this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2024
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First Router Designed Specifically For OpenWrt Released (sfconservancy.org)
submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 54 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

This device specs vs price aren’t appropriate in any way. There’s no point paying 100€ for something that only has 2 Ethernet ports, doesn’t have modern WiFi and only 1GB of RAM and an older CPU.

Besides the whole title and movement is a but misleading because the guys from Banana Pi shipped multiple boards already that are built for OpenWrt and have things like WiFi 6 in that price point. One of them is the “Banana Pi BPI-Wifi6 Router” for 60€ and more expensive the Banana Pi R3 that that just makes a lot more sense.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Seems cheaper where we are $89 CAD so €68. 1 gig RAM is plenty for a router. I'm running OpenMediaVault Samba shares and MiniDLNA on 256MB RAM and it doesn't max out. More RAM would be wasted on a router.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Check this out, the router from the link for someone in Europe:

Now the other ones:

I guess you get the point, all Openwrt routers and the last one is much much better in all ways.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

Why are your prices so high there? Double what we are at here

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

It's europe. All electronics are more xpensive here, often because of import taxes/VAT etc.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Because Europe, but as you can see the OpenWrt One makes no sense when the BPI-Wifi5 is half the price and the R3 is a 35€ more expensive but has multiple ethernet posts, SFP and a ton of other IO. In fact even for the US market I don't see the price of the OpenWrt One making any sense, because the others are cheaper over there as well.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

The odd thing about any pi kits in north america is their website list price is not our distributer purchase price. I looked up the Banana pi kit openwrt and it would be €114 .

Everyone always says thing like you can get a raspberrypi for €25 , but trying to get one here means used ones were €120 and new was €170

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

I don't know if it could be cheaper , it probably could be cheaper because if it will be more popular prices will drop (Economies of scale) , but i am afraid there will always be a price premium for FOSS friendly hardware because companies are losing their competitive advantage by giving away some of the work they do for free.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Any idea if BPI-WiFi6 has Tri-Band mesh capabilities?

[–] [email protected] 34 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (3 children)

No love for Turris? They've basically just added an easier web management UI alongside lUCI and their devices are specifically designed to run OpenWRT. Also they've sent a fair amount of patches to upstream (search the OpenWRT git repos for authors with @nic.cz email addresses)

https://turris.com/

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

I’ve been waiting for them to update the hardware of the Omni’s but they are taking their sweet time.

As it stands I won’t buy a router for that price that is like 5 or 6 years old (or even older?)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Love my Turris Omnia Router.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Oooooooooo I've not heard of them before! Thanks for the link

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

Seems like pretty old hardware.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

Uh, if you’re wanting to go above 1G, this thing is not going to cut the mustard. Seriously, why would they give it a 2.5G WAN port paired with a 1G LAN port? That’s so dumb.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah would be way more smart to do the opposite.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It’s not the other way around? It says the 2.5Gbe port has PoE, I thought that sold be for LAN

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

I mean either way you’re gonna bottleneck on the 1G port

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

I can see benefit in the 2.5G on the LAN side if you connect a disk to the USB port and have it function as a NAS. It gives you enough bandwidth for the full WAN speed plus headroom for that.

I agree I'd still prefer 2x 2.5G though.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 weeks ago

Ooooof lol hello engineers???

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I can't believe this only happened now. Like, why not skip the os, firmware, or whatever it's called? Sounds like a lazy man's dream.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

It didn't. The article and the marketing around the device is all bs. https://wiki.banana-pi.org/Banana_Pi_BPI-R3

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The two things that decide this device is not for me:

  1. WiFi 6 when 7 is already in the shops. The wifi portion of the router will be obsolete very soon.

  2. I need one uplink and 3-4 ethernet ports. Consumer WiFi routers have this.

So I'm just staying patient for my eventual upgrade from WiFi 5 to 7. I'd been more interested in a non brickable OpenWrt 1+4/8 ethernet device and get me a separate WiFi bridge.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm not sure WiFi 6 will be "obsolete" in even 10 years, let alone 'soon'. I'm still using AC just fine at home. If your ISP sucks as much as most, you won't benefit from much anyway. Maybe the new frequencies could help for apartment dwellers, or the intranet speeds could help if you transfer a lot to and from a home NAS?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

I agree that "obsolete" is an exaggeration, but from my point of view I'm making an upgrade from WiFi 5. WiFi 7 has way better throughout and possibly better real life coverage than 6, so I have no reason to settle with WiFi 6 when 7 is about to be readily available. I live in an apartment with plenty of competitors for the frequencies with good internet speed and plenty of NAS-ish use. And as mentioned, I was only sharing my personal reasons for why this isn't a box for me. Maybe it is great for you and I'd be happy to learn more about your use case.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

My use-case is quite basic: a single combined home server/NAS, and two remote workers. My biggest obstacle, historically, was buffer bloat, which really really annoys me in video calls. I've got it to an acceptable level these days but it still isn't ideal.

In a perfect world, I'd have a single home server box that does wifi, routing, NAS, jellyfin, DNS, movies, freshRSS, backups, and a few other tasks. And then I'd eventually build another and mirror data between the two in another location for redundancy. But I haven't found anything that can handle it on mostly FOSS, long-term-security-updated software (10 years minimum), with no required subscriptions, with easily repairable or replaceable hardware. This seems to be getting really close, though! Official openVPN support for a piece of hardware would go a long way. I made a mistake buying a router in the past with a poorly supported CPU and I don't want to make a similar mistake again.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago

I remember when linksys said that

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago

Been following this for a while! I’m getting one!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Uh why should I buy this instead of any other SBC?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

Or... a decent Openwrt router like the Banana Pi BPI-R3. I believe the only argument for those kinds of devices is the Wifi support but I don't believe the price and specs on the device shared by the OP are reasonable at all. If you don't need Wifi, then yes, a good SBC and a cheap switch will be a much better alternative.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I'd like to replace my router as it's only acting as a PPPoE modem for my pfSense box - this looks a bit of overkill, but interested if there's other (open) options?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Banana Pi BPI-R3. There is currently no text in this page. You can search for this page title in other pages, or search the related logs, but you do not have permission to create this page.

Er... thanks?

In other articles, I'm reading that Banana Pi quality control isn't that great, so I'm currently feeling that this might not be boards I am looking for

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

I have no complaints about their QC but well, samples are samples.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

GL.Inet noises intensify