this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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I would take these projects over stock firmware on traditional home routers any day. And I have done where I’ve been unable to rig a more permanent solution. They have an honourable mission in a section of hardware filled with absolute junk.
But the trouble is the sheer number of hardware targets and meagre resources on these devices combined with the contempt of third party firmware from most manufacturers make them hard to flash and leave them rarely updated, if you’re lucky enough to have a supported device. Even then they are prone to quirks and bugs. Some devices do receive and are capable of receiving updates but they often cost more than the equivalent low TDP general purpose computer.
Just imagine: the developers of DD-WRT have to target not just each individual router model but every single revision as the manufacturers have a habit of switching major components or even entire chipsets between product revisions. On top of that the documentation for the components used might be sparse or non existent. I’m impressed that these router distributions can make it work at all but that doesn’t make it any more practical or sustainable.
At this point you may as well flip the router into modem mode and run OPNsense or PFSense and get a fully fledged operating system running on far more resources than any of these SoCs. Assuming you have the power budget you’ll get assured updates and far more flexibility with fewer compatibility issues and quirks. My passively cooled N5105 box with 8GB of ram and a 128GB HDD happily routes a 1gb/s WAN while simultaneously hosting a busy home assistant instance. The resources aren’t even maxed out.
Following my experience I will always opt to run dedicated APs. DD-WRT WiFi support is amazing considering what they have to work with, but there are only so many wifi chipsets they can support and because they try to support as much as they can there are always problems with something. I really don’t have time to constantly troubleshoot the wifi following cryptic posts from years ago. Ubiquity stuff isn’t flawless either but it’s stable and a lot less prone to hard to trace issues. YMMV.
DD-WRT and friends I love you, you really saved my ass a few times when all I had was some shitty CPE. You’re still way nicer than Cisco gear. But I find it hard to justify using a gimped out SoC from a couldn’t-care-less manufacturer when I can buy a 5W TDP passively cooled x86 computer for ~100usd.
The problem with DIY solutions is that you will be missing out on all advanced hardware features available in prosumer and industrial routers. It's always better to just buy top of the line ASUS router than going DIY. DIY won't give you WiFi 7 or even WiFi 6E. DIY won't give advanced antenna array. The list goes on.
Another point for ASUS routers is that Merlin firmware is available for most of them. And new routers are added all the time. Simply because Merlin is based on official firmware from ASUS. And it adds a lot of nice features, plus gives you SSH access so you can do whatever you want.
And last, but not least, ASUS supports old routers for many years, adding new features and fixing bugs. So if you're not comfortable with flashing custom stuff, you are still better off with ASUS product than with a competitor, as some companies tend to drop support after a measly 9 months since release (looking at you, TP-LINK).
Basically, always go with hi end ASUS - the best hardware plus really good software and support.
While I agree in general that turnkey solutions for access points (not routers) are largely preferable I must point out that it is at least possible to achieve 802.11ax with DD-WRT: https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_available_16128_ax-wifi for example, as I found out from this excellent post: https://lemmy.ninja/post/224052
That post also does a fantastic job of explaining the inherent issues of dealing with wifi hardware from an open source perspective.
Features like Mu-MIMO/beam forming that call for arrays of antenna are a part of the respective WiFi specifications, and are baked into the closed firmware of the radios. While manufacturers will fight hard to make you believe they are implementing something special, the fact is that they must abide by the WiFi standards and are just rebranding things built into the radios they buy. Hence even FOSS software can implement them. Check out this thread I found which describes what’s going on:
https://forum.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=1215880
What troubles me about the ap/router combos from Asus and the like is that they they charge so much for so little, and they have a history of being generally shitty: https://www.pcworld.com/article/447083/netgear-accuses-asus-of-submitting-fraudulent-test-results-to-the-fcc.html
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2016/02/asus-settles-ftc-charges-insecure-home-routers-cloud-services-put-consumers-privacy-risk
It was these same companies that claimed gigabits of wifi throughput, when they were in fact advertising the combined speed of three antennas over two bands. No one device would ever see the speed they slapped on the package. Heck even if they did, grandma probably can’t appreciate the fact that faster wifi doesn’t mean shit if you have a 20/3 asynchronous dsl connection.
