think bpi r3 model may be more fun to play with
Been using Openwrt for years, router and access points. Any new AP I buy has to has to be supported by Openwrt. I have probably bought 7 or 8 old AP's at yard sales over the years for $5/$10 and turned them into decent wifi access points back to an Openwrt router running vlans, bandwidth monitoring, QoS, tcpdump for ssh dump with wireshark.
Just excellent, some pretty smart people in the Openwrt forum as well if you have problems.
If you're remotely interested in this stuff you should go ahead and set all this up yourself on a debian or such. Great learning experience.
I started down my “custom” home network journey with OpenWrt and some aftermarket hardware routers. Enjoyed my time using / playing with it.
After some time though, I eventually moved over to using OpenBSD directly. My small brain has a much better understanding of all the moving parts compared to that of OpenWrt :P
It is any better than other open-source and well established Turris Omnia NG ?
I’ve been running one for a while and love it. Have also built a Nix -> OpenWRT config language transpiler so that I can keep my router state in Nix files and have nice deterministic rollbacks etc. It’s been great!
the single 2.5gb port kills me. you may as well just have 2 gigabit ports at that point. and don't tell me the wifi is the selling point either, you won't get much more than a gig off 6e.
How open are the wifi drivers? (it was an issue with Broadcom and WRT54G)
is there any decent management software for a whole network of these yet? That's what keeps me going back to unifi with opnsense as the router. Last I checked it was basically openwisp, which was hugely painful/complicated to get working when I last looked a few years ago. I would love nothing more than to have a viable option to start replacing the unifi stuff (even better if there is also 10gb switching but that feels like an absolute pipedream still without a large budget for datacenter gear)
Flashed my TP-LINK router last week with openwrt bin file, to get wifi to ethernet bridge. Working awesome.
There are too many settings. Feels like Gimp (vs paintbrush). But once figured out, it works well.
I purchased one of these for a family member and it has been great.
https://wrtnova.com/builder/ this builder is cool too!
Did anyone, ever do a security evaluation of the most common network chips on the market? How much would it cost, are there even companies doing this?