What's your favorite enthusiast LEDE/OpenWrt device?

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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I'm using a Raspberry Pi 4, 5-port managed switch and an Honor Router 3 as a Wi-Fi access point.

I'm really impressed with OpenWrt and the functionality I've added to my network:

  • Network level adblocking.
  • DNS redirection.
  • SQM QoS
  • Wireguard server to allow my remote devices to access my home LAN and use the WAN connection.

Total cost was under £100 and the capabilities far exceed any off the shelf device.

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My daily is my WRT32X which I love, very fast and well supported by OpenWrt, SQM at 500+mbits is no problem, USB 3.0 storage at 120 MB/s, DSA, Adblock, Samba4, all working great, wifi 5GHz is okay not great, but been tinkering more with an RPi4 2GB I've had a while as a RetroPie box, now with another SD card it's been fun running OpenWrt on it.

I must admit, it would be an incredible setup for performance, ram, storage, etc running: Rasperry Pi 4 2GB or better, USB 3.0 gigabit ethernet adapter, 5-port gigabit switch, and WiFi 6 AP of course - probably a Ubiquiti U6-Lite-US access point. It would be a ~$250 setup but better than any solo router.

In the end I might just tack on a U6-Lite-US ($99 AP) to my WRT32X when I want WiFi 6 since there isn't a solid WiFi 6 router on the horizon yet for OpenWrt.

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Pi 4 with a dual USB3 ethernet adapter and the POE hat, along with a POE ceiling mount AP and of course a POE switch, cuts down on the wall warts and makes it easy to put everything on a single UPS. Thanks to my desktop being on the same UPS and my wife's telecommute rig being laptop-based (i.e. built-in UPS), we have more than once been able to continue working online through a couple of brief power cuts, when WAN was unaffected thanks to being fiber supplied from outside the affected area.

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Good luck actually getting a device. SolidRun takes months to fulfill orders from my personal experience!

When I ordered the CuBox many years ago it arrived after a one week.

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please stop polluting this thread with this info. if you need to show this off start another one

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These seem interesting. I've switched my wifi to seperate Ubiquiti AC-Lite as my bthub5 is terrible at wall penetration. If i can ever get a damn VDSL modem off Ebay for less than insane prices i'll be switching to Modem/ NanoPi R4S and my AC-Lite but if i was going to pick a new router with wifi 6? I'd definatly be looking at this one.

(edit) "All these router-oriented processors and boards run OpenWrt Linux and offer built-in support for 802.11a/n/ac/ax (WiFi 6)."

Not supported by OpenWrt yet - and not likely to change within the next 6-12 months for ipq60xx either (no one has even started working on this SOC so far). So pretty much by definition, this can't be a "favorite enthusiast LEDE/OpenWrt device" anytime soon.

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That's rather disappointing then. I rather liked the specs they offered.

Guess my original choice to revert back to dedicated router and separate wifi was much better idea (and was based off looking to move to FTTP and most all in one routers just drop off at about 300mb or you are looking at x64 based routerboards)

Must Netgear R7800 !!! :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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So many Devices, pointless looking through this list.

Does your existing Device (Router) Lag, not the connected devices which is usually the problem?
Do you have spare Space and Memory for every function (Router)?

If so, your (Routing) Device is doing perfectly, only the demands of the Local Network causes issues in Routing and Switching (Cisco Basics)

Let's face it more users have gigabit connections and wifi 6 devices now. If you have gigabit internet, or close to it, and want SQM cake shaping you will need a faster device than these 5+ year old off the shelf routers mentioned above. (WRT3200ACM does 500-600Mbits with SQM. R7800 is maybe reaching close to that with SQM, not sure.)

Since we are talking "enthusiast devices" here, gigabit internet simply needs more. Here are a few options that work great with OpenWrt and have CPU left over for Adblock, Samba, etc.:

  1. Raspberry Pi 4: but this requires quite a few parts, RPi 4 kit (enclosure, power supply, microSD), USB gigabit ethernet adapter, gigabit switch, and wireless AP.

  2. NanoPi R4S: this has 2 gigabit ethernet ports built in. Connect one to a gigabit switch (get one with a few PoE ports), slap a wifi 6 access point on ($100 U6-Lite-US for example), and you have a very fast $250 setup.

  3. x86 miniPC: does this with a ton of CPU headroom left over. OpenWrt (or pfSense) runs great. This is much more costly option though and needs a WAP too. For example: https://www.cnx-software.com/2022/01/06/6x-gbe-intel-tiger-lake-network-appliance-supports-pfsense/

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Considering the wiki for your router is totally blank I wouldn't count on it. Buy routers with good OpenWrt support.

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