| From: Lennart Sorensen via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | On Tue, Jun 21, 2016 at 08:58:23AM -0400, Giles Orr via talk wrote: | > You mentioned DD-WRT. I'm a fan of OpenWRT, and would recommend their | > buying guide: https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/buyerguide . Although to | > be entirely honest it's not that great, but it may help. OpenWRT info in general is often way behind the times. As you say, useful but incomplete. | > I choose my | > routers after finding out what Canada Computers has available, then | > looking at OpenWRT's table of supported hardware and ensuring it isn't | > one of the routers that requires you to crack it open to get at the | > JTAG headers or anything like that - ie. the OpenWRT install is easy. | I think they all need to be opened to get jtag. Now if you only need | that in case you really screw up, then I think that is fine. I'm sure that Giles means: pick a router that doesn't require JTAG access to load OpenWRT. He expands on this saying, in effect, JTAG access is a pain (requires opening the case, possibly soldering on headers, acquiring JTAG tools, ...). | > So look for the equivalent documentation for DD-WRT, do a lot of | > reading, and be particularly aware that if you get a router branded | > for the American market (always a possibility in Canada) that it may | > have the firmware locked - although OpenWRT has apparently already | > found a way around that for most routers. Do your reading! DD-WRT seems like a more viable project in some ways. But: - Brainslayer is a jealous god. The governance model is just not what one would want for an open source project. - the source isn't exactly open, AFAIK - Brainslayer can support Broadcom (better than any other chipset) because he has signed NDAs and (I think) he uses their drivers. OpenWRT is the one that seems better for non-technical reasons. Historically, OpenWRT supported Atheros and not really Broadcom since someone reverse-engineered Atheros pretty well. I don't know the state of AC drivers (they were non-existent last time I looked). Atheros was bought by Qualcomm in 2011 and that may have changed the culture by now. OpenWRT has recently been forked. We don't know how that is going to turn out. <http://hackerboards.com/lede-openwrt-fork-promises-greater-openness/> Broadcom seems to be ahead of other vendor, at least in adoption for high-end home wireless routers. The WRT1900ACS that Lennart purchased is interesting: - I think that Linsys promised an OpenWRT port, with drivers upstreamed. At least they promised that for the WRT1900AC v1. But for that, they didn't seem to do it in a timely fashion. - Like many recent high-end routers, the processor is ARM-based. Almost all home routers used to be MIPS-based. - for years and years, wireless routers would have about 8G of RAM and 8G of NOR flash. It has been creeping up. But the ARM-based routers have A LOT more of each. Except the flash is NAND, which causes some architecture changes (less like RAM and more like disk). OpenWRT support for NAND wasn't there a year ago; maybe it is OK now. - a good price for this would be $250, more than I have paid for some computers.