It's not openwrt even though they pretend it is in their marketing. It's based on openwrt and might be "compatible" to some level with other openwrt packages.

When asked for full source code they seem transparent about it:

https://forum.gl-inet.com/t/source-code-for-gl-firmware-and-...

You can't reproduce their images and they don't share the improvements.

Of course not GPL compliant but not a concern in China I believe.

Be careful of GL.iNet's products - some of them say they run OpenWRT, but they don't run stock OpenWRT and instead offer a version of OpenWRT supplied by the CPU manufacturer, with binary drivers and no source code.

I have this router, running the latest official stable build of OpenWRT, and I'm very happy with it. I particularly appreciate that it has two 2.5gbps ports, so it can route a > 1gbps internet connection, unlike the OpenWRT One.

Switching from stock to OpenWRT was incredibly easy.

I have to reboot it about once every month or two (my previous router, a Netgear R7800, only needed to be rebooted maybe once every other year.) But I hear that the nightly builds are a bit better in this respect, so I expect the stable builds will improve with time.

I installed the LibreSpeed-go package, and it can completely saturate the 2.5gbps LAN port.

Also, 2 x 2.5Gbe, so if you have a > 1Gbit && <= 2.5Gbit connection, you can do line speed without having to resort to more complicated router on a stick configurations.

Besides that it has quite a bit better CPU (quad core rather than dual core), so if you do anything that cannot be hardware-offloaded (e.g. Cake), the performance will be better.

The OpenWrt has better hackability though. USB-C serial is very handy if you manage to mess up your configuration in a way you can't access the device (though LuCI have this features where it can revert changes if a change makes the router non-responsive to the user).

I have both. The Flint 2 is definitely the better choice for a home router https://blog.thestateofme.com/2024/11/30/gl-inet-mt-6000-fli...

But as somebody doing OpenWrt package development the One is where I'm running Snapshot and trying out the new Alpine package manager.

This is somewhat true but their fork of Openwrt is horribly out of date, very hacked, and has a baby interface that doesn't fully provide what openwrt can do. I found myself having to manually edit files on the routers shell. I mean my use-cases aren't exactly normal since I'm testing very arcane networking stuff. But I found myself disappointed.

I want something that has like actual good packages already installed for common internet standards, that are configured by experts (so they work), that supports IPv6 perfectly, and is user-friendly so I can use it for what I need without having to work on router firmware. It's like... maybe I should write my own firmware at this point. Cause everything is actually just shit.

Different price range though, so catering to different market segments.

(I own some Gl.Inet products and they're reasonably good and I specifically purchased them for their OpenWRT-ness)

Does the Flint 2 have PoE? I don't believe it does.

..in these geopolitical times....

Huge +1 to this. Managed switching with hardware offload is the only thing standing between me and a fully open source* homelab.

I'm vaguely aware of some enterprise options. I want something quieter and reasonably power efficient. Price is no object within reason. I would pay low 4 figures for something equivalent to a Mikrotik CRS326, but with upstream kernel drivers and an X86 CPU.

* I don't run libreboot or anything, I'm sure there's a fair bit of closed blobs in my lab, but almost all my devices can boot any standard Linux boot image.

Speaking of which... anyone know why there don't seem to be any managed 2.5 Gbit switches / chipsets? Can we expect them in the foreseeable future?

openwrt supports zyxel gs1900 with 12, 24, 48 ports and even poe

Most likely an IO limitation of the MediaTek MT7981B SoC used—it looks like it only has one lane of PCIe Gen 2, a USB 3.0 port, and one built-in 1 Gbps Ethernet controller (among a few other common low-speed interfaces)[1]. Typically these chips have bandwidth constraints, and it seems this one is meant for small routers, not the typical multi-2.5G or 10G setups some homelabbers would prefer.

[1] https://mirror2.openwrt.org/docs/MT7981B_Wi-Fi6_Platform_Dat...

Total deal breaker for me. I don't understand this design decision, this router is clearly targeted to advanced users so I would expect most of those would have multiple devices they'd want wired?

I have a gigabit connection from my ISP but I run a 2.5Gbe home network. Works perfectly for me.

> Maybe they will make a one plus with double the ram and 2x2.5Gbe?

I parse this as "Maybe they will make one that costs more than $89?"

OpenWRT was born from WiFi... That's the valuable stuff for most of the market. The "router" aspect was the bundled part.

If you don't want wifi aspect, perhaps look at Mikrotik stuff?

https://openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/er605_v2?s[]=er605v2

This one doesn't have WiFi, just 5 Ethernet ports. It can be flashed openwrt with a very reasonable amount of tweaking. It's actually quite powerful and has 256M of RAM and 128M of flash memory. I have one, it's very cool.

Seems like they’re starting to do this as mesh is becoming common. In my apartment, my ISP has a permanently installed router without wifi. Then they just send you a wifi router or mesh devices depending on your requirements.

I never buy routers w wifi. Running PC Engines APU4 with Ubiquiti AP is more rock solid/stable than anything else I ever ran which had wifi+wired in a single router.

