What's your favorite enthusiast LEDE/OpenWrt device?

So I got GL B1300, I had a bit problem to flush it (by my mistake), I have found post most helpful:
https://forum.openwrt.org/t/flashing-gl-inet-gl-b1300-with-openwrt-18-06-1/25587

I am running 19.07.3. Absolutely love it, cool, fast, even without SQM scripts I am getting buffer bloat A rating.

Looking forward to learning more about openWRT, never come back to customer routers. I reckon even Mikrotik looks not too good with comparisons to that software.
WiFi is not bad either, but my house is not that big and on the wooden frame, so easy penetration.

So far very good purchase, about 100bucks with Tenda 5 port switch (half the price Asus blue cave I had use).

Very happy with my TP-LINK TL-WDR3600 and TL-WDR4300 workhorses. Not hotshot "AC" multigigabit speeds but dual band workhorses with great OPENWRT compatibility and plenty of RAM and sufficient flash of 8Mbyte. 2USB which still isn't easy to find. Long out of production, I keep a sharp eye on Kijiji etc. for them. For $40 CDN used I can't complain.

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Fellow Canuck here, I'm really new to this and looking to build my own home automation system. I have read about this or that not working well in different countries and I want to future proof my home automation system. Any suggestions on which routers to go with I plan on having 2 as I have a detached house with a backyard entertainment area with plans to add a router in the shed so maybe 3(2 will be WiFi only).

Please use this topic only for recommending your favourite device.

For questions like "Which device should I buy", please open a new topic in the Hardware Questions and Recommendations category of this forum.

Please read https://openwrt.org/faq/which_router_should_i_buy before creating a new topic. This way you will get better recommendations and come to a quicker solution.

Thanks!

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my Dream device is GL inet BrumeW now, 2nd choice is GL inet's Slate.

Brume is fast Marvel cortexA53 CPU,
1GB ram
8GB emmc

good support from GL inet.

just USD 140.

Slate use QC A9563,
128MB ram...
128MB nand, 16MB Nor.

half price at USD 70, but MUCH more popular.

dont think any can beat them.
btw they only got 1WAN 1LAN,
all gigabitLAN
but

300Mbps wifi for brume, 433 Mbps wifi for slate.
both only 1 USB 2.0 port

3 posts were split to a new topic: Replacement for Archer C7

I'm currently using a Qotom Q350G4 with an i5-4200U CPU, 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage.

I have 3 SQM layer-cake instances running, multiple VLANs, various scripts and other bits and bobs, and on my 200mbps / 20mbps connection CPU usage never goes above 10%. It wasn't cheap at about £200, but I should be future proofed for at least the next 10 years.

Wifi is handled with independent access points (old Asus routers running Tomato), so they can be upgraded separately.

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Was considering getting the Brume, but the absence of a 5Ghz radio changed my mind.
The Brume product page (generically) claims 'External 5G AC Wi-Fi dongle supported', but doesn't list any specific models. Not a big fan of dongles in any case. Will stick with the slate for now....

Memory usage looks like this after 60 days uptime:

The Qotom is great. It's built like a tank and it runs cool and completely silently - the entire case is a heatsink and there are no fans.

The only downsides are the relatively high cost and the fact that you generally need to order them from China, so extra taxes come into play. I was lucky and managed to find an unused one in the UK on eBay.

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I haven't used USB storage at all I'm afraid.

What sort of thing are you intererested in? I can try attaching a couple of USB sticks.

I'm with you on making backups of backups. I backup all my stuff to a Synology NAS and then backup those backups to a second NAS at my parents house, and they do the same in reverse.

The Qotom should be able to handle multiple USB drives easily. The CPU is way more powerful than anything in Synology's DS series. I do love Synology's NAS devices though.

At the moment I have OpenWrt running on the bare hardware, but in the long term I would like to virtualise everything so I can use the Qotom's full capacity to run other stuff like a full Linux distro and LibreNMS (which I currently have running on a Pi). It's tricky when it's your main router though - my family won't thank me for messing about with it and (temporarily) breaking their internet connection :slight_smile:

My main goal when buying the Qotom and moving to OpenWrt (from Tomato) was to get performant QoS on a 200Mbps connection, and it does that with its eyes shut. I suspect it could handle a symmetric gigabit connection with ease. Hopefully I can find out within the next couple of years if CityFibre get their act together...

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TP-Link and LTE connection already worked. Like on Fritzbox.
But both are slow and provide basic encryption and mesh VPN
networking. As my next option i tend to Huawei.
url=https://consumer.huawei.com/en/routers/4g-router-3-prime/
It seems a good solution. And working.

I've got to say that is a pretty neat set-up. I'm a little jealous. Your goal was hardware for 200 Mbps QoS though? I'd say you've exceeded your goal in spades: QoS on ramips MT7621.

You may even be ready for 200 MBps someday, if only those pesky Gig ethernet ports could keep up with the CPU!

Seriously though, that device looks great. It will probably handle full speed VPN and QoS simultaneously for you for a while.

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Yeah, I got annoyed with constantly upgrading the hardware to a new MIPS/ARM unit and hitting a new limit a year or two later, so I decided to buy something that'll definitely last many years.

I managed to get Proxmox running on it yesterday with OpenWrt running as a VM. Pretty cool.

Nice, but why not run OpnSense on the Qotom and OpenWrt on the Wifi-APs?

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Has the issue where this device does not support VLAN on the WAN port been solved?
That's a pretty nasty showstopper for me, otherwise the device is a great choice..

Got a great new piece of hardware

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how about amlogic tv boxes ?
most of it have about 2gb ram with quadcore cpu, 8gb storage..some has dual band wifi, just lack of ethernet ports

with the price of low-end routers, higher performance than high-end routers

wifi sucks so no usage as router

my favorite router for now is Newifi3 D2. its a capable hardware handling gigabit connection via hardware offloading, has gigabit rj45 ports, and all the wifi goodness. and all of this I can buy this for around 20USD or less at least here in my place.

getting this device loaded with openwrt is really easy, you dont even need fancy tools for ttl or open it up. just follow this one youtube video that enables telnet and load a .ko file which what it does is flash the bootrom with breedweb.

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