I currently have an Asus RT-AC56.
I think the USB port is bad plus it is Broadcom so stuck with an old kernel if I use Tomato.
RT-AC56U Dual Band Wireless-AC1200 Gigabit Router:
802.11ac : up to 867 Mbps
MIMO technology
5 GHz 2 x 2
128 MB Flash
256 MB RAM
Chipset ARMv7 Processor rev 0 (v7l)
CPU Frequency 800 MHz (dual-core)
1 x RJ45 for 10/100/1000/Gigabits BaseT for WAN, 4 x RJ45 for 10/100/1000/Gigabits BaseT for LAN
USB 2.0 x 1
USB 3.0 x 1
Circa 2015
I'm considering the Linksys EA6350 v3 (I hope everything for sale is v3) with OpenWRT:
802.11ac : up to 867 Mbps
MIMO technology (not sure)
5 GHz 2 x 2 (not sure)
128 MB Flash
256 MB RAM
CPU Clock Speed: 717MHz
CPU Cores: 4x ARM Cortex A7, Quad-core CPU
1 x RJ45 for 10/100/1000/Gigabits BaseT for WAN, 4 x RJ45 for 10/100/1000/Gigabits BaseT for LAN
USB 3.0 x 1
Circa 2019?
It seems similar and $100 (Canadian) can be better spent elsewhere.
I currently use both my USB ports so I'm a bit hesitant to downgrade.
Any recommendation for deals?
What do the two numbers mean, "16, 128NAND"?
ZyXEL EMG2926-Q10A
In your shoes what I'd do is grab a Raspberry Pi 4, one gigabyte should do for most usecases (unless you're running a huge adblock file or something like that). If you're in need of better Wifi though - depending on your coverage/performance necessity I'd lean towards just attaching a Wireless dongle to the Pi and getting a heavier duty power supply. You can also, if need be, up the power output to USB ports - which would definitely require a bigger power supply. This should basically get you where you want to go.
16/128 is 16Mb of SPI flash memory and 128Mb of NAND flash if I'm not mistaken.
Starting at 1GB of RAM and moving up to 4GB it will have between 8 and 30 times the RAM of a 16/128 device. By far it's the beefiest thing out there router-wise. In terms of storage, it uses micro-sd cards, so a 32 Gigabyte SD card is like $8, and a 64 Gigabyte SD is about $12. That's about 500 to 1000 times the storage of a 16/128MB device
Basically compared to a consumer all-in-one router, an RPi 4 is a server class computer that happens to be packed into a small device.
It's not exactly a cheap option in terms of up-front cost, but it's undoubtedly a cheap option in terms of long term costs over say 7 years. You buy the Pi kit with case, power supply, etc, a micro SD, an 8 port smart switch, and a commercial WiFi access point. The whole thing is probably $200. It's modular, so you can easily add another WiFi access point, or swap out an SD card. It will handle any commonly available internet speeds up to 1G symmetric no problems. If you have 500Mbps symmetric or less you don't need to bother with the USB ethernet dongle, just use VLANs. Electricity cost is maybe $10/yr. Over 7 years you're talking total something like $40/yr or on the order of say $5/mo
Considering that it costs you around $8 to buy a sandwich at a food truck these days, it's a lot of value for not much cost. Just have to have the cash on hand to put it all together up front.
Yes, the smart switch will cost you about $15 more than a dumb switch and offer about 1000 times the value. You Will want VLANs. Every home network will soon need isolation between the rat infested sewer of IoT devices attempting to exfiltrate naked pictures of your family to eastern European cyber criminals and all the devices you actually care about and have control of.
As for using the onboard broadcom wifi, No, just No.
If you want to support 1Gbps the Pi is really the only thing widely available with good bang for buck.
I have a spare Pi2 so I am going to install it there before I buy anything.
If I do buy a USB3 wifi adapter that supports linux, will the gui of openwrt be able to manage it (set the SSID, turn it off)?
Is it possible to buy any smart switches that openwrt can manage with the gui?
The biggest issue is that there is basically zero antenna. So maybe if the driver works ok, you could use it, but you'll get very much crap for performance. Don't rely on it for wifi from the next room over even if the driver is fantastic.
I was able to get a Pi4 today.
I installed the snapshot but what I want to do is enable the dhcp client so it becomes another computer on my current network.
My router is 192.168.1.2 because I had a DSL modem that conflicted.
I no longer have DSL but I never bothered to change the router.
So I can ssh to the Pi but it doesn't have access to the internet and doesn't show up in the list of devices of my router.
I tried changing the proto of lan to 'dhcp' but now I can't ssh to it so I think I broke it.
# vi /etc/config/network
# service network reload
I rewrote the SD card and now I can't ssh to it.
I guess I need to hook up a monitor.
Why is the SOC Broadcom BCM2838 but the snapshot is brcm2708/bcm2711 and shouldn't that be brcm27xx?
Shouldn't there be a brcm27xx and brcm28xx?
I had an HDMI -> HDMI cable so I bought an adapter.
Unfortunately the adapter blocks the power plug.
I ordered an adapter/extension that should fit but I won't get that until Monday.
I'll also get my USB3 -> Ethernet adapter so hopefully I'll have it all working Mon.
Except maybe wireless.
From https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/targets/brcm2708/bcm2711/packages/ you'll want to download (on another machine with internet access) the .ipk's: kmod-nls-base, kmod-usb-core, kmod-mii, kmod-usb-net-rtl8152, kmod-usb-net. Drop them into a folder. SCP them onto the Raspberry Pi scp /location/of/folder/*.ipk root@192.168.1.1:/tmp'
and then on the RPi use opkg install /tmp/*.ipk
After that an eth1 interface will appear.
A instruction for setting up RPi 4 with internet access:
DISCONNECT from your home(wifi) network from your computer
connect to pi with ethernet
Pi default IP is 192.168.1.1 (kind of dumb in my option)
assign yourself 192.168.1.xx 255.255.255.0
ssh to Pi using putty or whatever you want. user:root / no password needed
got to vi /etc/config/network press a to start editing
change option proto 'static' TO option proto 'dhcp'
press Esc then : type wq (this will save changes) (to quite without changes q!)
RECONNECT to wifi network
then on your computer under network adapters, go to properties of the wifi connection and share internet connection with ethernet
then open CMD type arp -a
check for an address(in windows) that starts with 192.168.137.x
You have to enter it a few times until you see an address (not the 192.168.137.255)
Use that IP to SSH into the Pi, you will then have internet on the Pi to add any packages and setup it all up.
Once you download and install everything you need, especially LuCi opkg install lucu for GUI and quick changes like setting up DHCP when you are ready to turn over controls of routing to Pi.
In Web Browser, G o to IP you used to SSH then under Interfaces tab click Edit to change to a static address and enable DHCP is you like.
make sure you tell your router to assign it a static lease.