Birbla

Discussion summary

OpenWrt One offers a budget-friendly hardware router with gigabit connectivity, considered adequate for most home users. Discussions highlight differing views on hardware specs, security, and use cases.

What the discussion says

  • Some argue 2.5 Gbps is sufficient for home networks.
  • Others believe 10 Gbps WAN is necessary for future-proofing.
  • Concerns about security and firmware integrity when flashing older devices.
  • The device is seen as a good balance of cost and functionality.
“Gigabit / 2.5 Gbit connectivity is already obsolete.”
— tcdent
“For a home network 2.5 is plenty.”
— ThrowawayTestr

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  • Hacker News
  • This is the official shop page afaict: https://www.bpi-shop.com/products/banana-pi-openwrt-one-rout...
    by peddling-brink
  • I use opnsense with an aliexpress n100 router. It works very well and I enjoy it. But upgrades scare the crap out of me. I've only had 1 upgrade where things went bad. I have zfs snapshots and everything, but just because its a headless unit, I get super anxiety upgrading the system waiting for the beeps for it to come back online.
    by dominick-cc
  • How much did you pay for it?
    by gonzalohm
  • I virtualize mine with proxmox and pass the necessary NICs through to the VM. Snapshots make rollbacks a breeze. You can also run HA pairs if you want to do updates without downtime.
    by papascrubs
  • I switched from a Google Wifi to this and found it to be just as stable, but with better range/signal strength, and easier to apply the parental controls I want.
    by williadc
  • Does it have parental controls natively or did you have to install something extra?

    I would love to be able to whitelist which devices are allowed to access the internet during night time hours.

    by freedomben
  • I've recently been test driving SPR[1] which is a security-oriented distro for Wi-Fi routers. The team behind it are serious about Wi-Fi security and have a research lab[2] that has been credited with several CVEs in the likes of Apple's network stack. The headline feature is strong device isolation for semi-trusted guest and home automation devices, and the software stack is based around containerized and audited Go daemons.

    It ran pretty well for me as a travel router I cobbled together from a Raspberry Pi and Netgear A7500 USB dongle for a stay in a short-term rental where the infrastructure network was shared with other units. More recently I have been trialing their CM5-based model with Wi-Fi 7 and 2.5GbE PoE for use as primary home Wi-Fi.

    1: https://www.supernetworks.org 2: https://www.supernetworks.org/security-labs.html

    by rgovostes
  • I have and love my OpenWrt One for my main router. I have two, so that I have a backup one I can switch to if the first one ever dies. It is the best device to run OpenWrt on as it is fully supported hardware that has great images/packages for it. Routing speeds/buffer/latency are great, everything just works, price is very reasonable.

    I don't use it for my APs, but that is mostly because I already had 3 TP-Link routers setup as dumb APs using OpenWrt that have been working great. If I did it again, I'd buy OpenWrt Ones though. Although Deco mesh kits I've used have worked exceptionally well, and have become my recommendation for friends/family that don't want to do things like run arbitrary packages on their router/APs.

    by pseudosavant
  • It's got only one LAN ethernet port. Do you use only wifi or did you add a switch between the router and your devices?
    by pmontra
  • another happy user here too. having openwrt with all features working and no tinkering out of the box (since it's their reference target) is a dream. this, plus the warm fuzzies of buying open-source, makes it worth it to me even with the 1GBps limitation and outdated WiFi (i use a separate AP anyway, like you). i swapped my ports in software to have 1GB WAN and 2.5GB LAN (which also lets me power the router with PoE, which i have coming in on the LAN port).
    by woodrowbarlow
  • I have 4 OpenWRT Ones and they are good.

    If you just want a good WiFi router or access point, unless you need something cannot do (e.g. WiFi 7 or 10 Gbit/s Ethernet), and if want to spend minimal time messing around with routers today and in the future, just get this one.

    After getting this, I see no reason to ever buy any closed-source router again.

    No need to learn/remember any other Router config either. It's just all OpenWRT, always looks the same, always works the same. Setting up a new one takes me 2 minutes max.

    The recent OpenWRT update also brought the one feature the project was most sorely missing: A simple "Download and install latest firmware" button in the device UI.

    Now they just need to add an unattended-upgrades option and I never have to log in again after initial setup.

    by nh2
  • Since we're talking WiFi, I'll mention

    https://www.wiisfi.com/

    The single best wifi reference I've found to date.

    by buredoranna
  • This is awesome, thank you for sharing.

    This answers so many questions that I had but never had the true desire to research every niche WiFi term.

    by evulhotdog
  • If someone is interested in open hardware running openwrt, also check out Turris.

    https://www.turris.com/en/

    I have been using them for years and I'm really happy. I recently bought the WiFi 6 upgrade kit for both of my turris. They "recently" released their latest version which is expensive but comes with WiFi 7 and 2.5 Gbps RJ45 and 10 Gbps SPF.

    by gnyman
  • Are you certain this is running OpenWRT? As in, can I get a OpenWRT build and flash it to the router and have it work?
    by bana-io
  • $106usd or $84usd without a case and antennas. That’s a solid price. Wish it had more than 1gb ram - goddamn datacenters.
    by kennywinker
  • Not even for the OS itself, but for the freaking wifi send / receive windows...
    by mjevans
  • Without performing any work at all to optimize RAM usage: My all-singing, all-dancing OpenWRT router projects have always used less than 100MB of RAM. These days, they usually occupy less than 64MB.

