the FCC ruling yesterday got me thinking about my router, it’s probably due for a replacement by the time the theoretical end of firmware updates baked into that (natural eol is likely around the same time) takes effect. I’m having trouble finding good options particularly in regards to openwrt at least.
We currently use two asus rt-ax3000 routers in mesh mode. One attached to the modem because it’s in a really shitty location, and one attached to our home server. I have 3 items that need 2.4ghz for smart home automation and everything else runs 5ghz, 2 laptops phones etc.
Everything I can get in local stores isn’t supported by openwrt (neither are the current routers). Looking at using older hardware we have spare (a MacBook Pro 2012 or rpi4) seem to have a track record of underperforming. What are the recommendations for upgrades from here?
Follow up question is am I overthinking it? Would the MacBook Pro or rpi4 with a second Ethernet nic running a firewall before the routers also fix the issue of not getting security updates?
I was very excited about open firmware and ran FreshTomato for a while. Eventually I decided it wasn’t reliable though (2.4Ghz wasn’t actually running on one router, occasional speed issues).
I switched to Unify and have had a great experience. Great visibility into link speed, which device is on which AP, able to SSH into each device and run iperf3, WiFiMan is a great debugging tool (which you don’t need their ecosystem to try), notifies me when the ISP is slow/down. There’s a bewildering array of hardware and it’s not cheap or always in stock, but there are some good guides around.
So, I’d like FOSS to be the right answer, but in this case I’m glad I switched to Unifi.
ETA: https://evanmccann.net/ubiquiti is the most useful guide. And a key aspect is Ubiquiti is the cloud services are an optional aspect, it won’t brick if they go under.