cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/45249301

Hi there, i have a few questions about GL-Mt3000 and Openwrt.

Context Wall fell free to skip:

spoiler

I bought a year ago a Gl-Mt3000 and have been using it as a home router since then.

It was fantastic, since the interface is really easy, i put all my iot on a guest network, my family cellphones on another and activated Adguardhome with little knowledge needed.

Now, i wanted to start learning a bit more, so i decided to host the dns sinkhole (Adguard Home) by myself on my main network.

I more or less got it working, it shouted a few errors but it worked. My problem is that the iot devices on the guest network can’t access it.

Tinkering with the gl-inet interface i was able to proxy all dns request to the Adguard server, but since they are redirected from the router i lose the statistics since every query appears as if it was done by the router itself.

From what i read, there are ways to make the udp 53 port reach the guest network but it flew a bit over my head, and i don’t know how touching luci will mess with the gl-inet interface. Edit: You can easily do this through the gl.inet interface, on the tab called port forwarding, you can forward between zones, not only to the internet, i don’t know why it didn’t occurred to me. In my defense i wasn’t able to google either. Maybe it was too obvious.

Questions:

Is there any benefit to host AdguardHome outside the router? I did it to learn, but i don’t know if it has any advantages.

I plan to learn openwrt and flash the router to vanilla openwrt. My reasons are that:

  • I feel restricted by the gl-inet interface.
  • Gl-inet doesn’t seem to update too frequently their firmware.
  • I’m worried their custom software will cause problems if i tinker Luci too much.
  • I think it will easier to learn the vanilla version than a custom version.

Does all of this make sense? Do you think is worth to spend time on this?

  • ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 hours ago

    Gl.inet routers still have the regular full Luci interface if you find their own UI too restrictive. Under settings -> advanced it opens the regular openwrt Luci

    • SusanoStyle@lemmy.mlOP
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      6 hours ago

      I did, but i don’t know if changing things there will cause conflicts.

      Since i have no experience using luci i don’t know what behaviour is normal or expected, and to what extent the custom software glinet uses changes it. Do you think that tweeking the preconfigured networks would cause conflicts in the long run?

      After sleeping over it, im leaning towards going full vanilla. It should be easier to find tutorials to solve and isolate problems.

      Anyways thanks for your comment.

      • ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        4 hours ago

        Do you think that tweeking the preconfigured networks would cause conflicts in the long run?

        No, none at all. The gl.inet GUI interacts with the underlying system in the exact same way AFAIK, the most common things are just presented with a better/simplified GUI to provide a better UX for non-powerusers.

        • SusanoStyle@lemmy.mlOP
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          1 hour ago

          I see, i will study it over the weekend a bit better and see what i end up doing. Thank you.

  • ki9@lemmy.gf4.pw
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    15 hours ago

    I say go for vanilla owrt. It’s perfect. Idk why gl spent the time making a fork when they could have maintained the drivers on the main project instead.