
Announcing the OpenWrt/LEDE merge - kylegordon
https://forum.lede-project.org/t/announcing-the-openwrt-lede-merge/10217
======
koolba
I'm in the market for a couple new WiFi routers and would love to get one that
is running either OpenWrt or LEDE. Any specific recommendations from the HN
crowd on which one to pick up?

The table of hardware[1] on the LEDE site has a ton of info but filtering
through 100s of devices manually doesn't seem very doable. Would love if
someone would just suggest one or two devices, preferably something they've
use themselves. All I really care about are Gigabit LAN and the latest Wi-Fi
(5Ghz N?) so no USB storage, NFS, etc.

[1]: [https://lede-project.org/toh/start](https://lede-project.org/toh/start)

~~~
mangix
Archer C7v2 has long been preferred as a nice and stable router. USB is slow
and NAT caps out at around ~500mbps but is otherwise very good (there are a
few patches around that improve this slightly). The WiFi driver for 802.11ac
has improved stability(no crashing after 2 days) in trunk but has not been
backported to stable yet. Range is also excellent (in my opinion).

If faster USB is needed, the recommendation is the Linksys WRT series of
routers (new ones). Avoid the WRT1900ACv1 (keep rebooting, watchdog driver bug
i think). WiFi is pretty stable now. One really nice benefit of these routers
is that most of the drivers have been upstreamed in the kernel and thus get
love from the kernel community (enhancements and bug fixes). Not so with the
other popular routers.

~~~
rcpt
AIUI the Archer C7 requires some tricks to get around recent FCC enforcement
which bans citizens from installing their own router firmware, cf.
[https://pappp.net/?p=1525](https://pappp.net/?p=1525)

~~~
mkesper
I recently flashed a new C7v2. Needed to flash the ...-EU.bin variant but
otherwise no problems.

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sharpercoder
I still don't get why no commercial hardware vendor offers products
specifically designed for this software. OSS router software for home seems to
be far superior then all the proprietary stuff that's out there.

~~~
moondev
I bought this mini router recently that comes with OpenWRT pre-installed. It's
an awesome little device!

[http://www.gl-inet.com/mt300n-v2/](http://www.gl-inet.com/mt300n-v2/)

~~~
IgorPartola
Whoa. That looks great! Is it stock OpenWRT? Does it auto-update? Do you get
root on it?

~~~
gsich
No gigabit port.

~~~
jrrrr
You must have a really fast internet connection.

~~~
snaky
There are many places (outside US) where you can get 200MBit for $10 or so.

~~~
fyfy18
1 gigabit symmetric for €20/mo here in Lithuania. Assuming you like cold
winters :-)

Back on topic, what hardware are people with these sort of speeds running? It
seems most consumer routers usually top out around 500mbit for NATing. I’m
currnetly using a Mikrotik Hex with RouterOS, but prefer OpenWRT/LEDE.

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drewmol
Does anyone have experience developing packages for OpenWRT/LEDE... && is
willing to offer some time (maybe an hour or two, whenever it's convenient) to
a fellow HNer who's getting ready to attempt developing my first OpenWRT
package?

I've got pretty entry level ambitions: I plan to created a utility that allow
the user to configure a list of scheduled SSID names for automated SSID
changes. I use to do a lot of tech support for the bar & restaurant scene, and
always wanted to schedule the public WiFi SSID to change daily and broadcast
marketing info. (Think restaurant daily specials, retail store popup/promo
coupon codes, estimated wait times, deal of the day, etc.)

Or, is anyone aware of this feature existing in a commercially available
device&firmware?

