My family needs a new router to replace the old (though not old enough that it should be dying) netgear router that is slowly dying. I want to do something with good foss firmware like opnsense or openwrt. I was thinking that the BananaPi options look good, but had some concerns. I would like to install the firmware myself, rather than trust that the manufacturer didn’t modify it in any way. I don’t know if the pre-made openwrt bananapi routers can be flashed with custom firmware easily. Also I need something with wifi (ideally wifi 6 or better), though would be willing to consider a separate WAP. VLANs would be nice too, but I could live without them. Have any of you done this? What has your experience been, both with install and long term? Is there anything I should look out for that I might not think of? What resources can I use to find out more about this?
Your budget is really near a https://store.ui.com/us/en/collections/unifi-dream-router/products/udr Unifi dream router. Your family is gonna be way happier with you (0 downtime) and it’ll give you extender options if you ever need it. Unifi is good enough and they update regularly, just disable cloud access stuff and you’re good.
Otherwise you want Opnsense instead of Openwrt. The upgrade process for Openwrt is not automatic, while Opnsense is. Worth it not to have to dote on your router.
And you should get an access point (Unifi something or Tplink Omsomething), wifi is problematic with openwrt and I’m not sure if opensense even lets you do it (haven’t tried).
And you’ll need a switch, dumb or managed, up to you if you want VLANs. The Opnsense box will have just one LAN port, so it requires a switch if you want to plug more than one thing into it. A switch with PoE+ can power the access point directly.
Opnsense needs x64 arch (Intel or AMD CPUs), get a small thin client like a Dell Wyse 5070 extended or HP T730 or that mentioned Fujitsu Futro S720 (its CPU is old tho, you can do better). There may be newer thinclients, you just want a mini PCIe slot to install some Intel gigabit card from eBay with 2 ports. Google power efficient gigabit mini PCIe card - there’s an older model that sucks power and a newer one that doesn’t suck; if you go more than gigabit skip 2.5 on Intel unless you google hard and expect extra power draw. Very limited point to 4 port cards, just go higher gigabit speeds don’t think about multiplexing ports or whatever it is called; and switches switch better than the router can and remove CPU overhead for more actual routing work - 2 port card is the way.
Slap Incus (superior but newer, less guides, LXD is previous name if googling stuff) or Proxmox (good enough, more guides for this) on it, make a VM and pass through the 2 ports of the PCIe cards, slap Opnsense in the VM. Make an LXC container and slap Debian on it and spin up the Unifi controller for your AP. Another container for adguard home or pi hole and you’ve got a box that does the basic nets all in one. The built-in port on the thin client is how you will access the underlying OS, it gets plugged into the switch you’ll have to get. If you got something with 2 gigs of RAM and an AMD Geode/GX or aged Intel Atom CPU I’d just only do Opnsense no hypervisor stuff.
Sorry for the info dump but there’s a lot of angles!
But really, the Unifi dream router is much easier and solves it all-in-one. You need 3 pieces (router, wifi access point, Ethernet switch) for a good experience otherwise.
Try a diff email if you do want one, a friend recently got one via email signup and wait a few weeks. But I do abs agree it fuckin sucks you have to do any of this effort to get one, it is just enabling scalpers
@HumanPerson how interesting! I didn’t know that kind of bananapi boards. It looks very powerful, maybe the best price/specs ratio.
Does it support DD-WRT? I’m using that firmware in my router long time ago.
I tried it and don’t recommend. I tried using it with openwrt, but the version that it ships with is too old and flashing is a pain. As for dd-wrt, I have no idea. I will say, when it was on the old firmware it was quite good.
I’ve got an R3 at home which generally works well. Flashing mainline OpenWRT was pretty smooth and easy. It’s been a while since I did the bring up, but I do remember having to jump through some hoops to get a partition layout that would utilize the onboard storage properly. By default it only left 10mb to install additional packages which seemed to defeat the purpose of having all of that emmc available. That may have changed in the more recent releases.
One bug I encounter regularly is that some (maybe older?) Apple devices seem to be able to lock up the router. Adding watchcat can get the thing rebooted in less than a minute in the event that it does hang, which makes it barely noticeable, but it’s not an ideal fix.
Depending on the devices you have in your house that might be a showstopper or of no consequence at all. Otherwise WiFi speeds and signal are great, as are general performance and reliability except for that bug I mentioned. Haven’t used VLANs but it’s all there and the flexibility of OpenWRT is great.
Did you have to use a display to flash? Some of them don’t seem to have a display output and I don’t know if that will be an issue. The apple thing concerns me. There are a few macs and iPhones on the network, but the macs are m1, and the oldest iphone would be a 12. Do you think that would be an issue? Also, which R3 router are you using specifically?