The specialised hardware - ASICS that push packets - are what allow them to include megabytes of RAM and tiny amounts of storage along with extremely anemic CPUs. Very little if any of this is designed in house, they pick components or even an entire SoC, lay out a board, test it and ship it with a nauseating markup. Those ASICS aren’t expensive: they’re in the most basic switches, and the super duper wifi hardware is just a rebadged product from another company. This isn’t really a criticism, it just means that they are efficient and low power but hardly unique. It is though an observation that even the high end router/ap combos are far from bleeding edge tech worthy of the high prices they charge, imho. Why the fuck is 10GbE still so expensive in 2023? There are 10 year old SATA3 drives that can saturate a GigE uplink.
The software side usually consists of a minimised Linux build often running a myriad of the same open source software running on DIY builds. Back in the bad old days it even took some pressure to get them to abide by the respective OSS licenses and give their code back to the communities they were using to make money.
They’re charging a premium for very low spec hardware, and not doing a great deal to earn their keep.
Finally while these companies are now being forced to provide updates, they are still shipping products with security issues:
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/asus-urges-customers-to-patch-critical-router-vulnerabilities/
One of the most relevant examples from that article being: ‘The other critical patch is for an almost five-year-old CVE-2018-1160 bug caused by an out-of-bounds write Netatalk weakness that can also be exploited to gain arbitrary code execution on unpatched devices.’
So while I can agree that a DIY Wifi AP will likely cause a certain amount of avoidable grief, I simply can’t abide by the notion that OPNsense or PFsense is unable to offer feature parity with COTS routers.
As an addendum, if my $100 x86 router can route 1GbE as well as a $300 RGB monstrosity, what are they bringing to the party exactly? Why should we indulge that? Why should we tolerate such gratuitous bullshit?
Show me a DIY WiFi 7 router.
I can’t even show you a COTS Wifi 7 device, unless I’m missing something the two models Asus have listed aren’t available on Amazon.com - not only that but are there any clients yet? So it doesn’t really support your point.
Even then.. how are you even getting 30gbps into the device - three 10GbE ports in a LAG? And then you’re what.. pushing that 30gbps over your home fibre? Looking at the spec Wifi 7 is designed for large scale deployment not home use. Anyway I’m getting off topic.
I mean you do realise I’m largely in agreement with you when it comes to discrete access points? I was just pointing out a factual flaw in your assertion that so called DIY devices did not support 802.11ax. My strong disagreement was with the state of COTS routers.
I think you kind of missed my point. The WiFi 7 magic, or any magic really that you’re ascribing to Asus or any consumer facing manufacturer doesn’t even come from them - they buy that shit in, slap on a load of marketing drivel and try to con your grandma or some gaming kid out of a few hundred bucks and call it a day. At best they’re gonna be sending it out for emissions testing because they have to, to get it certified. Maybe they test the antenna placement but given some of the testing I’ve seen it’s clear they don’t even always do that.
If any of those guys do anything considerably different to anyone else it wouldn’t be a standard right? The clients would only work with matching routers! In fact years back you used to see this, I think 802.11n some manufacturers had some superfast bullshit that only worked when you had a matching pair.
The whole point of standards like 802.11be is to make sure everything works together and does more or less the same thing, and the whole point of their marketing department is to convince you that their special brand of bullshit does something super special and unique when by definition it cannot without breaking standards, rendering it unable to use the term wifi.
Home routers have been dog shit for years, and behind the marketing they largely all still are. Don’t allow that shit. Don’t forgive them. I literally linked you to a laundry list of vulnerabilities in Asus routers patched last month, some of which had been known for years
Sorry my dude. I know this is a bit of a ranty winding post, but holy shit I’m guessing you haven’t been around for the last 20 years of bullshit that these companies have been pulling.
NONE of them deserve your loyalty and they definitely don’t know the meaning of the word kindness. They have proven time and time again that they would sell their own granny for a few pennies.
Don’t accept that shit.