~~~
rahulrav
You might want to look at [https://github.com/google/physical-
web.It's](https://github.com/google/physical-web.It's) really great, and you
could target SSDP as a starting point.

~~~
f2n
I was unaware of the SSDP component of that project, but it seems to require
having the Physical Web app installed. Their BTLE beacons work on Android
devices without anything special installed on the client. Maybe the SSDP does
work on stock android but just takes a bit? This doesn't work if the client
has to have a specific app installed to receive it.

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CharlesMerriam2
This appears to be people acting like responsible adults.

I heartily approve.

------
mmanfrin
Is it still the default suggestion that Open WRT/LEDE are better than stock
router software? What about compared to pfsense (or is that not good for
wireless)? Every time in the past that I looked at the WTF website (and I'll
admit I did not know about LEDE) it looked so dated that I assumed proprietary
firmwares on routers were more capable to making use of whatever the new
router tech of today is.

~~~
frio
For my money, these days, there are two devices/ecosystems that stand head and
shoulders above the rest: if you're an open source die-hard/have spare time,
the PCEngines APU2 is an excellent AMD+coreboot based router platform that you
build yourself. If you're not strict about requiring open source, the Ubiquiti
line is _amazing_. The Ubiquiti Unifi Security Gateway line in particular, for
home or small business, is incredible.

For home, I've got an APU2c4
([http://pcengines.ch/apu2b4.htm](http://pcengines.ch/apu2b4.htm)), running
LEDE. It pushes something near a gigabit pretty easily (and has a the
bufferbloat patches!), and I've got the time needed to administer it when
necessary.

For my folks, I grabbed an Ubiquiti Unifi Security Gateway
([https://www.ubnt.com/unifi-routing/usg/](https://www.ubnt.com/unifi-
routing/usg/)) and a separate Ubiquiti AP AC Lite. I fired up a controller in
the cloud, and now I can manage it remotely if there's ever a problem. It's
pretty awesome :).

~~~
Latty
I've been wanting to move away from standard consumer networking hardware for
ages, because it all seems terrible in lots of different ways.

The Unifi Security Gateway looked interesting until I googled a bit, no IPv6
support in 2018 at £100? That's insane. I mean, apparently you can do it
manually, but bleh.

~~~
frio
From what I can see it does support IPv6 -- [https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-
us/articles/115005868927-UniFi-H...](https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-
us/articles/115005868927-UniFi-How-to-Implement-IPv6-with-DHCPv6-and-Prefix-
Delegation-on-USG) is their own help article on the topic; it doesn't look
difficult. It may even come standard in newer firmware. The one caveat I have
with UBNT gear is that the stuff you get out of the box always seems to be
outdated; I fought a friends ER-X for a few hours until I realised it was
running old firmware that lacked some stuff I needed. That said, that might
just be a quirk of living in New Zealand...

~~~
Latty
Yeah, I saw you can do it manually, but what's the point of paying for custom
hardware with nice interfaces when you have to switch to a config file for
really basic functionality? At that point, might as well stick with bodged
consumer stuff.

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chx
Makes total sense. OpenWRT is an established name and LEDE is a better
codebase. Slap the former on the latter and move on.

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brightball
Wasn’t there some legal thing recently that made it more difficult to use OSS
router software?

~~~
brudgers
The FCC passed a certification rule a couple of years ago, not sure about it's
final status:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?utm_source=opensearch&utm_medium=sea...](https://hn.algolia.com/?utm_source=opensearch&utm_medium=search&utm_campaign=opensearch&query=fcc%20wifi%20router&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

~~~
Maxious
It seems to have been implemented in ASUS routers
[https://github.com/RMerl/asuswrt-
merlin/issues/967](https://github.com/RMerl/asuswrt-merlin/issues/967)

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Twirrim
"Won" seems like totally the wrong word to use, but this reads like LEDE
"Won". Their code base going forwards, just rebranded to OpenWrt, and everyone
all together again as one big happy family?

~~~
mosselman
Who, other than you, said anything about winning? I think ever one wins when
there is a climate where good code is appreciated. I always welcome
improvements by others to things I make. You shouldn't waste time on
people/projects who don't.

~~~
colordrops
I think the person you are replying to is referring to their own usage of the
word "won" as perhaps not the best choice of words, but used it anyway.

------
lifeisstillgood
I have been planning for a while to put in a OpenWRT router as replacement for
my generic ADSL from BT, and then add in things like netflow so I can
responsibly monitor home internet usage as the kids get older and discuss
whatever pops out. also probably do some ad blocking or something.

I am assuming projects like this exist already - focused on the dad segment,
but if not it's on my 2018 list. Anyone know of any?

