OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

832 309 16 days ago

This is the official shop page afaict: https://www.bpi-shop.com/products/banana-pi-openwrt-one-rout...

williadc2• 16 days ago

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.

freedomben• 16 days ago

Does it have parental controls natively or did you have to install something extra?

I would love to be able to whitelist which devices are allowed to access the internet during night time hours.

williadc2• 16 days ago

I do it the opposite way, disable my kids' devices at night, but I suspect your desired method would also be supported using native features. I have found LLMs to be very helpful in providing the right settings.

There is a plugin marketplace that provides more features, like ad-blocking. I haven't played with those yet, so I cannot vouch for them.

drdaeman• 16 days ago

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.

daringrain32781• 16 days ago

It’s for developers as far as I understand, it’s not meant to buy as a consumer router. There is far better hardware you can get that runs OpenWRT.

petee4• 16 days ago

It does raise the question that if it is for developers, what exactly is being developed? Especially if its not representative of hardware that is available or desired; is there some advantage targeting a very particular chipset? This seems to be the only device using it (from what i could find briefly)

aidenn02• 16 days ago

A 5 port 2.5GbE switch would upgrade this to 5 total ports (4x 2.5GbE), and costs less than $100. If you only need 1GbE then it's even cheaper.

Outside of home-labs, it's rare for me to see any devices connected to the LAN side of a wireless router these days, and more than 1 (i.e. the non-portable device that is closest to the router) is exceedingly rare.

PcChip• 16 days ago

Outside of home-labs, it's rare for me to see any devices connected to the LAN side of a wireless router these days

I would assume every gaming desktop computer would be? I actually assumed every desktop would be...

petee4• 16 days ago

2.5 is the WAN, so your lan is only getting 1g anyway

hoherd• 16 days ago

Chaining a switch off the gateway is the best way to do it anyway. If you do that, then when you reboot your gateway, your lan devices do not lose their physical link and can continue talking to each other.

ssl-312• 16 days ago

That's enough connectivity for a gigabit WAN pipe and a LAN full of stuff (including one or more better/faster APs), if a person wants to slice it up that way.

kennywinker4• 16 days ago

$106usd or $84usd without a case and antennas. That’s a solid price. Wish it had more than 1gb ram - goddamn datacenters.

ssl-312• 16 days ago

Without performing any work at all to optimize RAM usage: My all-singing, all-dancing OpenWRT router projects have always used less than 100MB of RAM. These days, they usually occupy less than 64MB.

1GB is a ton of RAM for this kind of application. :) What do you anticipate needing more for?

kennywinker4• 16 days ago

Blocky/pihole type stuff is what comes to front of mind, which probably fits but add anything else and now you’re hitting the limit.

mjevans• 16 days ago

Not even for the OS itself, but for the freaking wifi send / receive windows...

baggachipz3• 16 days ago

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.

voltaireodactyl• 16 days ago

Similar to XBMC at least for a long time.

boobsbr• 16 days ago

I still have a WRT54GL sitting in a box somewhere.

EvanAnderson• 16 days ago

The best model of the WRT54G line. I would snag them at thrift stores for cheap to use for silly utility functions. I always referred to that particular model as "The highly-coveted WRT54GL."

I used a pair to provide Internet access at a Customer's construction site back in 2010. Cell phone hotspot wasn't a thing for me yet. We took a pair of WRT54Gs, configured one as a WiFi client, the other as a bog-standard router/AP, connected the LAN from the client to the WAN on the router/AP, pur a directional antenna onto the "client", and pointed it down the road toward a big business who offered free WiFi for Customers. We leeched off that until the real Internet service got installed. (It was a restaurant and we ate there at least once so we were Customers, right? >smile<)

srik• 16 days ago

Used to work for that model. Great device for it’s time.

mohaine• 16 days ago

I'm pretty sure the software side of the project is a direct descendent from the WRT54G stack.

LinkSys got sued to release the firmware as it was GPL linked. This dump got modified to make the WRT54G way more powerful than LinkSys ever planned but they got to sell the hardware for years more than would have been expected at the time.

baggachipz3• 16 days ago

Yeah, I loved it because it allowed me to boost the signal above FCC-approved power requirements and saturate my house with that sweet 2.4GHz connection everywhere.

commandersaki• 16 days ago

Yeah, Linksys made a killing from this and the WRT54GS 2.0 because of OpenWRT.

kalleboo3• 16 days ago

Yeah it was so popular they even released a specific WRT54GL model (where the L stands for Linux) in order to keep supporting third-party firmware after the main hardware series moved on to a more optimized VxWorks-based OS that let them ship less RAM and Flash.

