Open source router firmware?

I'm very out of the loop in this area (not that I was ever particularly familiar with it in the first place...), but what's the current roster of third-party open source router firmware?

 

OpenWRT is most likely your go-to firmware (although it's a bit complicated to get your head around).
Easy way was always DD-WRT - it's a bit heavy and its development cycle is slow in my opinion.
Last but not least there is Tomato.

It's sort of your choice, unless it isn't as DD-WRT supports pretty much all sort of SoCs while OpenWRT works mainly with Atheros and Tomato mainly with Broadcom so your choice may be limited by the router you have.

If you are looking to buy though - I'd recommend going with Atheros as this has the widest choice of third party firmwares.

 

Thanks, this is exactly the kind of information I was looking for

I am indeed looking to buy, but I have very unusual needs (a combination of NFS server, managed switch, and wifi extender, but connected to another router upstream so none of the DHCP stuff) and in any case I haven't figured out if this is really the best - or even an appropriate - route to go down yet.

 

As far as firmwares go OpenWRT seems to be the best choice for that as you can manually install packages that support whatever you need (and skip all those that you never would but would take up RAM anyway).

While choosing a router do not assume that if it's Atheros based it will work. The SoC might be supported by if there are no open source drivers for a radio (ATH9 ot ATH10 for Atheros radios) Wi-Fi won't work although the rest will work fine.

So don't be an early adopter here - buy hardware that is confirmed to work with 3rd party firmware.

 

There is another issue. Hardware acceleration may not be present in open source drivers, so maximum throughput may be reduced.

 

As a follow-up question, would I be able to get a decent OpenWRT router for $50? $75?

 

You can get a TP-Link TL-WR1043ND v2 for $45 that is supported by OpenWRT - that's a decent piece of hardware.
For about $70 you can get a TP-LINK TL-WDR4300 which is a simultaneous dual band router (unlike 1043nd) and has twice the RAM - 128MB.

For $90 you could actually get a TP-Link Archer C7 which is a 802.11ac router but it would have to be a hardware version 2. HW 1 has a different 5GHz radio that is not and will not be supported by OpenWRT or any other open source firmware.

 

I second what downloads said. I have run openwrt on all of my routers. There is support for hardware crypto and many other features. It's a great distro that gives you a lot of power. I also think the Archer C7 (v2) is probably the best bang for the buck if you're going the openwrt route

 

I swear, this site is like the little devil hovering over my shoulder, always trying to get me to spend more money than I intended to

The TL-WR1043ND basically meets my needs, but the 5 Ghz and 802.11ac icing are so hard to resist, especially since all of my devices are dual band 802.11n but my AP is only 2.4 Ghz. I mean, it's just a little more money for that tasty boost in wireless, right?

 

Archer C7 is more than worth the money. It's probably the best deal as far as 802.11ac is concerned (said the guy who owns one )

 

Usually most home set-up(with enough internet bandwidth, say 5mb) don't really need to use a third party firmware. Stock firmware usually have slightly better wifi performance in my past experience (netgear and asus)

Sent from my 306SH

 

Well, you're like the god of networking, so if something's good enough for you, it must be good

By the way, is the v2.0 a wave 2 device? I'm guessing not, but it never hurts to ask

You're probably right, but the primary objective is to get a managed switch + lightweight NAS. The wifi is really just icing on the cake.

 

No, it's not a wave 2 device. I guess if Archer C7 turns out not good enough for you I will get bullied a lot