Ask HN: Best current model routers for OpenWRT, DD-WRT, Tomato, etc.?
I'm in the process of choosing new device(s) for a small wireless network in multi-story building and prefer having devices supporting some open source router software/firmware (OpenWRT, DD-WRT, Tomato). The amount of models available is enormous, but as the last Ask HN[0] (from 3 years ago) on this topic was a good starting point I think some good up-to-date advice can come up now. malandrew the original poster told it well so:
> If one were to decide to buy a brand new model router to install open source router software on, where would you go to find out the best current models and be able to compare their features? > While it would be nice to know the best models as of today, I think it's more interesting to be taught how to fish instead of being given a fish. This also makes it easier for me (and anyone else) to pass this advice onto the next person.
[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6828699
122 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 205 ms ] thread- TP-Link Archer C7 (supported by both DD-WRT and OpenWRT, and recommended by the latter)
- Linksys WRT1200AC/1900AC (supported by both DD-WRT and OpenWRT)
- Ubiquiti UAP-AC-LITE/LR/PRO (OpenWRT, diffrent models depending how much speed/range do you need. No routing here, just access points.)
For any models discussed, please keep in mind that depending on the hardware version, the firmware support is different.
https://www.reddit.com/r/openwrt/comments/423rn6/best_2015_o...
https://www.reddit.com/r/openwrt/comments/36s530/better_ac_r...
Initially I was also planning to buy the Archer C7 but it seems OpenWRT is not flawless on it. This is unfortunate since that appears to be the recommended router for OpenWRT, so there is nothing on which OpenWRT works perfectly.
That was the situation 10 months ago. I'm not sure if things have changed since then. If they did, the OpenWRT has not been updated: https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wdr7500 According to some recentish posts on their forum there may be hope: https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?pid=342710#p342710
I wonder if it isn't better to just go DIY ( http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2016/09/diy-homebrew-router... ) with pfSense or with the PCEngines apu1d4 and use a separate switch and access point.
Right now, it is very important to have a router with firmware you can trust and upgrade, otherwise sooner or later it will join a botnet. Therefore for me any router option without FLOSS firmware support is eliminated.
Edit: Just read the comment above about OpenWRT being dead. Looking into LEDE.
- 5ghz only worked after manually inserting the latest firmware blob for the qca9880 chip and setup only works via shell for it, setting any options for it from the web interface breaks stuff
- it's fast enough... I'm running a freeradius2 server on it, SMB shares on two 32gb USB pendrives, miniDLNA, DHCP for ~50 physical and virtual clients, a VPN tunnel to a VPS and so on. Never hits full load.
- 2.4ghz range is massive, 5ghz less so obviously...
- it is absolutely stable however, uptime exceeds two months and the only reason for shutting it down back then was a move, almost nine months before that
If you're simply looking for APs I would recommend Unifi UAP-AC-Pros though.
I did have considerable issues getting both wifi interfaces to work well at the same time, but that's probably more due to my own incompetence more than anything. I did finally manage to make it work, much like how you'd wiggle antennae on an old tv back in the day and suddenly you got a signal.
I ended up contacting TP-Link support and they were actually quite helpful though. They sent me a beta firmware that's mostly resolved the issues. I don't know if it's been publicly released yet though (I got it around a year ago now from memory).
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IB8IVDQ/ref=oh_aui_deta...
I've been extremely happy with this purchase, admittedly I'm a bit of a high-demand user (I host a number of minor services for myself and friends including TeamSpeak, minecraft, as well as operating two Xbox Ones) so I needed something with good port forwarding support and UPNP. Rock solid, straight DD-WRT interface with minor branding, shell access, and monitoring support. This router's been an absolute champ and I'd recommend it to anyone.
[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Buffalo-AirStation-HighPower-Wireless...
They may not have the greatest wifi range in the world, but I haven't found a router to beat them at stability.
I would highly recommend an ipq806x-based system, if you can afford it. Almost always matched with qca9880 radios. These are modern 802.11ac wave2 systems.
ipq806x is a Qualcomm-Atheros SoC. Go to wikidevi for specifications on the chips and all of the devices I mention below.
Check camelcamelcamel for recent pricing info if buying in the USA.
The list would be:
Linksys EA8500
TP-Link Archer C2600 (Not recommended due to TP-Link going anti-OSS. Modern versions require signed firmware and other DRM junk)
Trendnet TEW827DRU (Not yet accepted into LEDE, but could be any day now)
Netgear R7800 (Has a slightly faster CPU, but more expensive)
Netgear R7500v2 (Avoid the V1)
ZyXEL NBG6817 (Has the same slightly faster CPU as the R7800, but it's storage flash is goofy and I'm not 100% sure it's fully working. Ask the lede-dev mailing list first.)