A mainstream hardware company releasing a specific product SKU to support third party firmware really sounds crazy from the perspective of the current market where a substantial portion of the value in selling hardware is supposed to come from subscriptions and surveillance.

philamonster2• 16 days ago

Recycled 4 or so WRT54G variants a couple years ago I ran Tomato on for friend's small businesses and my home in early 2000's.

tracker12• 16 days ago

I miss the Tomato UI/UX... I don't care for LUCU or OpnSense's UI by comparison...

Been using OpnSense for about 8 years now though... it's just been the best option for me, I use separate commercial AP.

somat• 16 days ago

Did WRT mean anything? Wireless RouTer?

grvbck• 15 days ago

Wireless Router or Wireless Router Technology is the common interpretation, but to my knowledge, Linksys has never officially confirmed this.

pbmonster• 16 days ago

it was originally alternate firmware for the Linksys WRT54G router from 25 years ago

There's a couple of fun examples like that. xda-developers is named after the O2 xda, a smartphone from 25 years ago that not many people ended up developing software for.

ornornor• 16 days ago

Well we still use Roman months and weekdays, and carry over the 30/31 days months even though we could’ve had a way better system by now (base 10 and equal divisions)

ChrisArchitect• 16 days ago

Some previous discussion around the launch in 2024:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42285689

PaulKeeble3• 16 days ago

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.

routelastresort• 16 days ago

Hopefully, dual 2.5gbe too?

JoshTriplett2• 16 days ago

I'm hoping for one with at least two 10Gbps ethernet ports (one for upstream, one for downstream). Ideally more, but two would be great.

PaulKeeble3• 16 days ago

The other devices based on the same filogic chip do have dual 2.5Gbps at least.

You can get a Wifi 7 device and 2x2.5GBps with Wifi 7 support already with the Asus BT8 and a few other devices. Asus's bootloader firmware flasher will take the initial OpenWRT image so its really quite simple to get going.

WithinReason• 16 days ago

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:

http://www.gl-inet.com/en-gb/products/gl-be9300

NekkoDroid• 16 days ago

expected availability is late '25.

T-T. Any update on the timeframe (and presumably also I would expect the expected price to be solidly in the mid to high 300s at this point)?

da768• 16 days ago

Latest speculation would be that they don't have a manufacturer anymore https://www.reddit.com/r/openwrt/comments/1rnr0sv/what_happe...

BikiniPrince• 16 days ago

Gl.Inet ships with their openwrt version. I have the last version and it can be flashed to vanilla openwrt or one a high speed branch. It’s been good and fast. I don’t need wifi 7 yet so I have time.

eisa01• 16 days ago

Would you be able to set this up as a simple mesh with two units?

I have two old Amplifi HD units in wireless backhaul mesh that I’d like to upgrade

vsviridov2• 16 days ago

Why do they always have to look like some unholy blend of a cybernetic spider and a Knight Rider? What happened to a plain unassuming looking piece of industrial hardware...

draygonia• 16 days ago

In my opinion, get the Flint 2, the Flint 3 doesn't work with vanilla OpenWRT (but it does work with GL.iNet's OpenWrt fork). Then again, I don't need the 5x2.5G ports or Wifi 7 since my internet only goes to 1G.

Aspos3• 16 days ago

deleted.

ehnto• 16 days ago

I have really liked my GL.iNet travel router, also with OpenWRT. I didn't think I would need a travel router but they're pretty handy.

I didn't realise routers like theirs existed, and had been paying through the nose for your standard brands like TPLink and hoping it didn't get popped.

brunorro3• 16 days ago

Hey, I think this is important, Flint 3 relies on a Qualcomm chipset, so, at least some weeks ago, no vanilla OpenWRT was available for it (Qualcomm kernel).

On the other hand, if you can live with Wifi 6 and only 2x2.5Gbps ports (and 4x1Gbps), Flint 2 is powered with a Mediatek chipset, that runs a 100% vanilla OpenWRT.