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Your budget is really near a https://store.ui.com/us/en/collections/unifi-dream-router/products/udr Unifi dream router. Your family is gonna be way happier with you (0 downtime) and it’ll give you extender options if you ever need it. Unifi is good enough and they update regularly, just disable cloud access stuff and you’re good.
Otherwise you want Opnsense instead of Openwrt. The upgrade process for Openwrt is not automatic, while Opnsense is. Worth it not to have to dote on your router.
And you should get an access point (Unifi something or Tplink Omsomething), wifi is problematic with openwrt and I’m not sure if opensense even lets you do it (haven’t tried).
And you’ll need a switch, dumb or managed, up to you if you want VLANs. The Opnsense box will have just one LAN port, so it requires a switch if you want to plug more than one thing into it. A switch with PoE+ can power the access point directly.
Opnsense needs x64 arch (Intel or AMD CPUs), get a small thin client like a Dell Wyse 5070 extended or HP T730 or that mentioned Fujitsu Futro S720 (its CPU is old tho, you can do better). There may be newer thinclients, you just want a mini PCIe slot to install some Intel gigabit card from eBay with 2 ports. Google power efficient gigabit mini PCIe card - there’s an older model that sucks power and a newer one that doesn’t suck; if you go more than gigabit skip 2.5 on Intel unless you google hard and expect extra power draw. Very limited point to 4 port cards, just go higher gigabit speeds don’t think about multiplexing ports or whatever it is called; and switches switch better than the router can and remove CPU overhead for more actual routing work - 2 port card is the way.
Slap Incus (superior but newer, less guides, LXD is previous name if googling stuff) or Proxmox (good enough, more guides for this) on it, make a VM and pass through the 2 ports of the PCIe cards, slap Opnsense in the VM. Make an LXC container and slap Debian on it and spin up the Unifi controller for your AP. Another container for adguard home or pi hole and you’ve got a box that does the basic nets all in one. The built-in port on the thin client is how you will access the underlying OS, it gets plugged into the switch you’ll have to get. If you got something with 2 gigs of RAM and an AMD Geode/GX or aged Intel Atom CPU I’d just only do Opnsense no hypervisor stuff.
Sorry for the info dump but there’s a lot of angles!
But really, the Unifi dream router is much easier and solves it all-in-one. You need 3 pieces (router, wifi access point, Ethernet switch) for a good experience otherwise.
I’d love a dream router … if they were ever in stock. Instead they all end on eBay for $100 more than retail. Wonder why that is? (Fucking scalpers)
You have to sign up for the in stock notifications, annoying but it works in a delayed fashion. Sad it does enable scalpers.
Oh I have. And I have never gotten a notification. 😒
Try a diff email if you do want one, a friend recently got one via email signup and wait a few weeks. But I do abs agree it fuckin sucks you have to do any of this effort to get one, it is just enabling scalpers
I have a UDR and it’s pretty great. I have had one unknown failure once, which needed a physical reboot. And that’s been in two or so years.
@HumanPerson how interesting! I didn’t know that kind of bananapi boards. It looks very powerful, maybe the best price/specs ratio.
Does it support DD-WRT? I’m using that firmware in my router long time ago.
I tried it and don’t recommend. I tried using it with openwrt, but the version that it ships with is too old and flashing is a pain. As for dd-wrt, I have no idea. I will say, when it was on the old firmware it was quite good.
I’ve got an R3 at home which generally works well. Flashing mainline OpenWRT was pretty smooth and easy. It’s been a while since I did the bring up, but I do remember having to jump through some hoops to get a partition layout that would utilize the onboard storage properly. By default it only left 10mb to install additional packages which seemed to defeat the purpose of having all of that emmc available. That may have changed in the more recent releases.
One bug I encounter regularly is that some (maybe older?) Apple devices seem to be able to lock up the router. Adding watchcat can get the thing rebooted in less than a minute in the event that it does hang, which makes it barely noticeable, but it’s not an ideal fix.
Depending on the devices you have in your house that might be a showstopper or of no consequence at all. Otherwise WiFi speeds and signal are great, as are general performance and reliability except for that bug I mentioned. Haven’t used VLANs but it’s all there and the flexibility of OpenWRT is great.
Did you have to use a display to flash? Some of them don’t seem to have a display output and I don’t know if that will be an issue. The apple thing concerns me. There are a few macs and iPhones on the network, but the macs are m1, and the oldest iphone would be a 12. Do you think that would be an issue? Also, which R3 router are you using specifically?
UART to USB adapter, use a terminal multiplexer on your laptop
Cool, thanks.
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Have a look at this video I’ve used a Fujitsu Futro S720 (30/40€ on ebay) and I’ve created my router with firewall, VPN, VLANs and so on with OPNsense