The top issue that all of these devices have is that the 802.11 radio LEDs don't work yet because the driver is missing support for it. However, if you can live without blinking lights, these models are the way to go. This feature will almost certainly get fixed in the future.
I would tell you to go with the Linksys EA8500 if price/value is your concern. Otherwise the Netgear R7800 has a very active dev and probably has the best support. The ZyXEL NBG6817 looks really interesting to me, but I don't have one yet.
If $140-$200 USD is too much for you, look to some older 802.11ac devices. Like I said above, avoid TP-Link as they have started locking down their devices by removing serial ports and requiring signed firmware/DRM etc.
Your list here in comments is pretty good, though I'd avoid the TP-Link unless you can get one that is older (before TP-Link became anti-OSS.)
Good luck
[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11624374 [1] - https://xkcd.com/927/
The major problem that I do see here is that LEDE has been forked from OpenWRT, but has nowhere near the level of device support that OpenWRT has. I have a TP-Link WDR4300 which I bought specifically because it was one of the routers which are highly compatible with OpenWRT. However, LEDE doesn't list this router amongst its supported devices (though there are newer WDRXXXX devices listed).
What list are you looking at?
LEDE does builds for the WDR4300, and given that it's an ath9k router, it is and will continue to be very well supported. The only caveat is that I don't know whether they've added the necessary signature to allow the firmware to be accepted as a valid upgrade by recent TP-Link stock firmware, but once any third-party firmware is installed, there's definitely no barrier to upgrading to LEDE.
But I see now that my device is listed under the "non-ideal" table of hardware page.
My personal take on the split is like this:
First off, OpenWRT as a project was very sick before the split. There was development going on with core stuff and bug fixes, but a lot of things were not getting done: Documentation, user-oriented outreach (forum, end-user help, new-dev help, etc), security response was a joke, and other many other issues. Some of the old core devs went AWOL and were really hard to reach and rarely made new commits or worked on the project, but they still had the keys to servers, DNS, and similar stuff.
Then one of the big dev servers over in Europe started going offline, and nobody knew why. Infrastructure like the user-forums, DNS, the bug tracker, and git/svn all would go down for HOURS or DAYS. People tried to reach out to the missing devs and got no reply... for DAYS.
That really kicked things off. People already were not happy with how the current set of project maintainers were running things. There were too few people with the keys to the kingdom and then when stuff broke, nobody was around to fix it.
The old devs are basically holding the name of the project hostage and preventing future progress.
So people forked and that's that.
The new LEDE Project has a lot of problems. I'm not a fan of how they have failed to scope out the project properly, but I think it's a better situation than the old OpenWRT project, which was dying a slow death. At least the new project has a chance at life instead of being smothered by the old devs who refused to share the keys to the kingdom with the active developers.
Do you have any real-life comparison of range/stability (and with what load on them?) on those models as from experience I know that raw comparison data on Wi-fi differs from reality.
Both this and some other Trendnet models I checked are not Wi-Fi Certified - has that been an issue for you?
As I'm in Europe the issue with TP-Link locking down firmware because of the FCC ruling [0][1] won't be a factor and I'm still not sure are they or TP-Link at fault?
[0] - http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/charts/router/graph/117...
[1] - https://www.wired.com/2016/03/way-go-fcc-now-manufacturers-l...
[2] - https://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20150831/071...
Received C7 with old world-wide firmware. Immediately upgraded to the latest firmware, not realizing that this new version is region locked (no problem so far though). Tried to configure the VLAN for my Internet, realize that my ISP uses non-standard VLAN IDs which exceed the limit of the firmware. Call TP-Link (Germany). I was very surprised to speak to an actual engineer immediately. He knew the problem and recompiled the current beta firmware (with support for higher VLAN IDs) and sent it to me
Now we run into the first problem: You can't flash beta firmwares after upgrading to the region-locked one.
Call again - another very helpful engineer. He recommended flashing OpenWRT in recovery mode (FTP upload) and then flash the beta firmware from there. Flashed LEDE instead of OpenWRT (because I had it on hand), without any problems. Now I don't have any use for OpenWRT or LEDE. The functionality of the standard C7 firmware is more than enough for me. So I flashed the beta and everything worked.
Here are a few other points about this router:
- I pushed the internal switch to maximum capacity multiple times, even using unreasonable packet rates. The C7 doesn't even break a sweat.
- I use the built-in media server to stream music to my Dumb-TV. Works great.
- At one time, a friend brought his laptop over, which turned out to be infected. The C7 banned his device immediately, after it exceeded the DDoS protection limits I set.