Both are 1GB RAM, 8GB emmc little beasts that can even run some docker containers. IMHO Flint2 is in the top 5 for SOHO OpenWRT supported routers

prima-facie• 16 days ago

https://openwrt.org/voting/2025-02-12-openwrt-two

Glinet are doing a great job with their routers. I have the Beryl AX which is fully openwrt compatible. The new Beryl 7 is also fully compatible now. Mediatek chips might not be as high performance as Qualcomm but they make up in openness.

Edit: They just announced Flint 4 with a Mediatek chip:

https://www.gl-inet.com/en-gb/products/gl-be14000

3abiton• 15 days ago

I run OpenWrt on 2 of my routers. It's really amazing the level of control. Although, I am now building a better approach: a mini PC as a managed linux router replacing my ISP (no wifi). Then my 2 wifi routers for wifi.

zamalek• 15 days ago

That router uses OpenWRT, but only official firmware can be installed. The Asus ZenWifi BT7 is currently widely recommended if you want to go OpenWRT Wifi7.

mrsssnake• 16 days ago

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.

protocolture2• 16 days ago

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.

xattt• 16 days ago

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.

Abishek_Muthian• 16 days ago

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...

[2] https://abishekmuthian.com/openwrt-login-alert/

embedding-shape2• 16 days ago

OpenWrt is a great piece of software(firmware) to prevent ISPs selling your browsing data to the advertisers.

Huh, how? Either ISPs are doing deep packet inspection, and can track your browsing data regardless of what firmware you run, or they don't, and it still doesn't matter what firmware you use on your switches/routers, you ISP still won't be able to see TLS traffic, which most internet traffic is today.

xelxebar5• 16 days ago

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!

[0] https://www.turris.com/en/products/omnia-NG/

msh• 16 days ago

Less congestion in WiFi dense environments like apartment buildings due to the additional bandwidth and improved efficiency

mbana4• 16 days ago

Is this actually stock OpenWRT?

I mean is it supported by vanilla OpenWRT image?

I do like the board though.

voxadam• 16 days ago

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.

Why not use OPNsense on a mini PC?

zamadatix• 16 days ago

Screw the max theoretical bandwidths for marketing, without 6 GHz (which would need 6E or 7) and the improved airtime efficiency I can barely get a few hundred jittery mbps standing next to my AP because the airspace is so crowded where I live.

SirMaster• 16 days ago

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.

FractalParadigm• 16 days ago

I just bought a house and this was the conclusion I came to. A cheap PoE-capable multigig switch and a single Omada access point cost about the same as a cheap WiFi 7-capable router would have. I did opt to run the Omada Controller software on a Raspberry Pi instead of buying a hardware controller (to save a few bucks); maybe if I had a lot more hardware it'd make sense but for my one AP it's more than capable. So far I'm quite pleased, it gives me the peace-of-mind knowing that WiFi upgrades are effectively plug-and-play - plug in the AP, adopt it in the controller, add it to the site, and the existing network is already being broadcast - no more router reconfiguration every few years!

mindslight• 16 days ago

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.

aborsy3• 16 days ago

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.

magicalhippo• 16 days ago

I agree on the upgrade story, though supposedly the recent move to apk will help in that regard.

I moved from pfSense to OpenWRT due to the really poor IPv6 support in pfSense. I don't use the AP capability either. How are things in OPNSense these days?

Particular pain points from pfSense was that it published global IP as DNS address to LAN clients and no way around it, so connectivity broke every time prefix changed, and no real support for specifying prefix-less firewall rules or similar, so couldn't really expose anything via IPv6 without pain.

frugalmail• 16 days ago

You're right, it's interesting that this device isn't the most technically superior in hardware or software, and isn't the most casual user friendly. It seems to be targeting a segment I can't bucket other than loyalists. Maybe good hardware & software for the cost?

letmetweakit2• 16 days ago

Upgrades are “owut upgrade” these days. Pretty straightforward.

ssl-312• 16 days ago

Maybe so. The documentation seems to be all over the map, and the GUI suggests using "attended sysupgrade" for upgrades.

...which I tried doing, a week or so ago, for a minor point release update within the 25.12.x series. And then the router went out to lunch and didn't come back.

Getting it going again wasn't so bad as such things go. My router has a huge advantage here in that it's a Raspberry Pi 4, so it's easy to remove/replace/re-do the flash device and start over.

