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?

  • femtek@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    4 hours ago

    I’m overkill and use ubiquity but you can also use their entry level devices, I’m a fan of hardwiring the wifi points to a switch or the router itself thru poe so you don’t have to use a wifi band for the mesh.

    • village604@adultswim.fan
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      7 minutes ago

      Mikrotik is a great budget friendly option too. It’s pretty simple to do a standard home setup in RouterOS

    • neidu3@sh.itjust.works
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      4 hours ago

      Same. Got some leftover Fortinet from work that I’m using. Could be better, but my Fortigate 101E works miles better than my ISP default router. All I had to do was assign upstream wan to VLAN 10 and spoof the MAC address.