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
I don’t recommend GL.inet routers. I have the Marble and it is slower than my ISPs router. It has a thing called network hardware acceleration, and it breaks my home server. Services just stop working well with it. So I keep it turned off. When I reported the issue they said it is working for them and came up with a completely hypotical setup…
With AdGuard enabled it frequently froze and I had to reboot it. For some reason even without AdGuard name resolution is noticeably slower. Doesn’t matter if I use my ISP’s DNS or not.
Also, DynDNS doesn’t support custom names, so I installed an alternative service for mywire.org.
Overally, this box came with drawbacks, but no doubt about it is hackable in the good way.
I would like to try openwrt’s own router, next time.