(Except: I get all out of sorts when I need to do Internet stuff to fix my Internet connection while that Internet connection is absent.)

stoltzmann• 16 days ago

OpenWRT is very good, but the installation and upgrades are not easy.

The solution is to use image-builder and bake your config into the image.

IgorPartola5• 16 days ago

All of that is a nope. The solution is that a router should have a standard unattended upgrade system built into it that is on by default and pulls from the stable release stream, preserves your configuration automatically with a 100% guarantee of it working, automatically falls back to the last known working image if the update fails, and has a way to notify you of what’s going on with it. This must work out of the box with the first install without you having to do anything at all or even be aware of it except perhaps setting the time of day and day of week/month when the router is allowed to reboot itself for the upgrades (but the default should be set automatically by the system). Anything less than that is simply broken for anything that is considered production quality. Words like “image builder” and “config baked into the image” are for those developing the system, not end users.

c0l03• 16 days ago

Your OpenWrt ecosystem knowledge seems oudated; upgrades are a solved problem since the advent of "Attended Sysupgrade": https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/installation/attended.sy...

It's been included in all suitable default image configurations starting with OpenWrt release 25.12.

I do run OpenWrt on my x86-based router, on my AP, and even on my managed switches, and have no regrets.

aborsy3• 16 days ago

Indeed, I was referring to Attended Sysupgrade in luci or CLI.

tw042• 16 days ago

So an image released in March? I’m not sure I’d proclaim it completely solved when it’s been ga for all of three months.

manbart• 16 days ago

What switches are you running it on?

drnick14• 16 days ago

How about OPNSense on open hardware of your choice

Yes, it's a possibility, but if you want to tinker, I think a plain Linux distro like Debian is better. Turning it into a router is literally a couple of kernel parameters and a few iptables rules to set up NAT. Nowadays that's less than fives minutes of work with Claude.

This buys you much better performance and hardware compatibility relative to a BSD system, as well as lower resource usage and attack surface (no GUI or other unnecessary additions). WiFi support on BSD is bad, but on Linux you can use hostapd and almost immediately get an access point for free. And of course Linux is also better if you intend to run other stuff on the same hardware.

julkali• 16 days ago

Please support your claim about (networking) performance of BSD-based systems and Linux with some source(s). It surprised me. Thank you.

inventor77772• 16 days ago

But what if you don't want to tinker? I switched to OPNsense as a direct replacement for our Asus "WiFi routers", and it has been phenomenal, reliable, and does everything needed - when you just want it to work, it really just does. But when you want more advanced functions, there are tons of plugins and stuff that you can run natively, while still having a true CLI.

I suppose it comes down to what you said - "if you intend to run other stuff on the same hardware." Is it a good idea to run all sorts of extra stuff on your literal firewall/router? And if you did, I'd assume using a hypervisor is safer anyway? That way you can have the GUI and reliability of OPNsense but have a Linux distro beside it.

You also said that Linux has much better performance vs BSD, which seems rather far fetched. Got any data for that?

One other thing: OPNsense comes with a ton of helpful rules to eliminate bot traffic, allow IPv6, different NATs, VLANS, etc which you'd have to add manually. Not the end of the world, but worth considering.

tapper5• 16 days ago

Some people want a webinterface tho.

miladyincontrol• 16 days ago

Thats more or less what I did, and nix just made sense for the job. For 99% of people I'd say no its not worth it to tinker, just go with opnsense virtualized so you get at least some the benefits of the better linux drivers. By that I mean NBASE-T on various intel chips and while intel's igb is fairly solid on unixes many other vendors' drivers are less so. However if you're willing to figure out configuring per your needs you definitely can get a lower latency router with all the same capabilities and more, with it's components more sanely isolated via containers.

randusername• 16 days ago

OpenWRT is very good, but the installation and upgrades are not easy.

Agreed that separate router and dumb AP is the way. Every time I updated OpenWRT there was some gotcha that created an unexpected headache where I had to rebuild my elaborate configuration from scratch.

I'm not convinced A -> G upgrade paths are tested, only A -> B -> ... -> F -> G but who manually updates with that level of discipline?

ryandrake• 16 days ago

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?

smallnix• 16 days ago

One example is the introduction of MIMO, a technique to send multiple data streams in the same frequency band in parallel. This requires multiple antennas, i.e. hardware which wasn't there in the previous wifi version. Note this was 2009.

pid-1• 16 days ago

Radio modulation / coding (at least for 802.11) benefits greatly from paralelism (lots of matrix multiplication etc).

