glinet ship their own builds of a forked openwrt (most based on 19.x) containing proprietary patches and binaries. I got a handful of their most recent devices as of last year and all of those are officially still stuck on an ancient 19.x with several security issues that are fixed in upstream but don't make it down.
Got the GL-MT1300 working with a self-built open-source OpenWrt 21.something pretty straightforward but the E750 has been nothing but trouble, weird bugs and unreliability as soon as I try anything except light tweaks of the out-of-box experience. The last thing on the E750 is that my self-built firmware will initially work fine but at some point (and all subsequent boots after), there is not way to get network access either via wired or wifi, despite the OLED indicating everything's as it should. It's in the drawer waiting for me to figure out how to get serial working to debug it as a full factory reset is the only way to recover otherwise and I replicated the issue a few times already.
This is all after several hours of trying to dig apart their convoluted github org to figure out how the builds are made and where the code comes from in the first place.
I'd be really surprise if there will ever be anything 22.03-compatible for any of their current devices given all the iptables voodo in their custom scripts...
Given the combination of poorly maintained official images, inconsistent compatibility with open source upstream, and no way to reproduce their builds, I'd say these can be fun little toys if your use-case perfectly matches the out-of-box provided features but sadly enough you should seriously consider and test each model individually before relying on it for production use even just personally. At least until public progress is made on some of that.
They list[1] which device supports an official OpenWRT, but the E750 you mention is in this list for version ">21.02" without any remarks. So this list is not accurate?
IME yes, inaccurate. I have previously compiled OpenWRT for a wide range of devices from manufacturers with no official support and spotty community coverage so it's not like I'm not used to things like this. There's some talk about the issues with the E750 drivers/firmware on the openwrt forums or mailing list IIRC.
This should give an idea of how much much attention they pay to security updates and the response one can expect when opening issues or PRs on their repos:
I had the same experience with a AR-750s. The GL-iNet OpenWRT image with its fancy web UI had a lot of small bugs and required some reboot from time to time to be working properly.
I completely resolved the issue by flashing the mainline OpenWRT image from openwrt.org. It has been working pretty well ever since.
> glinet ship their own builds of a forked openwrt
Imma let you finish, but you've always been able to install vanilla OpenWrt on GL.iNet devices. I've been doing this for years across most models. Actually there are only a couple of recent GL.iNet routers that I don't own.
Have you been able to produce a working 21.02 image (or 19.x with critical security patches, for that matter) for the E750? I'd seriously love to pool resources on this.
My rant above comes from multiple days of struggling to get a working build that doesn't have stability issues not present in the official image.
Like I mentioned, I don't recall any surprises with the MT1300 that couldn't be worked around.
I don't own one of them so I haven't looked into it sorry. However there is usually an owrt forum thread for a device or a platform which goes into details. If you haven't asked on there, I encourage you to. They're usually pretty friendly and helpful, especially to people who try themselves and ask good detailed questions.
I know you're probably trying to be helpful (and still might be helpful for others) but If it wasn't obvious from my original thread I've already read every single comment mentioning this device several times.
That community repo is a fork of the GL.iNet build infrastructure repo, just with less definitions that allow compilation to succeed.
My understanding is that infrastructure fetches the official owrt sources and applies the patches listed in the yaml files, but I didn't audit the entire build system in 15 minutes :P
thanks for the info. It've had one old GL.Inet router sitting around, occasionally using it as a backup / test AP. Never realized their OpenWRT isn't stock...
Is there an alternative HW You'd recommend for OpenWRT?
I'd give it a shot with vanilla OpenWRT first. As noted, it's very device-specific how open, supported, and accessible they are. Maybe you're lucky.
Other than that I'm yet to find anything that beats taking a generic x86 or aarch64 that happens to have a miniPCIe slot , put in appropriate wireless modules and treat it more like you would a normal linux installation. Separating AP/router duties between two separate devices will help a lot to simplify things whichever route you go (makes little sense for the "pocket travel router/ap" scenario obv).
OpenWRT has some great extensions and luci modules, some of which integrate very well. If you don't need them and want to do anything more than a standard home network setup, I'd consider if the trouble with OpenWRT is even worth it and set things up from a base debian/rocky/freebsd/openbsd/whatever base instead. Things that can be super time-consuming to get right in OpenWRT can actually be surprisingly straightforward once you remove their abstractions. Especially with nftables, if you're on Linux.
To handle bufferbloat (too large buffers without queue management causing long latencies) pick a router based on ath9k, ath10k, or mt76 wifi chips. Those are not the most common ones, and might take a slight amount of effort to match what's available in your local gear store, the above chips, and the openwrt table of supported hardware at https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_extended_all
(Personally I have an ath10k based ZyXEL NBG6817 (product name is "Armor Z2") which I'm happy with. But it was a few years ago I bought it, don't know if it's still on the market. Also still running the previous openwrt 21.02, haven't yet upgraded.)
if you want to solder and be on the cutting edge - mt7622 is really fast (based on arm-cortex so it's magnitudes faster than other wifi routers - wireguard is also a lot faster, reaching gigabit speeds) - xiaomi ax3200 for example is near sub <50$ https://openwrt.org/toh/xiaomi/ax3200 - how to flash via serial console: https://github.com/mikeeq/xiaomi_ax3200_openwrt
one caveat at the moment: 802.11ax is? was unstable.
I got two for 48€ eatch, Euro now is cheaper than dollar so its sub 50$ for sure.
Flashed and using it, its a great/cheap router for home. Really speedy, using it with Wireguard on the entire network, perfect really
Since you specify US$, I'm assuming you are based in the US. Walmart had special offers of the at the moment probably best-suited OpenWrt device there is only a few days ago, where they sold the Belkin RT3200/Linksys E8450 for 60US$. If you can get that, it's definitely worth the 10US$ premium. Check https://forum.openwrt.org/t/belkin-rt3200-currently-60-at-wa... for pointers.
I did not know that one can flash openwrt on top of mikrotik. I have nothing against mikrotik, just not a big fan of learning yet another command line interface for doing same stuff I do for living on linux - manage firewalls and stuff.
Besides their very dubious product strategy which consists of shipping the org chart, which with the apparently high turnover results in multiple competing but basically abandoned product lines..
There's the security issues. If their AWS infra for their cloud services is that shit (as was revealed by a hack by an internal person), i doubt security is taken seriously in the org in general. Not to mention them suing security reporters.
Unlike their sometimes dubious hardware QA, it doesn't impact you that much if you plan on flashing your own firmware on their hardware, but still, those are kind of turnoffs. Hardware quality seems to vary somewhat, but is mostly decent.
but they're determined to run their company into a wall chasing people who want dumb guis instead of their basically abandoned uniquely awesome edgerouter series that isnt really matched in terms of consumer performance.
What does it matter what they do with their OS ? That's their OS to ruin. Making a crap OS is the rite of passage for every hardware vendor. The whole reason for running openwrt is to replace the vendor's OS. As long as they don't lock bootloaders, hardware is judged based on upstream support, and ER-X is perfectly fine.
For that budget, the wifi is likely going to be subpar. Get a wired router and manage your AP separately. Ubiquiti ER-X and ER-X SFP are decent wired routers in the sub $50 bracket, covid price gouging notwithstanding.
