No PoE support?
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Sounds interesting.
This what I was thinking, 4 to 8 port with or without Wifi.
Also old thread on the same topic. Poll - Interest in an OpenWrt purpose built router
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Good point. With 6/6E devices on the market and 7 just certified, the device with 2g/5g wifi radio will sadly age very fast. 
@ynezz Ubiquiti probably won't be game to make a device for OpenWrt but would it be possible to source something like ER-X but with the RTC battery and the proper 802.3af POE port, at least in? I understand the pickings are slim, but if there was a decision to make an OpenWrt branded device, why cripple it with just 2 ports and ageing radios?
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What is the reason only a single 2.5GbE port is envisioned?
I would prefer wan + (at least ) 1* lan at 2.5 and one or more 1GbE ports.
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Great idea! Looking for the hardware.
I agree with the comments immediately above.
Unless I’ve misunderstood, having one 2.5G (likely will be used as WAN) and one 1Gig port just seems strange. If the User’s internet is >=1Gig, then there’s no need for the 2.5GIg port. If the User’s internet is >1Gig, then the 1Gig port is useless because it’s the limiting port to getting at the data.
I would suggest focusing on the things that 90% of the users of such a device will notice day to day, and skip the rest.
People will use:
- At lease two 2.5Gig ports
- Fast Wifi with good range
- Sufficient RAM (1 Gig is good for MTK)
- Sufficient number of cores and horsepower to ve able to actually pull/push 2.5GIgs (with SQM? Get to 1Gig over VPN?)
What very few people will use:
- Secondary boot partition/capability. If the User is able to get uboot to fail safe recovery, that takes care of 99% of the cases. This also removes need for a physical switch that may accidentally get activated.
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Hopefully there is higher variant with more ethernet and 4x4 stream (tri-radio is nice to have).
Oh and Happy Birthday!
I really love the restraint of keeping this a realistic $100 device... it is quite easy to convince one self to 'upgrade' almost each individual component as being reasonable and worth the extra cost, but once one starts down that road it gets hard to find an exit.
I guess if this happens (that is if the announcement turns into a product) I would buy one....
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It's really easy to keep adding all the possible features everyone wants, so it's really cool that you have been able to keep it reasonable!
What is the need for NVMe storage on a router/AP?
I can't find any info on the mentioned RT5040 module. What is it?
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I think they meant RT5400 which is a POE module
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does 1GB RAM is SoC limitation ? In case NVME storage use more ram is better ...
I'm lining up in queue for my device anyway.
Did you read up on the MT7976C, it's a WiFi 6E chipset according to:
While I like the idea of 'official' OpenWRT hardware I have to question the disparity in speeds between the two ethernet ports. As it is the 2.5gbe port is wasted in all (maybe there's one or two exception) scenarios. I'd much rather see both ports running at 2.5gbe.
I also know having WiFi on a router is popular, but at the sort of internet speeds it looks like this device is aiming at being capable of dealing with I think there's a strong argument for investing in dedicated WiFi equipment to ensure speed and coverage through the home (or business). Is there a possibility for looking at producing the device without WiFi?
Has thought been given to how support will be provided for this device? Is there going to be a dedicated route for owners of the device to get support or is it intended for the forum to remain as the primary source of support? Will hardware support be treated different to software support?
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I really appreciate the KISS philosophy here. I appreciate how you made deeply sane, sensible choices, favoring stability and maintainability at every turn. That's what I also appreciate in a router - as opposed to flashy, gimmicky, new tech that often times ends up being unstable, because it was overambitious to have it work perfectly over the longer term.
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Possibly MediaTek MT7986 with dual 2.5GbE support would be a preferred choice over MT7981?
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Great idea! I have a small suggestion to offer. The inclusion of an M.2 slot is excellent. However, to ensure its functionality, we should not forget the compatibility with EBBR. Since you've already mentioned the use of u-boot upstream, it shouldn't be a significant issue. This compatibility would allow us to boot it seamlessly on any distributiom.
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No, the port is not wasted. The suggested use cases are as follows:
- One has a 1 Gbps Internet connection and an NVMe drive, in which case the 2.5 Gbps network card allows faster access to the storage from the LAN.
- One has a 2.5 Gbps Internet connection, and the speed is split between the wired LAN and WLAN.
But this does bring a question that no universally agreeable definition of which port is WAN and which is LAN exists - OpenWrt does not seem to support such ambiguous devices, and it's difficult even from the user experience standpoint.
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Congrats you your Birthday !
Really cool, any estimation for the release date?
I need to update my complete wifi infastructure,
for a router I already have my heard set for the BPI-R4 (including wifi) but for the roaming access points I still don't know what to choose. I think this device would perfectly suffice as an accesspoint.
How likely is it that a user with 2.5gbe networking already in place isn't going to already have a dedicated storage device? I can't imagine it's going to be a major use case for people to buy this, whack a relatively small NVME (comparing cost against spinning rust) into it, and maybe upgrade their internal networking just for slightly faster storage.
I can't speak for others, but if I had 2.5gb internet then any device I intended to upload/download on (which after all is the only real reason for speeds that high) are going to be wired. I don't want to have to sacrifice 1.5gbs of my internet speed for WiFi.
So, at best, the 2.5gb port might not be wasted if (and if is doing a lot of work here) you want to use it as a storage server. Otherwise it is a waste. Both ports should be 2.5gbe.
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