I imagine that using an ASIC is way more cost efficient vs using a CPU.

t1234s• 16 days ago

Are these for sale in the US?

pseudosavant2• 16 days ago

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.

woodrowbarlow• 16 days ago

another happy user here too. having openwrt with all features working and no tinkering out of the box (since it's their reference target) is a dream. this, plus the warm fuzzies of buying open-source, makes it worth it to me even with the 1GBps limitation and outdated WiFi (i use a separate AP anyway, like you). i swapped my ports in software to have 1GB WAN and 2.5GB LAN (which also lets me power the router with PoE, which i have coming in on the LAN port).

pmontra• 16 days ago

It's got only one LAN ethernet port. Do you use only wifi or did you add a switch between the router and your devices?

pseudosavant2• 16 days ago

I have it going into a 16-port gigabit switch, which my OpenWrt-based APs and wired devices are hooked into.

nh2• 16 days ago

I have 4 OpenWRT Ones and they are good.

If you just want a good WiFi router or access point, unless you need something cannot do (e.g. WiFi 7 or 10 Gbit/s Ethernet), and if want to spend minimal time messing around with routers today and in the future, just get this one.

After getting this, I see no reason to ever buy any closed-source router again.

No need to learn/remember any other Router config either. It's just all OpenWRT, always looks the same, always works the same. Setting up a new one takes me 2 minutes max.

The recent OpenWRT update also brought the one feature the project was most sorely missing: A simple "Download and install latest firmware" button in the device UI.

Now they just need to add an unattended-upgrades option and I never have to log in again after initial setup.

tcdent2• 16 days ago

Gigabit / 2.5 Gbit connectivity is already obsolete. Any modern product must have 10gbe WAN with the hardware to back up NAT at that throughput.

drnick14• 16 days ago

It's not obsolete, it's basically the contemporary baseline. Remember, this is a cheap device. And unlike most Chinese garbage, you can be reasonably certain that it isn't backdoored.

ThrowawayTestr• 16 days ago

For a home network 2.5 is plenty.

tcdent2• 16 days ago

https://frontier.com/shop/internet/fiber-internet/7-gig

7gig WAN is widely available residentially at a reasonable cost.

jtokoph• 16 days ago

200 horsepower vehicles are also obsolete. Any modern car should have 500 horsepower with the braking and safety systems to back it up.

dylan604• 16 days ago

That's such an assumption of needs. For someone to be using a 10g capable NAT would be some sort of super nerd with such a small portion of the population. More and more households have no compute device other than their devices. With WiFi routers now being sold with OpenWRT installed, it no longer means you're in the nerd category for installing it.

BLKNSLVR4• 16 days ago

Not for a cheapish device that is suitable for my parents that I'd be happy to administer.

No need for a Tundra when an electric scooter does the job.

hylaride2• 16 days ago

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.

sourweasel2• 16 days ago

Have you looked at the BPI-R4? It's a pricier option than the OpenWRT One, but it has excellent hw acceleration for networking tasks. I am 90% sure I recall someone reporting using it for a 2.5Gbps PPPoE connection and it handled it. It's also supported by the OpenMPTCProuter project if you need network aggregation support.

Namidairo• 16 days ago

While they're okay on paper, they managed to burn a lot of customers in regards to the add-on wifi 7 module.

Quite a few of the modules went out without their eeprom programmed correctly, and all of them appear to be plagued by quite mediocre performance from (alleged) inadequate RF shielding on the card.

It looks like they've revised the design, but it's peeved off quite a few of the Banana Pi/Sinovoip customers who have bought them with the intention of using it as a router/ap with their R4. (It's dual-PCIe fingers with unique spacing and requires out of spec PCIe voltages, so it's only practically usable with a BPi R4.)

At the very least, the customers using them as wired-only routers are likely to be having a slightly better experience.

merbanan• 16 days ago

Yes. Mediatek SoCs have hardware acceleration support for that.

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/net/et...

itsrobreally• 16 days ago

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.

timedude• 16 days ago

I have one of these for a few months now. Works like a champ. Firmware updates are very easy now through the web interface.

henryoman• 16 days ago

where to buy?

random__duck3• 16 days ago

Next step: open source hardware ASIC for the open router ?

