[HN Gopher] How much total throughput can your wi-fi router real...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       How much total throughput can your wi-fi router really provide?
        
       Author : giuliomagnifico
       Score  : 72 points
       Date   : 2021-03-26 18:15 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.smallnetbuilder.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.smallnetbuilder.com)
        
       | jeffbee wrote:
       | It doesn't matter how fast any of these routers is. There's no
       | way I'm buying any of them until they lose their buggy,
       | vulnerable management endpoints and get automatic, managed
       | firmware rollouts.
        
         | comeonseriously wrote:
         | I won't buy them because they look stupid. There's absolutely
         | no need for them to look like a star wars ship or a bear trap.
        
           | jeffbee wrote:
           | The aesthetics, including the stupid names, have kept me away
           | from all asus products lately. I don't care how good the "ROG
           | Maximus XIII Extreme Glacial" is. I am not buying anything
           | with that name.
        
         | kortilla wrote:
         | > and get automatic, managed firmware rollouts.
         | 
         | You mean shit locked into a proprietary cloud service that
         | delivers you new vulnerabilities at arbitrary times?
        
         | dsr_ wrote:
         | Run Debian stable on your routers. Use APs as dumb APs.
        
           | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
           | Are there truly dumb APs? Because I'm really not fond of
           | having Debian in the network core but the actual APs running
           | unpatched proprietary garbage firmware either (especially if
           | that's the part handling wireless security).
        
             | sliken wrote:
             | Dunno, define "dumb". Ubiquiti APs run linux, you can get a
             | shell, but generally the APs are pretty simple and managed
             | by their management util, which you can run somewhere on
             | your network. The APs don't control the router, don't
             | write/change firewall rules, and generally just focus on
             | reliably handling wifi duties.
             | 
             | So you could build yourself a router, run OpenWRT, pfsense,
             | or whatever floats your board to control which packets go
             | where, and which ports are visible from where. The APs do
             | not need access to the internet, and generally anything
             | sensitive going over the network should be encrypted
             | anyways.
             | 
             | I'd consider a router I control the OS and configuration of
             | with a ubiquiti AP (or 3) more secure than the usual router
             | configured by some corporation or running a bunch of wifi
             | binary blobs.
        
         | bawana wrote:
         | ubiquiti dream machine with a ap ac pro?
        
       | throwawaysea wrote:
       | Out of curiosity does some company benchmark other types of
       | commercial networking devices like this? Things like load
       | balancers, DDoS protection, switches, etc.? How do businesses
       | shop for such products without having a standard measure from an
       | independent third party?
        
         | PragmaticPulp wrote:
         | > How do businesses shop for such products
         | 
         | Businesses are more interested in reliability, security, price,
         | details of the warranty, support contracts, and other details
         | that don't show up in benchmarks.
         | 
         | If performance is key, they buy samples and test in their
         | workload. Or at the enterprise scale, they might get loaner
         | units from their vendors to evaluate. Benchmarks rarely tell
         | the full story for unique workloads.
        
           | Jonnax wrote:
           | Kinda feels like you copy and pasted Oracle's official
           | justification for disallowing benchmarks of their database.
        
         | westurner wrote:
         | netperf and iperf are utilities for measuring network
         | throughput: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iperf
         | 
         | It's possible to approximate the
         | https://dslreports.com/speedtest using the flent CLI or QT GUI
         | (which calls e.g. fping and netperf) and isolate out ISP
         | variance by running a netperf server on a decent router and/or
         | a workstation with a sufficient NIC (at least 1Gbps).
         | https://flent.org/tests.html
         | 
         | `dslreports_8dn`:
         | https://github.com/tohojo/flent/blob/master/flent/tests/dslr...
         | 
         | From https://flent.org/ :
         | 
         | > _RRUL: Create the standard graphic image used by the
         | Bufferbloat project to show the down /upload speeds plus
         | latency in three separate charts:_
         | 
         | > _`flent rrul -p all_scaled -l 60 -H address-of-netserver -t
         | text-to-be-included-in-plot -o filename.png`_
         | 
         | In 2021, most routers - even with OpenWRT and hardware-
         | offloading - cannot actually push 1 Gigabit over wired
         | Ethernet, though the port spec does say 1000 Mbps.
        
       | kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote:
       | wifi is shitty. If you need throughput and low latency, just use
       | ethernet.
        
         | glogla wrote:
         | You're right, especially now when 10G Ethernet swiches with
         | SPF+ ports can be had relatively cheaply thanks to Mikrotik,
         | but sometimes people need both throughput and mobility.
        
         | bobbean wrote:
         | Have you considered sometimes people are in a situation where
         | that might not be reasonable?
        
       | glogla wrote:
       | I heavily recommend for everyone who wants to make correct
       | decisions about Wi-Fi hardware to read this page:
       | https://www.duckware.com/tech/wifi-in-the-us.html
       | 
       | The author visibly knows their stuff and goes into channels, ac,
       | ax, 2x2, 4x4, MU-MIMO, beamforming, etc in great detail.
       | 
       | But the summary of what I took from that is the times when
       | consumer routers were bad are mostly over.
       | 
       | Modern high performance Wi-Fi has a lot of radio magic, so your
       | two-antenna laptop can talk to two antennas of router via two
       | multipath-propagated spatial streams while the router uses its
       | two more antennas to form directed beams and get more signal so
       | more range and speed.
       | 
       | All of that needs a lot of signal processing magic, and is
       | heavily proprietary and patented, so at the moment it won't work
       | well on non-blob firmware and drivers. And even small
       | manufacturers have trouble here - in pure Wi-Fi performance,
       | Mikrotik would be behind Asus or Netgear or something, even if it
       | has more features and more professional interface.
       | 
       | Of course, you only need to care about that if you need local-
       | network performance or you internet connection speed approaches
       | Wi-Fi speeds, otherwise it doesn't really matter.
        
       | infogulch wrote:
       | I bought a MicroTik hap-ac3 router with RouterOS for $100 which I
       | hope will arrive soon. I like how explicit and clear microtik is
       | about their products, but this would be my first one. Anyone else
       | use microtik or routeros before?
       | 
       | https://mikrotik.com/product/hap_ac3
        
         | throwaway888abc wrote:
         | Good investment, rock solid stability and performance.
         | 
         | Installed dozen over years and can say only positive things
         | about. Also, very flexible with configuration.
         | 
         | One headache less.
        
         | sliken wrote:
         | More so than Ubiquiti? I looked at both and ended up with an
         | Edgerouter and AP. Generally I prefer to keep my wifi and
         | routers separate.
        
         | KozmoNau7 wrote:
         | I've got a hAP ac2 and while it is a bit more involved to set
         | up than your average consumer router, it also exposes a _lot_
         | of advanced functionality that you can really get into.
         | 
         | I'll be adding one or two APs and managing them with CAPsMAN
         | when we move to a larger house. IMO it beats Ubiquiti's
         | offerings on functionality, but is behind on polish.
        
       | rektide wrote:
       | Really hoping Smallnetbuilder is back in the game, reviewing
       | routers. Used to be an invaluable site but not a lot of updates
       | these days.
       | 
       | On another topic, pretty devestating that OpenWRT runs on only
       | one of these routers, the slowest/oldest one, the Netgear
       | Nighthawk X4S aka the R7800, which dates back to 2016.
        
         | ciceryadam wrote:
         | While it's not OpenWRT, but I'm running this on my RT-AC86U:
         | https://www.asuswrt-merlin.net/
        
           | zokier wrote:
           | I wonder what it would take to get plain Debian to run on the
           | device. OpenWRT made lot more sense when routers had like
           | 8/16M of flash and not lot more RAM, but these big modern
           | routers are far more powerful so bigger OS shouldn't be as
           | much of a issue
        
             | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
             | IIRC, that _specific_ line doesn 't have OpenWRT for the
             | same reason that proper Debian support is unlikely:
             | important parts of the networking hardware are only
             | supported by closed blobs, and I _vaguely_ recall there
             | even being redistribution limitations on those blobs, which
             | is why merlin builds exist but not openwrt.
        
