it's remarkable hardware. Fast throughput, low gateway pings around 1.4ms, good band coverage.
The software is pretty terrible though. Outdated services. CVEs in dnsmasq. broken firewall . Some broken features like UPNP
If i could get openWRT on this box it would be a fabulous router.
I think I'm going to pick one of these up and hack on it. Just found a sale for 80 USD and it's an alternative to my current front-runner which is the ASUS TUF Gaming WiFi 6 Router TUF-AX6000 which is a whopping 200 USD.
May be a fools errand though, as I don't see any other currently supported routers for the Qualcomm IPQ6018, and I'm not 100% confident I have the skill to extract all the necessary stuff to get all the device tree files working for that chip.
We'll see I guess. Just 70 bucks.
Of you just want something hackable, where the SoC's already supported, have a look at the Reyes RG-E6 AX6000, it's often in the $75 price range for open boxes, on US eBay.
the hardware has been awesome. If we can get a firmware, there could be a big community for this category of devices.
Eh, I was more thinking I have the skillset and the time to mess with this and maybe enable this specific device.
As I understand it, there's basically three main hurdles to adding any device to the supported list
Grated, I just trivialized a lot of complexity there. And given I don't see any other devices for the Qualcomm IPQ6018 in the supported list, there may be some major hurdle I'm missing.
But thought it'd be fun to try.
great breakdown