ZenoArrow2• 16 days ago

An open hardware network-focused ASIC would be cool, but cost and long development times would likely be limiting factors. If you wanted to explore this further, starting with FPGA-based router components would be a good starting point. For example:

https://github.com/open-sdr/openwifi

random__duck3• 15 days ago

Thanks :) Yeah, the router is defiantly further in the future to, as it additionally requires CPU integration for run the software stack, switches are the first order of business.

random__duck3• 15 days ago

Can I do a "hold my beer" moment ? https://github.com/Essenceia/ethernet_switch_asic

buredoranna• 16 days ago

Since we're talking WiFi, I'll mention

https://www.wiisfi.com/

The single best wifi reference I've found to date.

evulhotdog• 16 days ago

This is awesome, thank you for sharing.

This answers so many questions that I had but never had the true desire to research every niche WiFi term.

arwhatever• 16 days ago

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.

pizlonator2• 16 days ago

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 :-)

IgorPartola5• 16 days ago

In case it is not, an old PC with a dual port Intel NIC running OPNSense is so far the best router I have ever used. I mean rock solid performance with near zero maintenance beyond adjusting VLANs and setting up a 6in4 tunnel over the past 5 years solid. My home network is larger, more diverse, and more complex than what I suspect most people have, with several hundred devices and yet I log into the OPNSense UI maybe twice a year and usually just out of curiosity.

The learning curve is a little steeper than more consumer stuff but it is by no means beyond a person who is capable of using OpenWRT and the docs and forum support are better than 99.9% of open source projects I have seen over the past 25 years.

guywithahat• 16 days ago

I don't disagree, however using an old PC as a router almost certainly wastes an enormous among of power. An old non-gaming PC could use 70kWh of power a month if running continuously (as a router would), which is around 11 a month and almost 140 a year. At that price you could just buy a nice router, or an OpenWrt One which will possibly also have newer, faster WiFi standards (WiFi 6)

tapper5• 16 days ago

Hi I tried with OPNSense, but I use a screen reader they made a big song and dance about fixing 11y on there web interface. In the end they did fuck all. OpenWRT has bin good with a screen reader since the start and the few times I have pointed out things to be fixed they have bin fixed with in days. So yeah go OpenWRT.

hyperbovine2• 16 days ago

"Enterprise class" wifi routers from ten years ago sell on eBay for about 1/5th as much, and work just as well for most home or small business applications.

gruez• 16 days ago

Aren't they also missing security patches? I'm not sure about you, but I'd rather have SOHO routers with up to date firmware, than enterprise routers with out of date firmware.

rnxrx• 16 days ago

It's worth being careful here: a lot of the affordable enterprise-class routers from 10+ years ago aren't as fast as cheap consumer hardware - like the OP or just a decent mini PC. The primary arguments for the enterprise-class gear are around feature availability and certain aspects of reliability (redundant power/fans, better heat tolerance, higher quality components). It's also worth remembering that this kind of gear tends to be built for dedicated environments: loud fans, higher power draw/lack of power saving features, etc.

Beside the potential performance and environmental issues the other big downsides tend to include firmware availability - either because download from the site requires a login on the vendor's site or, increasingly commonly, the gear has hit LDOS and images just aren't posted. Obviously there are other "unofficial" places for such images, but the risk/legality are a whole other (potentially serious) question.

There's an additional issue mapping the requirements of home networking to enterprise gear: Ethernet switches are lousy firewalls (little or no NAT, primitive built-in security, DLNA/mDNS and friends aren't really sane options, etc). Finally, even at "1/5" the price the gear may still be quite a bit more expensive than other options. And if it's not expensive, it's usually because nobody wants it any more because of the issues mentioned above (being near- or beyond- LDOS).

FWIW this is from someone who literally built a commercial-class machine room in his house with dedicated AC, subpanels, commercial UPS, etc for data center class Ethernet, Fibre Channel and Infiniband switching as well as carrier-grade routers and still runs "enterprise" grade WLAN and switching and can lay hands on as much as I could reasonably want without too much drama or cost... Going down this road can absolutely be amazing if you either have a.) the background to properly source and run the hardware/software or b.) have a driving desire to learn how to do so or c.) have some very atypical requirements for home networking. Otherwise it tends to not be something to be done lightly.

protocolture2• 16 days ago

I just received my OpenWrt One because I’m tired of dealing with the questionable quality of most routers.