             | rektide wrote:
             | I'd like an in the know response, but Broadcom-based
             | systems (yes the Raspberry Pi cpu folk) have been utterly
             | unusable by OpenWRT & other Linux users for almost half a
             | decade.
             | 
             | The original WRT54G, for which OpenWRT is named, shipped
             | with a Broadcom brcm47xx chip[1]. But something changed in
             | the last decade, and Broadcom has been unsupportable,
             | unusable, & there is no community, no folks putting their
             | own Linux onto Broadcom based systems for a long time now.
             | I would love to know the specific details, to know what
             | happened. But the status quo is that Broadcom is the worst
             | villian, is unsupportable, that nothing they do is
             | generally usable by hackers & Linux users, and that any
             | router with a Broadcom cpu in it is utterly unusable.
             | 
             | It's worth mentioning that the Broadcom wifi drivers on
             | Linux have been a constant tussle & difficult. For the
             | longest time the MacBook's worst area of support when
             | running Linux was the wifi drivers, owing to Broadcom's
             | dis-support.
             | 
             | I hope some day Broadcom stops being such a dark side
             | impossible company. But there've been no points of hope
             | that I've seen in the last decade. It's just gotten worse.
             | Maybe it's us, maybe we haven't tried hard enough to see
             | what access we might be able to get, maybe Qualcomm has
             | become the main OpenWRT, Debian, &c running chip because
             | it's what folks knew worked, because the long history of
             | Atheros (who Qualcomm bought) being moral & good folks, who
             | understood the relevance & importance of support, and we
             | just haven't tried hard enough to force access to Broadcom,
             | and that's on us. But right now, the status quo is,
             | Broadcom chips are all useless to the world, aside from
             | whatever software comes on them, and whatever software &
             | support you get out of the box. A lot of people are very
             | sad about this, and I recommend also being sad about this.
             | 
             | https://openwrt.org/toh/linksys/wrt54g
        
         | ethbr0 wrote:
         | Doesn't OpenWRT have a similar problem to Coreboot?
         | 
         | In that they need technical specifications and currently-closed
         | source firmware, in a low-margin business, where providing
         | those is last on most companies' priorities?
         | 
         | Or at least, those are needed to enable the latest-and-greatest
         | in a direct hardware path.
        
           | zokier wrote:
           | I don't think the situation is as bad as coreboot: Both the
           | vendor firmwares and OpenWRT are Linux based so there is
           | already some base for compatibility. And OpenWRT is not fully
           | objected to blobs in drivers, so they don't need necessarily
           | go digging down every smallest detail. Finally e.g. Asus has
           | been publishing their firmware "sources" (containing
           | gazillion blobs) so you don't need to do full blackbox
           | reverse-engineering to reuse stuff there. There is this whole
           | asusmerlin project repackaging the Asus firmwares:
           | https://github.com/RMerl/asuswrt-merlin.ng
           | 
           | Ultimately lot of the issues fall down on Broadcom and
           | Qualcomm being what they are and not even trying to upstream
           | their drivers and other bits.
           | 
           | I don't know if we ever will see another wifi chipset that
           | will have as good and long support as ath9k.
        
         | mfkp wrote:
         | I've found this site incredibly useful for router reviews
         | lately (and much more trustworthy than all the SEO-optimized
         | review websites): https://dongknows.com/
        
       | r1ch wrote:
       | I refuse to use anything that doesn't support OpenWRT these days.
       | The stability of a modern kernel, drivers and usermode can't be
       | beat. While ax support is still a ways away, many ac devices
       | support OpenWRT. I have the $70 wAP AC access point from mikrotik
       | giving me ~400mbps TCP throughput at 2x2, WPA3 and zero buffer
       | bloat and a $50 hEX which does routing/firewall, wireguard,
       | network adblock and encrypted DNS.
        
