Spending too much time trying to work with (below) average gear - need something better.
Im ok with keeping the Archer C7's as my dumb APs, but i need a new dedicated router.
I currently have an SFP/RJ45 media converter used to go from my ISP (Bell) fiber line to the WAN port on my Archer C7, but as you can see in my post above, things are just not working out!
I had my eye on the Ubiquity ER-X-SFP Edgerouter X, but its out of stock for several more weeks near me. So, maybe theres an easier option i can go and pick up this weekend.
A router with an SFP port built in is not required since i have the media converter already, but condensing may be interesting.
Don't need a wireless router, as i'll keep wifi controlled by the APs.
POE is also interesting, although i dont have any immediate use for it today.
Today i have 500/500Mbps, but future support for 1Gbps+ would be cool too.
I can't imagine i'm anywhere under $150, but dont want to spend $400 either.
Wow - well i wasnt expecting that answer! Haha I got an RPi4 laying around already so i may have to try this out..
But i just found a Ubiquiti Router (ER-X) without the SFP port in stock for $80 CAD, so i think ill give this a shot first. Didnt even think to look for the non-SFP model.. ugh. lol
OpenWRT snapshot works flawlessly out of the box; Realtek USB ethernet included. I tried the RPi community build linked above but it has a lot of highly idiosyncratic customization, none of which I needed and some of which was in the way.
With the snapshot, I mirrored all the packages locally to be on the safe side. Yes the kmod packages will remain available for a few months and the rest mostly don't have a sell-by date, but they can develop dependency issues without warning, and you have lots of room on even a small SD card so you might as well just grab everything you might ever want.
OK, looks like you've got a bit of a learning curve in front of you. The snapshot is simply the latest rolling build; for the Pi 4 it's at https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/targets/bcm27xx/bcm2711/
You have a choice of squashfs or ext4, I think ext4 is what most people use, it's certainly more amenable to customization anyway.
The sweet spot for SD card pricing is around 32GB, that's dozens of times more room than you'll ever need for any foreseeable OpenWRT-related purpose, and there's hardly any point in buying anything cheaper: a good quality SanDisk Extreme or Ultra tops out around $10.
Maybe don't worry too much about the kmod issue for now -- but for reference, kmod packages are kernel module packages that are bound to the precise build you're using. When using snapshots in production (i.e. your real-world router not just playing around) it's something to be aware of, but they keep the kmods for each snapshot available for several months; plenty of time to figure out which of several approaches to take for maintainability over time if you decide to keep it.
The snapshots don't have USB drivers Afaik. You need to grab all the kernel modules and install the ones for your particular USB device. Check the kernel logs to see what it detects. Also you will need a USBC to USB a adapter or something the USB c port is power for the pi
Hey all - Ok got the Pi booted up, PPPoE configured and it looks like things are working as they should...
Had to manually create my WAN port for obvious reasons. Do i need to also create the "wan6" port i saw on my Arhcer C7?
I also noticed that there is no switch interface in Luci, is that because the Pi doesn't have multiple LAN ports? I had to instead set eth0 to eth0.35 in the CLI which isnt a big deal, but i was just curious.
The owner seems to be an Openwrt user, since he references openwrt a couple of times. Quite impressive performance for such a cheap device - seems to cap out around ~3Gbps of throughput in total....he posted a video here