My latest 3 home routers have been mikrotik, mikrotik and juniper.

And the Juniper is still in there, just running as a switch. The old juniper srx sucks at uPNP but is otherwise still a fantastic router if I wanted to swap back to it.

Middle tier mikrotik took a power surge and lost 50% of its ports. It still routed just enough for me to get a replacement.

Latest tik is doing great.

I dont see what the One offers me at all tbh.

bradley_taunt• 16 days ago

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

dominick-cc2• 16 days ago

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.

gonzalohm• 16 days ago

How much did you pay for it?

dominick-cc2• 16 days ago

$200.93 shipped in April 2024 with a wall bracket. No storage or ram though, but it was cheap at the time.

papascrubs• 16 days ago

I virtualize mine with proxmox and pass the necessary NICs through to the VM. Snapshots make rollbacks a breeze. You can also run HA pairs if you want to do updates without downtime.

rgovostes• 16 days ago

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

patchtopic• 16 days ago

I purchased one of these for a family member and it has been great.

wwilson• 16 days ago

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!

CrimsonCape2• 15 days ago

I'd be interested in any more info you can provide. Do you have your router configs in flakes? I'm currently testing Nix in a proxmox VM.

I just finished writing a shell script to dump all the UCI config files to one text file using curly braces to bracket/separate each file with the intent of committing this to a repo. Then will be writing a little parser to chunk up the text file to the appropriate /etc/config structure that OpenWRT expects. So at any point I can then just checkout different git branches, run the parser, and bam the entire config has been written to the router over ssh.

Still trying to figure out if OpenWRT has some other state outside of the /etc/config directory.

ww520• 16 days ago

What does it take to add support for a router? Support for tp-link ax5400 seems missing for a long time.

throwawayk7h• 16 days ago

gl·iNet also runs openWRT. You can even ssh into these routers.

Damogran6• 16 days ago

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....

lofaszvanitt• 16 days ago

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?

blobbers• 16 days ago

madwifi lives on...

alaudet• 16 days ago

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.

denkmoon• 16 days ago

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.

zkmon• 16 days ago

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.

CrimsonCape2• 15 days ago

Ask AI to generate you a UCI config for "<your use case here>".

Reading the raw config files in /etc/config is the opposite of the web UI. The config files are the bare minimum data. Very easy to read.

I have no idea of the wider scope of possibilities that could be written into the config files, but that's where the AI helps.

mintflow• 16 days ago

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

h4kunamata• 16 days ago

I have an ASUS RT-AX53U running OpenWRT for a few years now.

I bought it, turned it on and flashed it out of the box lmao

I like the idea of having their own hardware but it is not easy to get, so buying normal ones and flashing them still the best option.

drewfax• 16 days ago

I too use ASUS RT-AX53U. Decent hardware. But stock firmware was terribly slow. IPv6 didn't even work.

I heard OpenWrt when I searched how to fix the stock firmware. Flashed it and never turned back. Now, OpenWrt is a critical infra in my house for adblocking, DoH, Firewall, Network Segmentation etc. None of these are possible with the stock firmware.

gnyman• 16 days ago

If someone is interested in open hardware running openwrt, also check out Turris.

https://www.turris.com/en/

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.

bana-io• 16 days ago

Are you certain this is running OpenWRT? As in, can I get a OpenWRT build and flash it to the router and have it work?

palata• 16 days ago

They maintain their own fork and they say that they contribute stuff upstream (not sure how much, though).

Last time I checked (a couple years ago), it seemed that I could use OpenWRT but I would lose some functionality (was it the FTT maybe?).

cbarrick• 14 days ago

The Turis Omnia runs a derivative of OpenWrt. They provide a custom UI with an option to switch to LuCI. It's easy to flash it to upstream OpenWRT, which is what I do.

_giorgio_• 16 days ago

Where do you buy the open wrt one? EU

ButlerianJihad5• 16 days ago

I once tried to flash OpenWRT onto a very old router that was EOL, and apparently wherever I had downloaded the firmware it was pre-pwned. There was literally an interface numbered “eth666” and the CLI was playing crazy mind games with me as I tried to configure it.

