Advice | Recommendation for new router

Hi

I am seeking advice / recommendation for a new router.
I previously had Mikrotik hEX lite RB750r2 with OpenWrt, which I bricked by mistake.
I am currently using Tenda AC18.

I am looking for something that is highly supported by OpenWrt/ future proof.
Router will be used for home setup.
Wired Devices - PC, Laptop, nVidia Shield TV, Blu-Ray Player, Smart TV, VOIP Phone.
Wireless devices 2GHz & 5GHz - 3x Cellphones, 2x Tablets, Laptop.
Wireless performance and range is not high priority.

Services - PPPoE, SQM QoS cake, ipv6 tunnelbroker, upnp and ability to add/ customize further.
What to consider?
Option 1: New router with built in wifi?
Option 2: New router only + Tenda AC18 as wifi access point?
Option 3: New router + new wifi access point?

Please advise

Thanks

That would be my first choice, assuming that the Tenda AC18 is meeting your wireless needs.

A $150€ x86_64/AMD64 device is likely to far outperform a comparably priced all-in-one now, and into the future.

By splitting them, you can choose the "right" router and AP, and upgrade/replace one in the future without the other.

For option 2, an edgerouter x or an espressobin could be performant and cost effective solutions.

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Wifi on AC18 is good so far.
x86_64 device is like a mini pc right? can you advise on a brand/ specs to look for?
Can OpenWrt run on laptop/ PC as a virtual machine? on VirtualBox / VMWare?
Yes, makes sense to split them.

Thanks, I will check that out also.

The suggestions above are good ones at a modest cost.

Yes, OpenWrt runs under VirtualBox quite well. I haven't tried other virtualization packages.

I tend to avoid "cheap import" devices. I am running PCEngines APU-series devices, but they are getting a little old in terms of technology at this point. A couple manufacturers others have recommended that have caught my attention include (the previews are of the home page -- I haven't looked at their specific device offerings in a while)

Right now, there seems to be a shortage of Celeron chips, which is impacting availability of quality units.

Another that I've had my eyes on is

https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-h2/

(which, surprisingly, looks to be available again)

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It started shipping on the 24th, I have one on order, but ameridroid has already sold out of the first allotment.

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Thank you, I will have a look at these.

I didn't know MicroTiks were brickable. I thought the bootloader was seperate and had serial access on all devices...odd.

Best in your device search!

A major point of consideration here would be the current -and expectable within the reasonable lifetime of this device- WAN speed, as especially beyond 100-450 MBit/s your choices are limited (increasingly favourable to x86 in particular). Below -or within- that bracket however, at least with your stated use cases so far, there are pretty decent wireless routers, which can easily handle routing and wireless needs at less or at least similar costs than the entry level range of x86_64 and which will be supported/ supportable by OpenWrt for quite some years to come.

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Get a well supported ARM64 platform (like the Espressobin) or x86, depending on your needs you may find something else you might want to run more "beefy" hardware (or later on). Solidrun ClearFog GT 8K might also be worth having a look at if you want something else than x86 but still rather capable hardware.

I flashed the wrong image, and don't know how to fix it...
Check the post below.

Your mikrotik had QCA9531 with 5x 100mbit ethernet ports and 64MB ram?

It seems to me that your requirements is not that high. Yes, you can go sky high with x86 :slight_smile: but is it necesary?

I use a ZBT WE-1326 with MT7621, gigabit ports etc. and it works quite fine and should be good for your needs.
See: QCA9561 Vs MT7621AT - #9 by Sharkam52

I can't talk for PPPoE performance as I don't use it. But it should satisfy your needs for long time if your old router had no bottlenecks. Also it is easy to flash with web based recovery if something goes wrong and well I can only vouch for my own use that it did not explode yet :slight_smile:

Although seems like ZBT prices have been going up a bit and now WE-1326 floats around 60euro. That is sad,
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32917568899.html

Also it seems to support some hardware flow offloading to support up to 900mbit apparently but I never needed it myself as my WAN connection is much slower. (the thread is about Ubiquiti Edge Router which also use MT7621)

Thanks, that looks really neat!

I ended up picking up the ER-X for my gateway at a local electronics shop, and after running the default EdgeOS for about a month or so, I installed OpenWrt and am pretty happy with it.

This one is about the same price as the ER-X, with the same SoC, twice the ram, and all sorts of ports. And obviously Wifi. Not a bad deal!

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I also consider the Odroid H2. My R7800 is slow and it doesn't seem possible to solve the issues. Have you or anyone already tried it?

If you want to use 100% OpenWRT I recommend the Linksys WRT3200ACM.