Linux

I was actually the lead engineer on an Openwrt router. I hadn't heard of it before that, but at one point I pretty much knew it inside and out. It's been a few years since I left that company, so I'm a bit rusty at this point.

We made tons of custom features for our router. I did the backend and implemented UIs for most of them. The biggest feature I did though was a full REST API to be able to configure the router from a smart home controller, which was the company's main product. I did both the router side (server) and the smart home controller side (client/caller), including the UI on the smart home controller. I spent almost a year on just that feature. But I was damn proud of it by the end.

I've been using OpenWRT as a hobbyist for over 15 years, and as a professional for over 6 years. Extremely underrated OS.

A vanilla install beats any stock router firmware by leaps and bounds. From there you can add pretty much any functionality you desire.

I currently use a Turris Omnia router made by CZ.NIC, who also maintains their own OpenWRT based distro called Turris OS.

I've been using it for years and now I basically can't live without it. I consider OpenWrt compatibility in all of my router purchases. Currently using a Netgear R7800 and a Belkin RT3200, both are going strong.

It isn't as widely used because it can be finicky to flash sometimes, and that's if it's even compatible in the first place. Even if it works, you may experience a drop in performance unless OpenWrt supports using the routers hardware acceleration features. If there's no support, OpenWrt basically uses the onboard CPU to do routing and they're usually not all that powerful.

TIL there are Linux people that don't use OpenWRT. I always assumed everyone in the Linux community used it. It's great.

Works great with mt7621 based routers if anyone ends up looking for something compatible.

Past Linux user here, not only do I use openwrt, but I base my routers choice on openwrt support, it's weird to me there are long term Linux users who don't know what openwrt is

I use dd-wrt a little bit, then tomato and variant (usb, toastman, fresh) then Merlin for maybe 5 years now.

Broadcom routers are mostly not openwrt compatible

Yup. Running it on my home router, right now. It is awesome. A tiny, stripped down OS that you can install minimal packages on. Like a VPN client, or ad-blockers. If your router is compatible, I cannot suggest it enough.

Also, my router's manufacturer had the gall to ask (force) me to sign up and get an ID with them in order to get to the back-end of my own router. Jesus Christ, privacy red flag much?

I could not install OpenWRT fast enough.

I use OpenWRT on my Linksys WRT3200ACM because I used to have a cable connection that suffered from bufferbloat. The SQM feature made a huge improvement. I eventually switched to a fiber connection from a different ISP which does not suffer from bufferbloat, but I kept OpenWRT on my router.

I've used OpenWrt, DD-WRT, and Tomato firmware on the various routers I've had. I don't think I've ever kept the stock firmware on any router I've owned.

I use pfSense at home now, but I've been considering switching to OPNsense. I still run OpenWrt on a portable router that I use when I'm traveling though. I won't ever buy a router that I can't run open source firmware on.

Installed OpenWRT on my NetGear router like 2 years back, and it didn't give me any trouble since then. BTW, the amount of configuration options it offer is mindbogglingly.

I actually took some older now somewhat defunct google wifi pucks and got them all set up on openwrt not too long ago. Really enjoy having them on something with a dedicated web UI and perfectly nerdy

Fine on limited hardware like a router but if you're going to use a full box for your router (or a VM), you'd probably want OPNsense for the ease of management and the fact that it's targetted for hardware like that.

I've used it and dd-wrt back in the day on cheap crashy routers. Also Tomato.

Haven't tried it in a long time, but have an EAP225 v2 and v3 I've been considering slapping openwrt on.

Interesting. I have heard of it but so far I didnt bother since my router is quite versatile.

My biggest fear is that it borks itself and I sit there at 10 pm on movie night without a network or internet to troubleshoot.

If if I chose to use it I would need to have the current router as a fallback either running 24/7 or on a dead man switch.

No, for home I've only ever used pfsense or opnsense.

I used to use it, then wanted more control, power, and functionality so I moved to pfSense, and later on to Opnsense where I am today.

I mean, what does one have to do to replace an ISP owned router and what are the benefits? How much does one have to know in order to setup a connection? How does one get connection details from the ISP owned router? How much does a replacement router cost?

My ISP owned router allows me to configure NAT forwarding, replace the DNS, setup a DMZ, assign static IPs to MACs, turn off the internet at specific times (e.g at night), configure parental controls (allows websites, internet access) per device, and probably a few other things I haven't discovered yet.

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I've known about it for years, but my router is loaned from the ISP so I can't install any custom OS on it (although I've considered buying my own for a while because I can't even do proper DNS for my internal network on it). A while back I used to have a router, but the default OS was enough for my needs so I also never considered installing anything different.

As a person with hands, do you know about flamenco?

Yes. It saved me from crappy firmware on my expensive router. It's a must if you care about security of your home network and devices.

I do know about it, but I don't even have internet at home.
Though I do use DD-WRT on my WRT160NL which I use at school. For me it acts as firewall + setup-free VPN + DNS Ad blocker (NextDNS). I also have separate passwordless guest network on it if someone wants to use my router. Separate subnet, unbridged with net isolation and AP isolation enabled. And also QoS set to "Bulk" while my network is set to "Maximum". And also forced DNS redirection enabled, so that everyone who doesn't use DoT or DoH uses NextDNS.

It cannot run modern versions of OpenWRT.

I know about it but definitely prefer Opnsense for my x86 router.

About a million years ago, back in 2007/2008 that is, there was this small company called Hexago that did R&D in IPv6 networking, they were behind the Frenet6 project and created the networking stack and the TSP client that would let you tunnel a /56 IPv6 network over a dynamic IPv4 connection.

One the projects was a tiny hardware router, I honestly forget who made it, but Hexago would buy them, then we would flash each one with WRT+TSP client custom image, the idea was you plug this in your network and you have IPv6 connection in your network without doing any magic configuration.

It worked well until we lost finding.

So yeah, OpenWRT is old and not just for Linksys routers :)

As a seven-plus year Linux vet I've known about OpenWRT for some time but only made the switch about 3 months or so myself to breathe some life into an aging Linksys.

I'm very impressed with the kit so far, it runs well (snappy even) and the amount of options provided are a bit overwhelming at first. Eventually I'll move on to prosumer hardware, but this is a nice middle ground in the interim.

Yeah of course! Once I went on a buying spree of used WNDR3700. They were so cheap and I won a few too many bids at once.

I gave one to a flatmate when we lived together as students and he took it with when he moved out. Put one in the office room of my current flatmate and still have one or two in reserve. I usually take one with me to LAN-parties.

Before that I once used DD-WRT on a WRT54GL. It also wasn't bad from what I remember.

I used it in the past, and it is great.

Nowadays, I bought a mid price router from a well known brand, and seriously: The router works, has all features I need (even WireGuard OOTB) and for now I see no reason to replace the provided firmware with OpenWRT. YOLO!

Yeah I run it on a cheap asus router. Learned stuff like don't run adguard on it if you don't have that much ram

I used OpenWRT for years, but I switched to the FreeBSD-based OPNSense router/firewall OS.

I used dd-wrt for a few years, but I realized I didn't need it as my new router have the functionality I want. I also realized my router had much better throughput with the stock firmware.