~~~
Latty
What I really wanted when I was a kid was for my father to find out what porn
I liked looking at and come to discuss it with me!

Cut your kids a break. If you are going to monitor their usage, at the very
least tell them about it first.

I get the urge - when your kids are very young you have to protect them and do
everything for them. At some point you have to accept they are people, however
young and inexperienced, and you have to _teach_ them to look after
themselves, not invade their privacy.

Or maybe I've misunderstood you and you meant older as in, they are 6 or
something. Even then, I'd argue that you should be up-front about the fact you
monitor it. Hiding it is just going to feel like entrapment.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
There never was any intention to hide this - this is a show everyone on a web
page and discuss it idea. and the porn issue ... fair enough i guess i have a
handful of years yet however before they hit puberty.

but my main point still stands - we live in a surveillance society that works
against us, so i want to use it to start working for us. and that to my mind
means starting with metrics.

will it help to know daddy spends x hours a day on HN? will it be harder to
complain about my kids watching cartoons if i spend 12 hours a day on netflix?

~~~
Latty
Yeah, but there are still going to be things your children are insecure about,
embarrassed about, and want to find out about without you knowing.

In my experience, ignorance is responsible for a lot more harm than "seeing
too much". Going off hear-say, or just remaining ignorant is not a good thing.
Having some room for privacy is important for development as people and for
learning.

Yes, there is room for insight and lessons from data, but without an opt-out
switch, it'll also be something that limits them. It's not just porn, there is
a lot of stuff I'd want to learn about that I wouldn't want my family to know
I'm learning about, if I was a child all over again.

I was fortunate in that I got to look up that stuff without fear of being
discovered, and otherwise I know I'd have gone around believing playground
rumours and the like.

It's easy to say "but I want them to be able to talk to me about that stuff"
\- it's easy to say that, but it's harder for it to be true, especially from
the point of view of your child. You can't pre-empt every fear, question and
insecurity, and some things will just always be embarrassing enough they'll
stay ignorant rather than ask you.

I had a friend who didn't know basic (important) things about her own anatomy
that caused health issues during university just because she was too
embarrassed to ask her (non-judgemental, lovely) parents about it as a child.
She didn't have a computer in her home then, but I'm sure if she had, knowing
she couldn't have privacy would have stopped her as well.

It's not the worst thing in the world or anything, but I think many parents
don't start giving their children privacy early enough. I get it's scary and
hard to judge when it's perfect, but I think it's important.

On a side note, I just watched the ultimate "turned up to 11" version of this
in Black Mirror S04E02 - ArkAngel, where a parent gets a monitoring device
implanted in their child after a scare with them getting lost. Good series
about the potential dangers of tech as it evolves, if you haven't already seen
it.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I see the point about privacy, and like the idea of the off switch. good idea

------
qwerty456127
By the way, what is the status of addressing the Meltdown and Spectre
vulnerabilities in OpenWRT/LEDE at affected platforms?

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unsined
I guess I'll be waiting until that major release and then flashing my router
with it for use as a Wifi bridge.

Does anyone know of a concise guide to configuring your router for this type
of use? I tried going off of what's available on the LEDE site but couldn't
get it to work for whatever reason.

------
ausjke
Best news for the day. Cheers.

~~~
cbzbc
Time will tell - but the reason for the split in the first place was the
bureaucracy and slow progress of the OpenWRT project.

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cyberjunkie
Alright then, when do we see some Netgear R6220 love?

~~~
bartvk
If I search the LEDE database, it shows that the snapshot supports it:

[https://lede-
project.org/toh/start?dataflt%5BModel*%7E%5D=r6...](https://lede-
project.org/toh/start?dataflt%5BModel*%7E%5D=r6220)