         | sliken wrote:
         | I get it, but seems WAY easier to have an opensource friendly
         | routing running a linux kernel (with OpenWRT or similar), then
         | push the hard parts to an access point.
         | 
         | That way you can get 4x4 MIMO, 802.11ac, 802.11ax/wifi-6, etc
         | and when there's a new version you don't have to replace your
         | router to get it. Doubly useful if any future needs might
         | include needing a second AP.
        
           | r1ch wrote:
           | I admit I was very tempted to go with a proprietary AP, the
           | TP-Link EAP660 HD for example looks amazing. However all my
           | client devices are 2x2 and only my PC supports 802.11ax at
           | this time, so I don't mind waiting a bit longer for possible
           | OpenWRT support. My fiber caps at 500mbps so I'm only really
           | missing ~100mbps over Wi-Fi, if I had gigabit service I'd
           | probably have gone with the TP-Link.
           | 
           | I also strongly agree with delegating routing / wireless to
           | different devices, having a PoE AP offers so much flexibility
           | for positioning so you get better coverage.
        
             | sliken wrote:
             | Heh, years ago I got a ubiquiti NanoHD, it rebooted every
             | few weeks for a few months. Then Ubiquiti shipped a new
             | patch for it mentioning stability improvements and it's
             | been rock solid since.
             | 
             | I just moved into a larger house and after some research
             | decided to skip the $99 Ubiquiti 2x2 wifi6/802.11ax and get
             | the $179 4x4 Ubiquiti wifi6/802.11ax, just received it this
             | week and haven't installed it yet.
             | 
             | PoE is also REALLY useful for cameras, hoping my 8 port PoE
             | switch does well with 2 APs, and 5 cameras.
        
         | sam_lowry_ wrote:
         | Does wAP AC support OpenWRT?
        
           | r1ch wrote:
           | Yes, though there are two hardware revisions - the newer
           | model (2020 onwards) has a completely different chipset and
           | no support yet (see comments at https://openwrt.org/toh/hwdat
           | a/mikrotik/mikrotik_rbwapg-5hac...)
        
         | rubatuga wrote:
         | The MT7621 boards support OpenWRT, but IMO, they are a buggy
         | mess requiring constant reboots, or freezes after long-hours of
         | torrenting. Just because it runs OpenWRT, doesn't mean its
         | stable. I'm testing out a WRT-1200AC, which has an ARM
         | processor rivalling that of SBCs. I'll post about the long-term
         | stability of the WRT-1200AC on my blog in a few months. You can
         | find the WRT-1200AC for about $50 USD on ebay.
        
           | r1ch wrote:
           | I generally try to avoid anything with a Mediatek or Broadcom
           | wireless chipset, Atheros seems to be the more stable of the
           | bunch. My OpenWRT experience hasn't been entirely flawless -
           | the switch on the hEX kept crashing until I found a forum
           | post that said flow control was buggy, turned it off and it's
           | been good since.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | rasz wrote:
       | ~$100 Xiaomi AX6000 does full 1600Mbit if you have fully capable
       | client https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNIKJ4mGigI but firmware
       | setup is in Chinese, and most likely contains some mandatory
       | backdoors.
        
         | secfirstmd wrote:
         | Yeah not like those US backdoors...
         | 
         | https://www.engadget.com/2016-08-21-nsa-technique-for-cisco-...
        
           | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
           | I really wouldn't suggest cisco for home use, either, history
           | of backdoors certainly being one of the reasons...
        
         | sliken wrote:
         | Is there a OpenWRT port for it?
        
         | Youden wrote:
         | > and most likely contains some mandatory backdoors.
         | 
         | Is there any evidence behind this assertion or is it just the
         | usual fearmongering and baseless speculation?
        
           | 10000truths wrote:
           | People who make these claims rarely have the knowledge to
           | verify them. Anyone who genuinely wants to evaluate the
           | security of a router can always run a packet capture or do a
           | firmware scan.
        