So I thoroughly destroyed the router and e-wasted it. I honestly never want an open-source router OS ever again.

cik• 16 days ago

What I want is a cheap, brainless wifi 6 or 7 device, that's easy to mesh and extend. I currently have Orbis that are Wifi-5, and I'm sick of the general untrustworthiness. The thing is, like my WRT54G from back in the day, they just work in all situations. It's amazing how stable this kit has been for 7 years.

I'm not in the US. I can't Amazon. I don't want to spend the equivalent of 1k USD just to get 3 devices in a brainless mesh that covers my ~125sqm place made of insane amounts of radio blocking concrete.

I no longer want to maintain my network, to have network. I want things that just work. The Orbi did that for me - but the costing makes me think abut the future, and not finding a painless solution. I guess that's the tradeoff.

To wit, I also want the mesh comms on another channel (i.e 6Ghz, rather then the 2.4/5.0) and the computers/IOTs/etc isolated from that. Perhaps cheap tri-band is insanely wishful thinking. It sure seems that way.

shdh• 16 days ago

WRT54G was so good

11mariom• 16 days ago

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.

Oxodao• 16 days ago

i don't understand the use case for 1x2.5gbs + 1x1gbs for a router. Why not both 2.5gbs it's not like you'll be running lots of stuff on the router itself so it would be more useful to have a wan AND a lan at 2.5 (outside of load balancing for a lot of wifi devices of course)

dhlavaty• 16 days ago

It is any better than other open-source and well established Turris Omnia NG ?

BLKNSLVR4• 16 days ago

It costs about a fifth as much as I just found out.

Turris also specifies 'based on' OpenWRT, rather than straight OpenWRT. In reality there may not be much of a difference, until if/when Turris no longer exists.

lonelyrock42• 16 days ago

https://wrtnova.com/builder/ this builder is cool too!

naruhodo2• 16 days ago

Note that recent (2025-10) batches of the OpenWrt One have an M.2 slot with a detached post at the 2230 position and the shipped product contains no way to attach the post.

The implications of this are going over my head (and TFA should explain it better). I gather that 2230 is a form factor 22x30mm and there's also a 2280 M.2 SSD form factor.

Is this just saying that there's a missing mounting post? So it wobbles? You can't use a certain form factor?

alance• 15 days ago

Sounds like you might need to screw your own mounting post in at the 30mm mark.

naruhodo2• 13 days ago

I'm trying hard but to take offence.

zoobab• 16 days ago

How open are the wifi drivers? (it was an issue with Broadcom and WRT54G)

sigio2• 16 days ago

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.

Palomides• 16 days ago

you can install openwrt on basically any x86 mini-pc, works fine

sigio2• 16 days ago

I know, and I have, however, I would prefer a ultra-low-power arm-based platform.

mbana4• 16 days ago

Frankly I just want https://openelab.io/a/s/products/banana-pi-bpi-r4-pro-1 to work with OpenWRT.

The board linked to in the post doesn't have 10 G LAN, only 10 G WAN unlink. So what do people who have a 10 G internet connection do?

walrus014• 16 days ago

I'm sorry but lack of 802.11be tri band is a non starter in mid 2026 for this price. Someone else commenting in this thread has linked the glinet 802.11be unit which looks like a better option.

I would also highly encourage people to buy a wired only router, and something like a ubiquiti u7 lite or u7 pro AP, and separate the functions of router and AP.

The ubiquiti unifi controller package is really straightforward to install for basic SOHO use on a base Debian stable system.

BLKNSLVR4• 16 days ago

My home setup is pretty much as per your description, but for someone like my parents, this does it all in a single device that uses far less power.

I've recently been setting up a GL.iNet Marble for my folks, with Adguard and some other filtering / security add-ons. This is a bit more expensive, but also more future proof.

walrus014• 15 days ago

A U7-Lite uses less than 14W so even in a month it's not much power, cost wise, even if your power is $0.40 a kWh...

mast6footer• 16 days ago

nice

_joel• 16 days ago

"It's not a router, it's a very naughty board"

husky8• 16 days ago

1x 2.5g WAN

mehdix• 16 days ago

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.

distantsounds• 16 days ago

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.

snapplebobapple• 16 days ago

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)

santiagohzszmex• 15 days ago

Increíble

PovilasID• 15 days ago

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.

deknos• 14 days ago

once i put my on linux on there, will the NICS still operate at maximum speed?

mstaoru• 11 days ago

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.

OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router

Related Stories