[dead]

I'm just about to cancel my DSL, but when you run the modem in bridge mode, and run PPPoE on your actual NAT gateway if needed (which is sadly often the case), the modem firmware doesn't matter very much.

I put together some stuff so I could transfer PPPoE sessions to a backup system and then I could reboot the NAT boxes for upgrates with minimal downtime. Sometimes, it even worked ;)

When I last used DSL, I was using AT&T uverse (which is/was VDSL with multicast video layered in).

I configured the provided gateway/router-widget to provide a "DMZ Plus" mode for my router (a custom box running Tomato or OpenWRT or something), and I called to get ports 25 and 80 unblocked. And then, plus-or-minus some completely-surmountable difficulty with making dynamic DNS behave properly it all worked fine.

For years.

I never connected anything other than my router to the ISP-provided device.

There's probably some corner cases where this configuration falls flat, but I never ran into them.

What might be some practical advantages of what you suggest?

There are fiber PON/ONU/UT/$JARGON in shape of an SFP module, though most customers don't appreciate such offering and therefore it'll be an upsell.

As for why not USB specifically, probably because such a device is inherently much faster and responsive in upload to the Internet than downloads, and therefore it makes less sense.

Not USB, but there exist SFP DSL modems, like the Proscend 180-T.

They are pricey and difficult to come by, but with something like a Turris Omnia as a host, you _can_ have a single-device modem/router/WiFi AP

> As an aside: Why can't DSL modems be a single USB dongle?

They definitely existed in the UK for a time and were often supplied by ISPs. IIRC they were only supported in Windows XP, and drivers were never provided for Vista.

I tried for years to do similar when I lived in Australia. Though with a PCI/PCI-E card

ZyXEL if I remember correctly did make an ADSL2+ at the time PCI-E card. Literally just a DSL modem wired to a Realtek 8139 NIC. You could slap it in a Linux (or BSD, or Windows) PC and just use PPPoE to connect to the internet

Naturally it was impossible to order the damn thing and I never got to realize my dream of an "all-in-one" DSL Linux router.

After moving to DOCSIS (Cable) internet I ran into the same confusing problem. "Thankfully" with Fiber everything is just ethernet (more or less) now. But it was an infuriating time in the 2010's

What is the alternative? No battery, but update via NNTP on reboot?

+1 - I have a "beryl" one I think and it worked well in a few situations (backup router at home, and replicating home WiFi SSID when travelling to places with random hotel wifi so I didn't need to reprogram all the kid's wifi-connected white noise machines/night-lights/cameras/monitors/etc - yes I realise this is absurd but we find it all useful for a stress-free life with tiny kids)

Only complaint is the USB LTE dongle was super unintuitive to setup/use, and I felt like some of the translations were just flat out wrong so it was a bit of trial by error and factory resetting things when inadvertently bricking/locking myself out etc.

In addition to the wifi, I recall the preloader at the start of the boot chain is also a binary blob, which handles some of the chip init and memory calibration for the DDR4.

almost certainly. we don't know what's running inside the modem chip

I think it's unfortunate given the audience I imagine will make up most of its purchases. For example, the NBN in Australia just announced earlier this year it's first 2 Gbps residential plans (previously 1 Gbps being the maximum) planned for availability some time next year[1].

[1] https://www.nbnco.com.au/corporate-information/media-centre/...

Do you have a WAN connect greater than 1GbE?

> regulatory compliance requires that devices which make unlicensed use of radio spectrum (such as Wi-Fi) must contain non-user modifiable software for their radios in order to comply with regulations

Couldn't one restrict the chip to only accept signed firmware and then publish the source with reproduceable build instructions? This would prevent user modification while still being open source.

Do you mean open wrt? If yes, the devs have serious problems whenever they need to deal with broadcom because of all the proprietary blobs. So the number of supported chipsets is low.

There is an M.2 slot, though only PCIe 2.0 x1. Possibly still good enough for reasonable bandwidth.

So was the recent Linksys WRT series. The product description on Amazon (which Linksys presumably provided) explicitly advertises the WRT3200ACM as "[o]pen source ready with OpenWrt and DD WRT for complete flexibility and customization of networking functions, or to optimize your router for specific use cases". Likewise for the WRT1900AC: "For advanced users who want to customize their firmware, the WRT1900AC stays true to its lineage by offering an Open WRT compatible firmware with Open Source ready capabilities that allow advanced users to expand the capabilities of the Router.".

The headline's (and article's) claim of the OpenWRT One being the "first router designed specifically for OpenWRT" is misleading, at best.

I've been eyeing the BPI-R4 as an eventual replacement for my aging ER4.

Possibly, that's 89 without VAT.

Change the currency to USD

Worse still, Wi-Fi *7* devices are already out. Qualcomm's QCN9274's running on the "ath12k" chipset [1] have been a tempting DIY option. Though that module requires an external 3 amps at 5 Volt (15 watts!) to be soldered to it to operate

[1] https://www.524wifi.com/index.php/network-modules-adapters/w...