    1GB is a ton of RAM for this kind of application. :) What do you anticipate needing more for?

    by ssl-3
  • How about OPNSense on open hardware of your choice, and passing messy wireless to separate AP?

    OpenWRT is very good, but the installation and upgrades are not easy. There is a zoo of images for different hardware, installation options and tools. It has to run on small devices, so there are limitations. The documentation on Wiki is scattered and could be improved.

    I had to search forums for weeks for a custom package installation for my router. Right now I have been trying to upgrade to the latest version via LUCI for a while, and it stucks. Probably have to wait for few weeks, go through CLI and maybe search forums again.

    I just thought I am paying a hefty time price for a bit more expensive x86 mini pc and AP.

    by aborsy
  • I agree on the upgrade story, though supposedly the recent move to apk will help in that regard.

    I moved from pfSense to OpenWRT due to the really poor IPv6 support in pfSense. I don't use the AP capability either. How are things in OPNSense these days?

    Particular pain points from pfSense was that it published global IP as DNS address to LAN clients and no way around it, so connectivity broke every time prefix changed, and no real support for specifying prefix-less firewall rules or similar, so couldn't really expose anything via IPv6 without pain.

    by magicalhippo
  • > How about OPNSense on open hardware of your choice

    Yes, it's a possibility, but if you want to tinker, I think a plain Linux distro like Debian is better. Turning it into a router is literally a couple of kernel parameters and a few iptables rules to set up NAT. Nowadays that's less than fives minutes of work with Claude.

    This buys you much better performance and hardware compatibility relative to a BSD system, as well as lower resource usage and attack surface (no GUI or other unnecessary additions). WiFi support on BSD is bad, but on Linux you can use hostapd and almost immediately get an access point for free. And of course Linux is also better if you intend to run other stuff on the same hardware.

    by drnick1
  • You're right, it's interesting that this device isn't the most technically superior in hardware or software, and isn't the most casual user friendly. It seems to be targeting a segment I can't bucket other than loyalists. Maybe good hardware & software for the cost?
    by frugalmail
  • > OpenWRT is very good, but the installation and upgrades are not easy.

    Agreed that separate router and dumb AP is the way. Every time I updated OpenWRT there was some gotcha that created an unexpected headache where I had to rebuild my elaborate configuration from scratch.

    I'm not convinced A -> G upgrade paths are tested, only A -> B -> ... -> F -> G but who manually updates with that level of discipline?

    by randusername
  • Upgrades are “owut upgrade” these days. Pretty straightforward.
    by letmetweakit
  • >OpenWRT is very good, but the installation and upgrades are not easy.

    The solution is to use image-builder and bake your config into the image.

    by stoltzmann
  • Your OpenWrt ecosystem knowledge seems oudated; upgrades are a solved problem since the advent of "Attended Sysupgrade": https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/installation/attended.sy...

    It's been included in all suitable default image configurations starting with OpenWrt release 25.12.

    I do run OpenWrt on my x86-based router, on my AP, and even on my managed switches, and have no regrets.

    by c0l0
  • What a coincidence to see this on the front page!

    I just received my OpenWrt One because I’m tired of dealing with the questionable quality of most routers.

    And I don’t feel like resurrecting my old PC that I used as a router for a while. I stopped doing that because it’s loud. Pretty sure the power supply fan is about to fly off.

    But Qualcomm WiFi pci card with giant antenna in a dirt cheap PC running ancient Ubuntu and a simple hostapd setup is so far the most reliable WiFi router I’ve ever had. I hope openwrt one is even better :-)

    by pizlonator
  • "Enterprise class" wifi routers from ten years ago sell on eBay for about 1/5th as much, and work just as well for most home or small business applications.
    by hyperbovine
  • >I just received my OpenWrt One because I’m tired of dealing with the questionable quality of most routers.

    My latest 3 home routers have been mikrotik, mikrotik and juniper.

    And the Juniper is still in there, just running as a switch. The old juniper srx sucks at uPNP but is otherwise still a fantastic router if I wanted to swap back to it.

    Middle tier mikrotik took a power surge and lost 50% of its ports. It still routed just enough for me to get a replacement.

    Latest tik is doing great.

    I dont see what the One offers me at all tbh.

    by protocolture
  • In case it is not, an old PC with a dual port Intel NIC running OPNSense is so far the best router I have ever used. I mean rock solid performance with near zero maintenance beyond adjusting VLANs and setting up a 6in4 tunnel over the past 5 years solid. My home network is larger, more diverse, and more complex than what I suspect most people have, with several hundred devices and yet I log into the OPNSense UI maybe twice a year and usually just out of curiosity.

    The learning curve is a little steeper than more consumer stuff but it is by no means beyond a person who is capable of using OpenWRT and the docs and forum support are better than 99.9% of open source projects I have seen over the past 25 years.

    by IgorPartola