             | maccam94 wrote:
             | What's a firmware scan? I believe that most router OS
             | images and driver blobs are encrypted these days.
        
           | nerbert wrote:
           | A quick Google of "China cyber security law" should give you
           | a hint.
        
       | kevindong wrote:
       | Reminder to take a step back and evaluate what you actually
       | *need*. In my experience, software engineers tend to go overkill
       | and buy the $300-400 prosumer routers that doesn't actually give
       | them any tangible benefits over a normal $50-100 router.
       | 
       | I live in a shoebox NYC apartment so a potato can give me pretty
       | good service. The potato I picked was the TP-Link Archer A7 for
       | $52 (at the time).
       | 
       | My internet speed is ~280/~280 Mbps and I have successfully
       | attained ~440 Mbps transfers speeds between my local file server
       | (hard-wired) and my Macbook (over wifi). So the router is not a
       | bottleneck to the internet from a wifi device.
       | 
       | At any given point in time, I have ~15 devices connected to my
       | router and it handles it great. My router supports band steering
       | (i.e. the router and wifi device somehow jointly decide whether
       | the device should be on the 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz band) so I get both
       | great coverage and the best possible speeds at any given location
       | in my apartment.
       | 
       | I don't see the need (for myself, your needs will vary) to
       | upgrade to a more expensive router.
        
         | otabdeveloper4 wrote:
         | I've sold every ISP-provided TP-Link I've had. The cheap
         | "normal" routers crash _all the time_. Their firmware quality
         | is worse than abysmal.
         | 
         | Also, does your shoebox apartment have reinforced concrete
         | walls? That would make everything much more difficult.
        
         | gambiting wrote:
         | I used to do exactly this, had a very expensive Linksys router
         | until I discovered that I get higher WiFi speeds with the ISP
         | provided BT HomeHub2 and just switched the Linksys off. And the
         | coverage is pretty great too for the total cost of zero.
        
       | drewg123 wrote:
       | How about latency in the face of interference from other APs?
       | 
       | I just went through a battle helping a friend who is a streamer &
       | who lives in an urban setting with hundreds of ISP provided 2.4
       | and 5GHz APs visible from her apartment. She had horrible
       | glitching issues when live-streaming which I guessed were due to
       | latency spikes when other APs were talking on the same frequency.
       | 
       | I tried to research what routers support DFS, and settled on a
       | Netgear AC3200 which they claimed supported DFS. However, we
       | could never get it to select a DFS channel, and there was no
       | mention of DFS in the firmware. After a week of useless Netgear
       | "support", I just gave her an old TP-Link 5Ghz router I had
       | laying around. It was running dd-wrt (or openwrt, I can't
       | recall), and had no problem selecting a DFS channel.
       | 
       | Since then, her streams have been nearly perfect.
       | 
       | I just wish DFS was a feature these reviews tested
        
       | nullc wrote:
       | Do you like bufferbloat?
       | 
       | Fixating on throughput benchmarks is how you get bufferbloat.
        
         | pitaj wrote:
         | I assume bufferbloat will affect your latency, right? Is there
         | really a tradeoff between latency and throughput?
        
           | amarshall wrote:
           | The negative effect of bufferbloat is indeed increased
           | latency. But bufferbloat is a specific scenario--latency may
           | be low when throughput is low even if the network path is
           | susceptible to bufferbloat.
        
           | nullc wrote:
           | > Is there really a tradeoff between latency and throughput?
           | 
           | Assuming that the path under test latency is small to begin
           | with, increasing buffering from reasonable to large to absurd
           | generally provides a tiny and rapidly diminishing throughput
           | increase.
           | 
           | Part of the reason bufferbloat exists is because of norms in
           | equipment testing focusing on throughput (esp for single/few
           | tcp streams) and drops while ignoring other effects.
        
         | colordrops wrote:
         | You can measure bufferbloat and adjust appropriately if your
         | router supports it.
        
       | ronnier wrote:
       | I've stopped buying consumer routers for my home and instead buy
       | small dual gig network x86 boards and put OpenWRT on it. OpenWRT
       | is super nice now. Clean simple UI. Does everything I need, is
       | open source and I have access to the entire system. Extremely
       | happy with it.
       | 
       | I graph my data in/out with grafana. When a new IP or MAC shows
       | up on my network I get a push notification on my phone (I wrote a
       | small script to do this). Really great to have options to do what
       | I want. Also it runs wireguard.
        
         | artificialLimbs wrote:
         | "...push notification..." Using Twilio?
        
           | jjeaff wrote:
           | Probably something like pushbullet or pushover.
        
           | kevindong wrote:
           | Not OP, but my preferred push notification provider is IFTTT.
           | Their API for sending a push notification to my iPhone is
           | just amazingly simple.
           | 
           | Basically set the trigger (the "if this") to an incoming
           | webhook and set the action (the "then that") to be sending a
           | notification.
           | 
           | https://ifttt.com/maker_webhooks
           | 
           | https://ifttt.com/if_notifications
        
           | ronnier wrote:
           | I use "Home Assistant" as my home automation hub and I send
           | an HTTP request to its API (this is local on my network) and
           | it has native push notification support.
           | 
           | https://www.home-assistant.io
           | 
           | https://companion.home-
           | assistant.io/docs/notifications/notif...
        
         | sigjuice wrote:
         | Which x86 boards would you recommend for this? Thanks!
        
           | c0l0 wrote:
           | I recently reviewed my (imho absolutely recommendable) pick
           | here: https://johannes.truschnigg.info/reviews/2021-01_fwbox/
           | 
           | Hth :)
        
             | sliken wrote:
             | Looks pretty awesome, was hoping for at least three 2.5
             | Gbit ports though. Know of a variation with 2.5Gbit ports?
             | 
             | Hardkernel has a J4115 Celeron (10 watt max tdp) board with
             | max 32GB ram (two sodimm slots), and 2 x 2.5Gbit ports.
             | They also have a 4 x 2.5Gbit board you can add. So
             | relatively low power, 6 x 2.5Gbit ports, plenty of ram for
             | running any network services you want.
             | 
             | No idea how well OpenWRT or similar would be supported
             | though.
        
           | ronnier wrote:
           | There's a ton of options. But I'm using this one ...
           | 
           | https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B086MK4YB8
           | 
           | It also has a SIM slot so you can fallback to LTE if your
           | main internet goes down.
           | 
           | I should mention. This doesn't have wifi. I buy distinct
           | access points that are POE powered. For those, i use the
           | WAX-610.
        
             | maccard wrote:
             | That's $450, plus tax plus labour for a wifi setup. It's a
             | really hard sell compared to google mesh wifi pick for
             | anyone other than a die hard fan
        
               | ronnier wrote:
               | There are definitely cheaper ways. But it's a hobby and I
               | enjoy it.
        
               | maccard wrote:
               | Cant argue with the hobby aspect!
        
             | zokier wrote:
             | Wifi is the Achilles heel here. For example as far as I can
             | google, that device has quite old Intel Wifi chipset which
             | means 802.11AC only and no AX, firmware blobs, and worst of
             | all apparently no AP mode support on 5GHz(!!!??). So not
             | the best choice as a (wireless) router.
             | 
             | That being said, I don't know what Wifi chipset would be
             | really good option right now.
        
               | sliken wrote:
               | Would just handle routing and wifi separately. Ubiquiti
               | has a wifi-6 AP for $99 (2x2) and a "LR" version with 4x4
               | for $179. Then you can add whatever router you want and
               | not have to worry about what next years wifi standard is.
        
           | bentcorner wrote:
           | Depending on your bandwidth needs an old laptop + switch can
           | suffice (using vlans and a one-armed router approach).
           | 
           | I currently have an EdgeRouter-X running openwrt and are
           | relatively happy with it. I think I could eek more bandwidth
           | out of it but honestly I'd rather not fiddle with it.
           | 
           | I have some Unifi AC-Pro access points and am pretty happy
           | with those.
           | 
           | Combined router/access points devices are the networking
           | equivalent of TV/VCR combo devices.
        
           | amarshall wrote:
           | I don't use OpenWRT (just a plain-old Linux distro), but
           | PCEngines APU2 is pretty cheap and fast enough to run on a 1
           | Gbps WAN connection.
           | 
           | https://pcengines.ch/apu2.htm
        
             | jacob019 wrote:
             | I second this recommendation. Using one for a business.
             | Added an LTE card to it for backup. Running Debian, very
             | stable, low energy usage, more than enough power for
             | gigabit routing, VPN, and some server proceses. Booting off
             | of a real mSATA SSD, much better than eMMC.
        
             | DrPhish wrote:
             | Also chiming in on this: I've been running OpenBSD on
             | dozens of PC-Engines boxes for over a decade (first Alix
             | and then APU2), usually as a full-on firewall HA pair with
             | CARP/pfsync. The APU2 is VERY capable, hardware-wise, and a
             | bargain at the price they sell it. I've had flash memory
             | die, but never had hardware fail otherwise.
             | 
             | I've also done wireless deployments with APU2 and a wifi
             | card, and the range was not great. Things also might be
             | better with better antennas, or under Linux where drivers
             | are likely more mature. I've never run anything but OpenBSD
             | on them.
        
             | minimaul wrote:
             | You may struggle if your ISP requires PPPoE, but otherwise
             | this is a great pick :)
        
         | dmos62 wrote:
         | Initial investment and ongoing energy costs are probably quite
         | different though, right?
        
           | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
           | Initial investment sure, but ongoing maintenance shouldn't be
           | any worse; you just run updates every now and again.
        
         | rektide wrote:
         | > I've stopped buying consumer routers for my home and instead
         | buy small dual gig network x86 boards and put OpenWRT on it.
         | 
         | I hugely support the idea (or just using Debian), but what a
         | sad sad sad sad sad state of affairs there is with trying to do
         | this!
         | 
         | There's the most limited, tiny, miniscule amount of wifi add-on
         | cards one can buy with decent chipsets. Consumer offerings with
         | consumer-targetting chips have never worked well for me
         | (terrible performance with multiple clients, huge multi-second
         | drop outs, low max client limits), and I spent years trying
         | hard to make something work. The market feels basically reduced
         | to one company, Compex, making PCIe & m.2 addons[1] one can
         | maybe perhaps buy, that do a decent job, and their availability
         | is somewhat scarce, and prices are pretty high.
         | 
         | Imo DIY ought be such a commonsense straightforward alternative
         | to these fancy routers. Alas it seems almost impossible to do,
         | short of scrounging for some expensive, demanding Compex chips,
         | and hoping the open source drivers are up to snuff (they're not
         | always). And Compex prices have gone up and up and up. Their
         | modern 4x4 m.2 card is $400[2], but hey, at least it's possible
         | to buy something: without this card, we'd have nothing. Oh, and
         | that card doesn't have x86 drivers available for it, only
         | drivers for Qualcomm platforms.
         | 
         | [1] https://compex.com.sg/wifi-module/
         | 
         | [2] https://www.arrow.com/en/products/pn02.7/compex-systems-
         | pte-...
        
         | sliken wrote:
         | Hrm, I need a few more ports. I want at least four ports.
         | 
         | Think OpenWRT would work well on something like this:
         | https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-h2plus/
         | 
         | It's pretty low power (TDP 10 watts or so for the CPU), pretty
         | fast (for a router), max 32GB ram, and has an expansion board
         | for 2.5Gbit x 4 on top of the 2.5Gbit x 2 on board.
         | 
         | Was hoping to hook up two desktops and a NAS with 2.5Gbit, then
         | run GigE for cameras, Roku, etc.
        
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