I've been planning to setup Openwrt on Raspberry Pi 4, and would wanted to know whether it would work as a main router with my Tp-link AX50 as my access point. I have Fiber connection back at my place with 100Mbps up & down (will upgrade to 300Mbps up & down next month). Why I primarily wanted to use Openwrt was to tackle bufferbloat (through Cake SQM) during intense gaming sessions mainly on Call of Duty Warzone (latency variation is horrible right now, results in heavy stutter; 60fps feels like 20fps on PlayStation 4 Pro), use Adblock and NordVPN in router level. I plan on getting two Tp-Link U300 USB to Ethernet adapter as well, through which I can get two Gigabit ports out.
So, do you recommend running OpenWRT on Raspberry Pi 4 as my main router running CAT 7 cable from my ONU and connect Tp-Link AX50 as my AP through USB - Ethernet adapter where my other home devices are connected through AX50 WiFi.
First of all I don't own a rpi4 but a rpi3 used for other purpose (libreelec).
Your setup looks ok but from what I've read the important factor for usb3 ethernet on rpi4 is the its chipset - avoid cheap asix and look for rtl8xxx ones
Also another thing you may want to avoid is running openvpn (nordvpn) on the rpi4 - the performance will suck - expect less than 50mbps and it might interfere with the SQM thing
I do however recommend going with Wireguard on the rpi4 as it's reported to reach up to full wirespeed.
now here the situation becomes tricky as there is no native Wireguard suport with Nordvpn and their app isn't supported on openwrt - you might need to look into a different vpn service that supports wireguard natively (although there are some privacy concerns with this kind of setup)
I've used raspberry pi 4 with TP-Link UE300 (before moving to intel nuc with proxmox) and it works just fine. Just remember there are no stable build for pi 4 yet as of 19.07.4 so you have to build images yourself.
Fair enough, few people are suggesting not to go with Raspberry Pi 4 with OpenWRT since it cause latency when used with Usb 3 to Ethernet adapter. They are recommending RB450Gx4 than Edgerouter X or Raspberry Pi 4 on OpenWRT. I've been reading online that RouterOS on RB450Gx4 is enterprise grade, while OpenWRT isn't that comparable. In all honesty I just want to reduce bufferbloat while gaming with a fairly decent bandwidth. 200 Mbps up and down would do out of 300Mbps line I'm getting upgraded to next month. As they say, does it cause higher latency than I already have?
in my testing with the ue300, this is 1ms or so at most. This is similar to latency in electronic music instruments caused by MIDI packet sizes so not important to musicians playing in the same room as each other which is honestly about the most demanding latency situation that exists. It won't be relevant.
Makes sense. Alright then, I'm going ahead and making the purchases. I really don't need an enterprise grade level of performance anyway, it's mostly for home usage. Just a fix on the bufferbloat would do for me. If the setup I mentioned above would work for what I'm looking for, I'll be more than happy. Plus it doesn't put a nuke on my bank account going Pi with OpenWRT.
The main non-enterprise things in a RPi are the USB dongle and the power supply. Get yourself a good power supply and a case with a fan, run the fan on low voltage (a 5v fan on 3.3v) and you'll be good to go with no noise.
We had a wonderful launch RPI4 thread that got locked by whatever reason threads get locked after a year here, you can read it here. Many experiences and solutions to common issues.
