Hi friends,
I'm shopping a router and from what I read in the reviews, ALL mid-end family routers (those between $40 and $100) that I see need a cloud account to access the management page. I'm wondering if there is anything that does not need a cloud account? Thanks~~
https://openwrt.org/supported_devices
You might find / inquire about specific devices at the OpenWRT subreddit:
https://old.reddit.com/r/openwrt/
The Turris Omnia is priced above your preferred range, but is effectively a small server and has excellent capabilities. It runs a specifically-tuned and live-upgradable version of OpenWRT:
https://www.turris.com/en/omnia/overview/
Maybe the thing that took me the most time was to decide which version to use or whether I should use openwrt vs tomato vs other competitors
I never felt the 'instability', at least not when I limited myself to the basics a thing like that should do, and not trying to turn it into a server for all sorts of things.
(Edit: Though you can also do that, if you know what you are doing. That's the advantage of things like these!)
Depending on which hardware/SOC you have, DD-Wrt may be a better option.
It's cloud-free, spyware-free, adware-free.
The default configuration works with the same basic configuration any consumer-grade system would require.
Extensive configuration capability is offered through either of two graphical front-ends, the basic Turris, the advanced Luci, or for those who prefer talking in words rather than gestures, a highly capable Linux system residing underneath.
Does not match my experience at all. My router would regularly go offline with the stock firmware which never happened after I flashed OpenWRT.
You can add additional rewritable onboard storage. And an LTE modem for mobile data.
[0]: https://freshtomato.org/
This is something commercial routers get right, updates keep your settings. This requirement will cause you to delay if you use any of the complexity of the router and that leaves you open to attacks. IMO its not a great choice today due to this one fatal flaw.
I own one and it has not always been great. At one point their fork of OpenWRT was so different from upstream that upgrades were taking a long time and introduced lots of bugs.
Since the last major version or 2 though, they've upstreamed most of the drivers and custom code, so TurrisOS is just a few patches and packages on top of OpenWRT to better support the specific hardware and services, and it's been very stable.
One incredibly useful feature is BTRFS snapshots and the `schnapps` CLI to manage them. The hardware reset button can even be used to roll back to factory defaults, from where you can still access and restore any snapshot so it's very easy to unbrick the router if you make a mistake.
Add an M.2 NVMe card and you can run LXC containers (and in the next major release, even Docker).
https://openwrt.org/docs/techref/bootloader/pepe2k
https://github.com/pepe2k/u-boot_mod
No, seriously ;-) What you are thinking of is probably described here https://openwrt.org/docs/techref/hardware/switch and has a long history.
Basically it depends on having opensourced drivers, or at least specifications for the internals of the affected switcheroos, which wasn't the case for many chips for a long time, and still isn't for all of them.
Then there is the part of writing a unifying and usable abstraction for all of that, which also isn't fully there yet, at least not for every device under the sun.
Read up here: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/networking/switchdev....
In almost all cases, OpenWRT extends rather than restricts device capabilities.
That said: choose your hardware based on OpenWRT support if at all possible.
- Seems very badly out of date.
- Far more limited capabilities
- Much less clear upgrade capabilities / path.
If it works for you, then sure. I'd lean strongly to OpenWRT.
Much of my dd-wrt comments also applies to Tomato from what I've been able to sort.
dd-wrt and Tomato were built for systems as they existed a decade or two ago, notably the venerable Linksys WRT54G router. These work, but have highly constrained hardware.
I use Mikrotik hAP2 (~£60/$80) - if you are comfortable with that sort of thing, otherwise I guess anything that supports OpenWRT as others have said.
Have you got examples of ones that need a cloud account? I'm intrigued now
Only if there's no Amazon in your region.
Amazon eeros require an account.
Apple's Airports did, too, when those were still being made. Not directly, but you needed an App Store account to download the setup utility.
It sucks that companies feel the need to cloudify everything.
Also have netgear with no cloud account required. Also don't use mobile apps.
It obviously phones home, and has all sorts of additional exploit angles.
I bet there's a daemon listening 24x7 for incoming connects, too.
Ubiquity ERL already had a security issue with theirs.
For The router get a mikrotik or ubiquiti. Then you can run small- business APs from Ubiquiti and TP link for example. Or convert an older router into AP with open source firmware .
OP : If you are technical you can buy a TM-AC1900 on ebay for $40 and flash it with the AC-68U
https://www.bayareatechpros.com/ac1900-to-ac68u/
In most cases, I'm getting better than stock performance. UI is much better too. I'm a big fan.
You don't have to buy from them the hardware.
I used to use OpenWRT (which is also a nice second option), but the robustness and flexibility of mikrotik is fantastic.
I have supported dozens of router brands for clients since 1996, and I cannot say enough good things about Mikrotik. It allows you to work productively on Terminal CLI (but that is not necessary).
Unless I have missed a few recent development, the RouterOS is open source only in the sense that it is build on a foundation of open source software. The source of the GPL parts is available upon request.
Running RouterOS on non-Mikrotik hardware requires the purchase of a separate license. Mikrotik hardware usually comes with a license already on the device.
The wizards for network setup make this much easier but be ready for a steep learning curve.
I buy them at Goodwill for $5-10 whenever I see them there, which is fairly often.
They have two main features I like:
- separate main and guest networks. I put all my non-computer stuff like phone, TV, Roku, Tivo, etc on the guest network. There is a setting to isloate the guest network from the main network on separate vlans.
- they have a QOS setting for uploads (I only have 1Mbit up), so when I do online backups with HashBackup (I'm the author), the router will use the full upload bandwidth if there are no other connections uploading, but if there are other connections needing to upload, the router splits the capacity between the active connections. Without QOS, it was impossible to have an interactive ssh session during a bulk upload. With QOS it works fine.
You can buy these on eBay for $15-25. Get one with free shipping so that if you have trouble and have to return it (unlikely with a high feedback seller), you don't have to pay for shipping.