Good router supporting OpenWrt below 100$

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

Hi there,

I am looking for a wired router supporting OpenWRT. I rather have WiFi access point separately. So it just has to support wired Ethernet. It’s used to secure a few sporadically used devices, hopefully with good OpenVPN speeds.

Something like EdgeRouter X seems great but I don’t know if I can install OpenWRT on it.

Other options are GL-Inet routers eg Blume W1000, and Miktrotik hex s.

Any suggestions?

2

I'm running the esgerouter er-x! It doesn't run openwrt out of the box. You need to flash a special version of openwrt thats reduced in size (lacks luci) , scp over the true openwrt release image, and use the flash commands over ssh to get it to work.

Id say it's moderate to advanced getting it installed since there isn't a clear n00bturial with spoonfed pictures.

But overall it works great.

I'm very happy with openwrt's performance and function on the esgerouter. My service tops out at 400mbps down which the er-x is sufficient at packet shaping for.

If you don't need upnp, you can use the built in hw flow offloader for qos. Otherwise software sqm works great.

3

Running ER-X as well.
Pros of ER-X:

  • Availability, you are more likely to find it available at local/online stores around the world (as well as second hand units for as low as $15) than Brume
  • Price -- even new it's almost half the price of Brume MSRP
  • Passive PoE port
  • Can be powered with PoE
  • OpenWrt release images are available for this device

Pros of Brume:

  • Definitely faster platform, if you need OpenVPN or other CPU-hogging applications, this is the oen to get
  • Slightly easier flashing procedure

Cons of Brume:

  • As of Feb 5th, 2021 it's not supported by the released OpenWrt, only by snapshots
  • Original MSRP is about twice as high as ER-X

If I didn't have ER-X and was making a choice now, I'd probably pick Brume, as it's on sale for $99 ATM.

4

Thank you!

You mentioned Brume is not supported by released OpenWRT. Does that mean that I can’t install the latest OpenWRT or there will be problems?

If yes, how old would be the snapshot that would work? That could be a security issue.

5

I consider myself an absolute beginner. Yet it took me 2 minutes to install OpenWRT on my Edgerouter X. First I installed the "lean" version, restarted the router, copied via SCP the systemupgrade version to 19.07.7, and did the updgrade. That's it.

1 Like
6

It's the other way around, there hasn't been an OpenWrt release since the Brume was supported by OpenWrt. snapshots are being rebuilt every day (or every few days), snapshots are newer than release. You should read up on that.

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7

Oh sorry about that! The term snapshot somehow confused me!

I probably get the Brume. It seems more powerful than ER-X and even USG or Lite. I heard it gets hot but let’s see.

8

LOL, I love how our definitions of, "beginner" are so different.

Beginner for me means taking a rom file and using the stock OS to flash the new OS over. I could tell my boomer parents to do this and even they wouldn't be intimidated by it.

Once you open up that scary, "DOS" (as my boomer parents say) window is when things start to get difficult.

You're pretty advanced mate, don't talk yourself down :stuck_out_tongue: