I'm looking for a reliable router that I can purchase in retail stores here in the USA (not online). I want a device that will continue to receive long-term support from the OpenWRT community.
Are there any specific models that are currently popular or generally recommended? I've heard good things about the TP-Link Archer series and Netgear Nighthawk series, but I'm wondering if there are any newer models that meet the requirements of 16MB or more flash memory and 128MB or more RAM.
My budget is $350 max that I'm looking at spending.
Any advice or recommendations would be greatly appreciated!
You can't beat Asus TUF-AX6000 for $139 at microcenter. Currently discontinued so whatever stock is left--that is it. Multiple MC locations have stock. Given your budget, I would buy as many as you find on the shelf. Read the wiki about flashing latest stable. Should have support till 2030.
ASUS ZenWiFi BT8 exists but wifi7 features are not stable yet.
Sorry for late reply, I will be using with Fiber but I will have to enable bridge mode on my ISP modem and wireless cause I will just be using it as the modem. Generally 1 Gbps/1 Gbps for wired and wireless or whatever the standard is. I'm not worried or concerned about having WiFi 7 or 6E honestly.
Preferably I'm looking for something that I'm not going to have to worry about replacing for a few years, something that supports VLAN also.
In person I saw lots of routers that had different version or revisions with v.3 for example on the labels. Is UART flashing easier then BIOS flashing directly to a chip?
I do have experience with that but not UART flashing.
Been seeing lots of TP-Link's being most common at most stores like Staples, BestBuy, Walmart etc. Is this true reason why the govt was talking about banning the import of them? I'm not buying their muh China reason tbh.
BestBuy carries the Cudy WR3000 devices, they're easy to flash too.
But with a budget of $350, I'd buy a wired only router, and add an AP on the side (all Openwrt devices can be used as APs), but it might be hard to find decent wired only hw at BB.
This is not true for semi-recent purpose built x86_64 (like alderlake-n, n100/ n97/ n150 or similar) devices (with typically two or four 2.5 GBit/s ethernet ports). In general these will idle (which is the most prevalent power state for any router in a home or SOHO environment, even if you are actively using it) around 5 watts (+/- 1 watt), only few modern plastic routers can beat this figure. Yes, you will have to add the power consumption of a more traditional (but potentially lower-end) wifi-router to cover the AP functionality, but in the end the tally isn't that much worse compared to a high-end wifi6/ wifi7 router (ipq806x (nbg6817) was already in the ~15 watts range, wifi7 tri+ radio APs can easily reach ~30 watts, idle, 24/7). Do not expect that every plastic router has a low idle power consumption, higher end routers with multiple high-end radios are quite thirsty (and very little in the sense of dynamic power saving features).
If you keep you x86_64 device to its primary function, routing only, and resist the urge to overload it with non-routing 'server' tasks (just because it has cycles to spare or a big/ empty SSD (even a 2 GB DOM (disk on module) is way more than plenty for a router), maintenance and upgrades will be totally boring and painless. I'm running OpenWrt on x86_64 for the last half decade, sysupgrading to new main snapshots every 2-6 weeks on average, most boring experience of my life (in the best sense of the word, it just works, always).
Which are all no-name Chinese boards with zero support, zero warranty, and broken Intel 2.5G which requires ASPM to be disabled to just kind of work. x86 (no radio) vs arm full SoC router + wifi7 triband active is not an apples to apples comparison. Arm (no radio) will beat x86 (no radio) for power consumption. If power consumption was close, these x86 boards wouldn’t need massive heatsinks and/or fans.
“At idle, we saw 5.0W at the package for the N100 system and 14-15W at the wall.”
“Under load, that was 10.5W at the package and 16-27W at the wall.”
“both the N100 and N200 consumed around 10.5-12W at idle.”
“On the maximum power consumption side, these only raised to 22-23W for the N100.”
“Idle was in the 9-11W range in Proxmox VE 8. The system powered up to around 36W for around 36 seconds. The clock speed dips after the initial burst and it settles around 28-29W of power consumption and stays there.”
And the vast majority will use x86 beyond just routing, so that means potential issues.
6 watts average (semi-idle) at the wall, around 20 watts under full load (rarely, only for short periods of time). Yes this is my LAN server and not my router (which is a tad more wasteful at 11 watts at the wall), but that was already possible 11 years ago.
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