What's your favorite enthusiast LEDE/OpenWrt device?

We get it. You like the device.
Could you try not shoving that fact down our throats for a while?

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To answer @plh, the new "preferred enthusiast device" is basically anything with ipq40xx or ipq806x. Those are stable, well-supported and reasonably priced.

Good examples for each:

  • ipq40xx: Linksys EA8300/MR8300, AVM FRITZ!Box 4040
  • ipq806x: Netgear R7800, Ubiquiti UniFi AC HD

Basically, if you are fine with around 250 Mbps SQM-enabled routing performance, go for ipq40xx. If you need more than that, go for ipq806x.

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3 posts were split to a new topic: Searching for router to buy

4 posts were split to a new topic: Looking for router to buy ofr 80/20Mbit

Please mind that this topic is only for recommendations of your favourite enthusiast OpenWrt device, i.e. "I can recommend device XYZ, because...".

If however you have a question like "Which device should I buy?"
please open a new topic in the Hardware Questions and Recommendations category of this forum.

Please see https://openwrt.org/faq/which_router_should_i_buy before asking for recommendations. This way you will get better recommendations and come to a quicker solution.

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Just reporting back. My XCY Mini PC router has been going strong and solid so far. I'm thinking of getting another X86 router as a backup to replace my draytek.

Melbourne to Sydney.

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XCY OpenWRT x86 Melbourne to Sydney to Melbourne

isn't the fact that a Device from 2016 falls under the "recommended enthusiast devices" somewhat disapointing?

Not really, it's top-end for 802.11ac/ wave2 devices and still a very good choice - there is not a whole lot better in this category (unless you lose wifi and go wired-only).

The 802.11ax class of devices is still under development, mt7622bv+mt7915e (just adding a new wireless chipset to an already supported SOC - rather than using new components for SOC and wireless) has had a head start so far, ipq807x is still facing some problems (but seems to be progressing). Once these are fully supported, they'll bring a lot more performance to the table, but that will take a bit more time (an unknown amount of it).

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Yea it's definitely not ideal. It's because there are no WiFi 6 routers with newer SoCs supported by OpenWrt yet, so the R7800 is still one of the top options. I use the WRT32X and it's mostly great too, faster in some regards, wifi is not as good though.

If you're into other 3rd party firmwares, like Asuswrt-Merlin, then the Asus RT-AX58U and RT-AX88U are great choices. Newer SoCs and great WiFi 6 support for better wifi (faster, TWT, etc.), that firmware can do SQM cake now too. Of course it's vey different in that it uses proprietary code.

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Yes fair enough. But what targets and what feature set: single login? airtime fairness? target wake time? OFDMA? wpa3? etc. My isssue with the E8450 is the relatively slow SoC and lack of USB 3.0.

Lol it wasn't a claim, I didn't realize support was in yet. Then I asked what features are in and you apparently don't know. Haven't seen any of those features I mentioned as check boxes in LuCI yet. I doubt what you posted is coming in 21.02, which means master builds only for a long time.

I use USB 3.0 literatlly every day with samba 4 shares on an external drive, get 120 MB/s read-write on my WRT32X, faster than many NAS boxes. Wouldn't switch to a newer device unless it keeps USB 3.0.

I got a new backup router it's a Lenovo Ideacenter. I got on an clearance sale. 17 watts idle with 9 x Gigabit ports and wifi.

HFC 1000/50

Running OpenWRT 19.07.7

Power doesn't bother me that much as I have heaps of solar panels. 9 x Gigabit ports is what I need

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A post was split to a new topic: Alternative to Belkin rt3200?

Hello,
what about the CLEARFOG CN9130 PRO

sold @306$
https://i.imgur.com/PN86vJk.png

Marvell OCTEON based CN9130 Quad core Arm Cortex A72 up to 2.2 GHz
1 x Port dedicated Ethernet
5 x Switched Ethernet RJ45 10/100/1000
1 x SFP+ 10GbE
1 x USB 3.0
up to 8GB DDR4
8GB eMMC
MicroSD
mikroBUS header
M.2
2 x mSATA/mPCIE with SIM holder
Indication LEDs
User Push Buttons
RTC Battery
JTAG Header
OS Support Linux Kernel 4.x, OpenWRT/LEDE, Yocto

More details here : https://developer.solid-run.com/knowledge-base/clearfog-pro-getting-started/

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By no means terrible :wink: From the raspberry pi 4B we know what 4 A72 cores can achieve, and these seem to be higher clocked... A bit on the pricy end, but then it seems to be a rather complete wired-router-for-gigabit links solution... AND with the proper mPCIe wireless cards and antennas this could also be converted into a wireless router as well (albeit at a cost).
I have no idea how long solid-run supports their SBCs (this is one thing raspberry pi has going for it, a relative big market able to support sales of the device fo a relative long time).

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I have a Solid Run Cubox I4-Pro sitting idle which I originally set up as a media device, and they stood behind it with good support and resources for years, but then it was fairly popular with the XBMC crowd. This seems to be a little pricy given those 5 ports connect to a switch and a single NIC-- it suggests it's more of an edge than a core router and I don't know what you're doing with all that CPU unless you're encrypting and shaping that 10Gbe link. At just over half the price, the dual-core 1Gb RAM version seems more right-sized for typical applications.

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Nah, that is a way less capable CPU... at $186 a dual core A9 @1.6GHz with a 5 port switch and no WiFi is not really bad but also not that attractive. This is similar to the turris omnia, not a bad platform, but also not really powerful enough to shape small packets at gigabit rates symmetrically. (Full disclosure I own and operate a turris omnia, but my access link is limited to 116/37 anyway, which I shape down to 95/36, which the dual A9s do without issues)

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Probably my favorite overpowered device I've used for OpenWRT is an Intel DQ77KB ThinITX mobo (2 onboard GigE NICs) with a 3.1GHz Ivy Bridge Core I5 CPU and a quad I340 PCIe card. I ran multiple instances of OpenWRT as LXC containers to perform various networking tasks such as isolating a bittorrent client on a VPN tunnel, separate home routers for my wife's telecommuting needs (including unsanctioned multiple PPPoE connections to my ISP) as well as a separately firewalled VPN link connecting a bunch of local devices on a VLAN subnet to an offsite client's lab; it was a complicated project.

I don't get that fancy with it now, but OpenWRT is really astonishingly versatile. It's handy as an appliance OS, a virtual appliance OS and as a container. I haven't had much success with it as an LXC host for unprivileged containers running as a non-root user; that's a bit outside of its wheelhouse: there are small-footprint server Linuxen that a little better suited for that sort of thing out of the box.

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