before buying expensive routers check OpenWRT’s table of hardware and buy one that is supported by the current OpenWRT release and has decent specs. There is a detailed installation guide for each supported device in the wiki too so there are no excuses it’s dead simple. Free yourself from stupid hardware manufacturers and their planed obsolescence products.
- Edit: also here is the new version of the table of hardware with more details They seem to have buyers guide too in the wiki.
- Edit2: seems like GL.iNet devices ship with OpenWRT out of the box with their GUI on top and you still have access to openwrt under the hood if you need it which sounds awesome so look into them if you’re interested. Thanks you guys who brought them up.
- Edit3: there is firewall sulotion called OPNSense which is not limited to commercial routers like OpenWRT and can be run on any x86 hardware of your choice (like N100 mini pcs) so look into it if you’re interested. Many thanks to the guys who contributed in the comments
- Edit4: Sorry for the multiple edits but some of you guys suggest some fantastic insights that I had to add. Anyways here is a list of good candidate devices for hassle free installation and yet powerful enough hardware from OpenWRT’s Forum
- I promise it’s gonna be the last Edit. OpenWRT has a official device they made themselves called OpenWRT ONE (I think the second one is also in the works). It hase good specs for home network and you support the project too. Here is the link to official Retailers
For the more rookie people, check out routers that are based on openwrt and have rookie GUI.
OpenWRT is great and powerful but unless you are trying to level your networking skills, it can turn into a biatch real quick beyond basic set up.
That’s interesting like which devices? Could you elaborate
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You prolly right for the audience here but my comment is going after the broader audience tbh
Imagine a world where normies start using openwrt routers as default 🐸
It just has to work and that product already available, a seach string away
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I just bought the openwrt one a couple of minutes ago after using networkd+hostapd+nixos as my router for more than 2 years.
I don’t see LibreCMC (https://librecmc.org/) mentioned anywhere in this thread, so correct that.
Unlike Open WRT, LibreCMC is recognised by GNU to be a fully free Linux distribution, and you still get the time-honoured LuCi web administration interface.
LibreCMC runs on much fewer devices as OpenWRT, which can be a feature for those who are overwhelmed by the length of OpenWRT’s list.
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Any recs for a OpenWRT-supported router? The list is pretty deep
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I remember the majority of routers in the past could not handle many half-open connections which had very negative impact on torrenting. Asus routers were the only ones that didn’t have that limit and i stuck with them since. Is that still a problem that exists?
I have port forwarding setup on my devices (Google WiFi running OpenWRT). I can connect to most piers on qbitorrent. My only limit seems to be my bandwidth Which is what we want.
Thank you, though that doesn’t really answer my question. Torrenting also worked back then but it would become slower than a router that could handle more half-open connections. If you have fast peers and a small number of torrents, it would probably not matter, but if you seed 100+ torrents at the same time, you’d notice.
