Is there any OpenWrt compatible hardware that meets GAO Buy American Act?

^this... sooooo this. Lock those down hard. or they will be the next bots for DDOSing or being hostile hosts for whatever bad actors are playing silly fools on the internet today.

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I though this was about Made in America GAO stuff, not just any cheap made in China stuff...

Maybe you you retitle this thread to "Cheap made in China router wanted !"...

Comparing Apple to Belkin is quite insulting to the Billions of USD really Made in America R&D and Design Apple spends yearly and the tens of thousand employed by Apple in America, compared to the paltry Belkin US shell, employing 4 in America (yes, I am exaggerating, but you get the gist) used by Foxconn.

There's something I am really failing to understand about this thread here !!!

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take a good look at your stuff in your house. See how much electronics say made in china. At most you might find a few little bits that say Assembled in vietnam/taiwan but the main parts are sourced from china.

It is somewhat laughable that they want a GAO buy american thing going, because with the slide of manufacturing and outsourcing, most of your electronics are made in china.

However things based on ARM chips are designed outside of china and just fabbed in china.

That's my point:
Made in China or Made in America, you can't have both.

With respect to Arm, they power EVERYTHING, so I still don't get the point here...

And yes, I do own a boat load of made in China stuff, basically EVERTHING running on electricity/electronics...

My point is this thread should be closed as the answers are already posted elsewhere or a thread properly Titled about the real issue should be started...

None of this GAO or Made in America BS...

I feel it is worth pointing out that The Buy American Act literally dates back to the Hoover administration and is exclusively aimed at federal agencies, very few of which would have been buying networking equipment back then I reckon.

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Another aspect is that parts can be made overseas, and then assembled in the U.S.

Those can then be labeled "Made in the U.S."

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Like Apples classic “Designes in California” and “Assambled in Malaysia” on the back of every device

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These are my current favorite. Very easy to work with, small size, cost is very low, in stock in quantity. I got some grumbling feedback the Mango MT300N didn't look like a professional product and would arouse suspicion. I'm switching to the Creta AR750 with the included power supply and second LAN port is a win, but it also looks a little more "professional".

But if anyone starts sniffing around Gl.Inet they will stumble on good cloud and that's going to raise serious concerns. Obviously my defense here is these aren't running the stock OS as they are on OpenWRT but I'd prefer to avoid the encounter completely.

The PLC vendor we work with does this and it completely meets Buy American. Buy American isn't hard and fast and there are exceptions for something that is simply unavailable or just costs too much to comply.

What I was trying to do here is find something that comes as close as I can. Some good leads and good discussion.

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Honestly it sounds like one of the SBCs with a microSD card would be best. You can easily prepare a bunch of the microSD cards with the desired OS config. You can get good VPN performance, and you can put them in a professional looking case.

Yes, I think I'm going to take a closer look into that Friendly NanoPi. First strike is no US stocking supplier I've found yet but just started looking.

Honestly, I'm thoroughly confused now. I get it, for whatever reason you need to Buy American, you're probably (supplying) a government outfit, it's not my business why.

But what exactly are the criteria for "American" then if you consider gl.inet (headquartered in Hong Kong) and FriendlyElec (headquartered in Guangzhao) contenders? What distinguishes them from literally any other manufacturer if they qualify?

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gl.inet feedback was negative because of what you point out. That's why I'm here. Everything else about the devices are excellent though. Our initial work with these was with the gl.inet OS that includes goodcloud hooks which raised a LOT of questions and concerns. But now that I've settled on OpenWRT I think I can win acceptance. I'm not married to them though and I'm fine with exploring better options.

Freindly is a computer motherboard we load an OS on, I might be able to shift the narrative a little on that. Still hoping I can find other non china routerboards though. From what I'm reading one LAN is USB and the other is part of the SoC so that brings some driver concerns you see when trying to adapt that board to pfsense or opnsense for example. OpenWRT seems to work because of the work they put into friendlywrt. Next concern I had was sd card wear and corruption on power loss, I have had some terrible experiences with raspberry pi on that sort of trouble. Kind of thinking openwrt has that handled though.

If you think of other options let me know, thanks.

What country is OpenWRT from then?

That's exactly what I mean though. Your question was and presumably still is about compliance with the 1933 "Buy American Act", so what exactly is "American" about gl.inet and FriendlyElec that makes them stand out from all the others? And yes, like @flygarn12 asks, what is "American" about OpenWrt?

I am not trying to be confrontational, I just can't make heads or tails of your selection criteria. In one very early post you said:

And I have to wonder, is "made in America" even one of the boxes then?

In the GAO link in the first post they say this which I get stuck on all the time.

It is inaccurate to conclude, however, that the United States is more restrictive than Great Britain, France, Germany, and Japan because of present buy-national legislation. These governments and nationalized industries also exclude most foreign competition when similar items are available domestically.

Well GB after Brexit is it’s own story but we still has Schengen.
But for France and Germany it is very illegal to have a law inside of EU that would suggest a patriotic trade law, that simply doesn’t exist since EC and EEG was invented after WW2 and then turned into EU.
It is a lot of trade outside of EU also, if the external supplier comply with EU rules.

But the only thing that matters in EU is the price.

But for Germany this patriotic trade it isn’t actually true since the Hansa trade union and that is way back.

But all these trade laws is only a reflection who and which countries the politicians like and are friends with for now. Tomorrow there are new friends…

OpenWrt doesn't write to the SD card under normal operation. For example logs are in RAM.

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Have a look here.

https://www.moxa.com/en

Headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan...which could be the next Ukraine.