- I never had any downtime on this router.
- WiFi performance is exceptional (up to 450M).
In conclusion: I would recommend the Archer over any router in this price range any day. The painless flashing of OpenWRT and LEDE makes it even more awesome. Add to that the awesome and competent support experience. And by the way: You receive an actual paper manual on how to request the GPL'd code that's used in the stock firmware.
https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt https://github.com/openwrt/packages
I get that there is some strife, but calling OpenWRT dead would appear to be very very premature. FWIW I build OpenWRT from source and for the past few months have not been using CVS. I don't know the story behind it, but it looks like all development has moved to Github.
If I go to what LEDE calls "ideal hardware for LEDE", at https://www.lede-project.org/toh/views/toh_available_864, none of the above routers are listed (with the possible exception of the Netgear R7500, but there is no mention of v1/v2).
I guess the docs are just out of date?
Hopefully LEDE will change this, but I'm not very optimistic. It's the same devs as before, and they didn't like dealing with end-users before, so why start now? It took LEDE over six months to set up and end-user forum, and they decided not to make a lede-user mailing list at all. Not very end-user friendly actions I'd say.
Note that I don't interact with DD-WRT, so that's why I don't make comments about DD-WRT.
For the router, any fanless mini-PC with two ethernet ports. Run OpenBSD or pfSense.
For a router, I use openbsd and this guide: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13052673
The router is an AMD that runs almost any unix, so it is more or less immune to obsolescence due to lack of software updates (Linux and *BSD all have to abandon headless x86-64...)
Total cost was ~$300. The router was $200 of that and should last until my home internet connection is ~1GBit (OpenBSD probably can't NAT quite that quickly on that hardware--haven't measured it).
[edit: fixed asus model number]
http://www.pcengines.ch/apu1d4.htm
I agree with the separation comment, but you can buy a radio for this board, and make it do wifi as well. The case even has pre-cut holes for the antennas. I've thought about doing it just for the fun of it.
On further (re)inspection though it seems you'd still be tied to your ISP's router/modem :(
Perhaps there's a good standalone/mPCI modem out there somewhere?
I previously used the Netgear R7000 "nighthawk" with DD-WRT and it worked just fine but the lack of updates and up to date documentation was very offputting. Somehow the whole setup felt like a massive hack.
I'm very surprised that there is no more talk about Turris Omnia here on HN. It's Open Hardware running Open Software. One would think that people here would be very interested in that kind of product.
If you're looking for information, I suggest SmallNetBuilder. They have very thorough reviews: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/tools/rankers/router/view. It looks like the RT-AC68U is their #1 pick for AC1900 router now. It used to be their #2 pick under their previous testing methodology (after the R7000 Nighthawk from Netgear). That's slipped to #3 under the new testing and the Asus has taken the top slot.
Asuswrt-Merlin isn't such a radical departure from stock, but it has some nice features and allows me to do things like edit the etc/hosts to block certain things.
The Asus RT-AC68U is probably one of the top 2 AC1900 routers out there and T-Mobile is selling it for a song (even if you're not a T-Mobile customer). It's a little work to re-flash it so read a guide and see if you're comfortable with that. Or you could buy a stock RT-AC68U and get SmallNetBuilders #1 AC1900 router overall, for 2.4GHz avg throughput, 2.4GHz max throughput, 2.4GHz range, 5GHz avg throughput, and 5GHz range.
I just replace my FIOS router with an ASUS RT-AC66U running AsusWRT-Merlin (I understand the stock firmware is based on Tomato). It is very fast, stable, has great coverage and is extremely configurable/hackable. I think I paid $75 for it from Amazon Warehouse Deals.
Except for the closed-source WiFi drivers, which also limit the choice of kernel versions.
I have yet to open it as I'm using my landlord's Verizon crap model, but once I move to my new place, I'm looking forward to flashing Merlin or DD-WRT.
I'm just about to order a Mikrotik hAP AC Lite.
https://routerboard.com/RB952Ui-5ac2nD
It's for a one-floor collective house in Latvia, so it's kind of nice to get an AP from a Latvian company. :)
They also have a new cheaper wAP ac which has a single gigabit port and work outdoors!
A stone's throw from the house is a field where we plan to have some activity in the spring and summer, so I'm thinking we could then get an additional outdoor wAP.
Yeah, finding out about Mikrotik at all took a fair bit of googling and researching but they seem cool!
Latvia has a bit of an electronical engineering tradition, especially in radio, as I understand...
I recently decided on the ubiquiti edge router x ($49), ac-lr access point($90), and pihole($50) on a raspberry pi for DNS. The pi also runs DNS crypt. But now everything gets regular updates and the firewall config and stats on the edge router are great.
