What's your favourite cheap LEDE/OpenWrt device?

A used Netgear WNR2200 can be bought for less then $10, but it has up to 16M of flash and 64M of RAM and there is an USB port. Since it doesn't have 5GHz support it is considered dated, but it's more than enough for most of possible applications where you might need a router.

Today GL-iNET Microuter-N300 has a price drop in aliexpress store. But seems like there is no compile for this device of openwrt. I bought one and will see what can i install (i'm not a developer so i cant compile one) Hope developers get closer this sweet device.


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Raspberry Pi 4, for 1Gbps fiber connection (Archer C5 was unable to route more than 400 Mbps of traffic - Pi does 1000 Mbps without difficulty - so I can get rid of the provider buggy black box).

Using integrated Gigabit Ethernet for LAN, and ASIX AX88179 USB3 for Gigabit WAN (needs opkg install kmod-usb-net-asix-ax88179).

Using it for since end of August. Transferred some tens of terabytes! Never had any crash, corruption or problem.

Can also be used with OpenVPN Server inside of it, but needs some hours of detailed configuration and tests (masquerading should be used and configured manually).

My only concern is that "releases versions" (and incoming 19.07) aren't available for bcm2711, which is too bad (mainly for opkg support over weeks/months, and luci manual installation avoidance at first poweron). Using snapshot build, opkg was quickly lost and sysupgrade made luci and kmod-usb-net-asix-ax88179 not working anymore (no more Internet) so when updating, I use factory image and complete reconfiguration.

It may be nearly 2020, but I've got to say: It's still the WNDR3700/WNDR3800.

They're Gig-E, Atheros based so generally very stable, and even with only 128MB RAM, can handle fairly decent loads without choking.

My ZBT-WE1326 workalike took nearly 3 years to become stable enough for use, and I still have to reset it once or twice a month because for whatever reason, mt76.

I would strongly advise against buying anything cheap that says it's OpenWRT based, and doesn't have a recent distribution (if it's still on Chaos Calmer - run away!)

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WNDR3700v1: only 8 MB Flash
WNDR3700v2: "only" 64 MB Ram

So while I love my wndr3700v2 dearly, everybody not owning one already, make sure to get a 3800 as that has 128 RAM which will allow a few more bells and whistles...

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I forgot about the flash limitation- 3700v1 usually gets the @hnyman treatment for the <$20 used units, which still carries it just fine for most needs I've run into.

64MB RAM is a little low depending on your needs to stream and higher-end, but I now live in an area still highly populated with DSL, so it really hasn't become a contention within the last year.

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Netgear R6220. It has enough ram and storage (128/128) to run openwrt, and it can be found cheaply on ebay.

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@chongtin

Yes! I bought mine used for 40$ on amazon, with openwrt it works like a charm!

You can buy WNDR3700v4 It also has 128 MB FLASH and 128 MB RAM. I have it and it works amazingly well. Now it works on ath79 with 4.19 kernel. It's very stable. I run transmission, openvpn server, dnscrypt-proxy, simple-adblock and also have very large hosts file.

how can you order v4 instead of v5?

TP-Link TL-WR740N. Cheap, old and trusty. Sadly it's an old 4/32 device that won't work with 19.07, so its EOL is near.

Anyway I also bought a new LinkSys EA6350-v3 for about US$60, which @jeff recommended.

What about search for it on ebay and see in photos and description what model is it?

I was asking about a new device from amazon or some other online retailer...
so favorite new device is actually a second hand one from ebay or some asian thing from AE...

Atomic Pi ~$30 USD
USB 3.0 Gigabit Ethernet adapter (RTL8153) ~$5 USD
Enterprise WAP ~$20 USD
Any unmanaged gigabit switch ~$15 USD

all running OpenWrt and easily handles my 500/50 with QoS :smiley:

Atomic + …. = 70$

WR330 -> $ 33.75 run fine

https://fr.aliexpress.com/premium/wr330.html?d=y&origin=y&catId=0&initiative_id=SB_20200131105855&SearchText=wr330

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I bought R6220 last week for $7.50 plus $7 shipping on ebay. It was sold as bricked, but, I figured it was probably simple enough to restore that it was worth the risk. As it turns out, there was nothing wrong with it, just needed to be reset and now it has ROOter Golden Orb firmware, so, I will get some experience with ROOter.

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Bought an RPi Model 3 B+ ages ago for another project that I ended up just using a virtual machine for. Works beautifully as a router for <100Mbit connection (80/30). Set it to turbo mode for 1.4GHz clock at all times compared to stock 600Mhz. Only problem is the lack of RAM. Still managed to get it to block over 7 million domains and more than a handful of regex rules, all while saturating my connection over Wireguard.

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Raspberry Pi 4. :slight_smile:

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Xiaomi Mi Router 3G
or - technically the same -
Xiaomi Mi Router 4A Gigabit Edition
Both cost about 30-35$

I wish it was costing 30$ :neutral_face:I can't find 3G anywhere below 50$, excluding the shipping cost.