Next year though! Next year!
[1]: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Latest-windows-8-mini-pc-min...
pfSense is simple to get started with, powerful enough for small to medium businesses and "just works."
The initial setup might be a bit more $$$ ($150 for hardware), but it will last you a long time.
I added a 32gb ssd drive and a USB Ethernet dongle as well (for 2nd interface).
The box has wifi, but no driver support from FreeBSD. My WIFI is supplied via a UniFI AC LITE.
1. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856164...
Seems the box you linked to has only 1 ethernet port. How do you connect to both WAN and AP?
Have had 0 problems with it so far.
How much coverage and clients does a single Eero manage - by the reviews I read, I think it shines only when multiple ones are used, but that makes them a pricey solution.
More about APU2 at http://www.pcengines.ch/apu2b4.htm
If it is the first option - there are two recommended Wi-Fi cards - which one you are using and how many client devices does it manage?
As to load, it manages just a household's worth of machines, maybe ~10 wireless clients and ~10 more devices on the LAN side. The load on the machine is effectively zero. I would personally be confident building such a setup for even 100 clients. The 2 PCI + 2 USB3 offers many expansion options and the SoC itself is tens of times faster than most home routers.
Moreover, are there any AC cards supported? Based on the list provided by them[0] and info on the forums there aren't?
[0] - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11cF4UoNL68Me5ZC6qhjF...
I think I'm going to be needing one soon.
The Raspberry Pi is well supported. If you happen to have one that's collecting dust and want to have a look at OpenWRT. Or to try things without fear of bricking the main router. I use a spare v1 for "traveling". Add a cheap Wifi dongle, an LTE dongle and one of those portable USB batteries and you have something to play with.
What they don't have is good I/O. USB 2.0 only. And the 100mbps Ethernet is attached through it.
- TP-Link Archer C7. This supports our office of ~30 ppl and has been bullet-proof since day 1.
- TP-Link N600. Cheaper but still 5GHz. Also super stable, I use it as a wifi bridge daily.
- I just bought a Netgear R6300v2 which will go in my home. Have not used it much yet but for the price it's an ARM core with a lot of Flash & RAM so I'm excited.
Caveats: I don't know if in practical terms new-ish TP-Links (later than Q2 '16) are harder to flash due to them supposedly cracking down on third-party firmware. At the time they were super easy, I just downloaded the latest from ftp://ftp.dd-wrt.com/betas/ and followed standard instructions.
Caveat #2: For Broadcom/ARM builds you probably don't want to use builds from ftp.dd-wrt. Intead you want KONG's build, see: http://www.desipro.de/ddwrt-ren/K3-AC-Arm/Readme and search the forums for latest KONG builds.
Finally, reading Amazon reviews for any supported model helps as well, you'll find a few ppl who relate their experience putting ddwrt on it.
EDIT: if your budget is $100+ I've also read good things about the Netgear R6400 and ASUS AC66 and AC68 but don't have any direct experience there.
Now that the enterprise-level Ubiquiti stuff is so insanely cheap, there's basically no reason IMO to fool around with open-source router projects.
I've been quite interested to read about the fact developers from OpenWRT are moving to LEDE. Maybe it could be worth it to wait - as I said, OpenWRT isn't perfect and I'm sure a lot of improvements can be done. I haven't tried LEDE though. But I think, for a small office/home network, just getting an (reasonably)old/cheap yet powerful, compatible hardware and put OpenWRT on it is quite a good solution at the moment.
I have a TP-Link TL-WDR3600 v1 running OpenWRT. It was cheap, and works fine.
if i were you, i would take an el cheapo j1900 intel box (from aliexpress) with quad lan ports and run pfsense on it. perhaps the best bang for buck configuration known to man!
I was looking at switching from ASUS on Merlin to Tomato for better QoS and to try out multi-WAN that was added in shibby about a year ago. I really want the internet to be reliable and fail over to a 2nd connection and then back fairly seamlessly.
Am I better off using pfSense (or something else) vs trying one of these integrated router/wireless firmwares?
Years ago I started looking for multi-WAN and got the very disappointing Linksys / Cisco RV042. It worked, but the interface was crap and it lacked a lot of the features that even consumer routers had. For an office of up to 50 people (and 2x devices) we've been using an ASUS RT-AC66R on Merlin and it's worked pretty well in that it's rock solid stable for many months at a time, has a bit of features - now including nice graphs for per-host bandwidth monitoring, and basic QoS and multi-WAN. The biggest issue is that QoS options are limited and it's hard to know if it's even working properly. The multi-WAN auto failover seems buggy and that seems like an area that Merlin hasn't touched.