- MediaTek Filogic 880 processor
- 1 x 10 Gigabit SFP port
- 1 x 5 Gigabit Ethernet port
- 4 x 2.5 GbE Ethernet port
- 1 or 2 Gigabit Ethernet ports
- WiFi 7 (tri-band)
OpenWrt Two is expected to sell for around $250 when it hits the streets in late 2025
But the first OpenWrt-branded device has only two Ethernet ports, which is an odd choice for a router.
Well, technically it’s the only choice for a router… We are getting so used to the router/switch combo we will forget what exactly is a router. Which is probably good, I guess.
Routers can run just fine off only one port too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Router_on_a_stick
This takes me back to my childhood… My dad would take me to the fair and get me a deep fried router on a stick and a roll of cat5.
I mean, technically there’s no reason a router can’t route between more than two networks. For example, I’ve got both fiber and cable Internet (for no real good reason – I ought to cancel one and save some money) and I’ve configured my OpenWRT router to have two different uplinks, reconfiguring one of the four LAN ports to WAN2 instead.
I’ve also got the other ports configured for separate VLANs (walling my untrustworthy Chinese ONVIF cameras off from being able to phone home, for example), but I think that’s technically not “routing” 'cause it’s OSI layer 2.
I assume it’s not common to have more that two networks being routed, especially in a SOHO environment, but it’s definitely not impossible.
That’s not entirely true. Having a router with multiple interfaces is useful for multiple physical networks like VoIP, OOB, dmz, etc. We use vlans a lot for that now, but it’s not fair to say only two ports is the only choice.
Only some have an internal switch, others just have multiple NICs.
A router is also an open-by-default device, and knows how to handle routing protocols like OSPF. It’s not something you would usually use at home unless you’re into that sort of thing. Things we tend to call a “router” are all-in-one firewall/switch/access points.
That is what a router is, switches are generally a separate thing. It is only the home hybrids that combine the two different things.
I have two separate networks in my home + WAN the router combines all 3 as they are designed for. The switches just switch the packets in those separate networks. (and not to get all fancy with layer 3 switches)
Nah, I have a NetGate (pfSense) rackmount router/firewall with multiple ports. Isn’t that pretty standard with enterprise gear now days? Only 2-port routers I’ve seen are ones I build from old PCs.
more and more over the past like 5 years only. All the cisco and juniper enterprise went from like 4 ports (expected to be an entirely different network on each port and they go directly into a large switch) to having a lot more swappable port interfaces
Are you too used to Cisco devices? Mikrotik routers also have multiple ethernet ports, that are not connected to an internal switch.
That’s not bad pricing wise. There’s very very little prosumer gear that’s multi gigabit and it’s all much higher price, or it’s just a PC with several NICs.
If and when we move to hyperfibre this is going to be pretty high up on the list.
Hyper fiber??? I don’t even have regular fiber here and y’all are moving on to HYPER???
For some it’s long overdue. Fiber is soon to be 20 years old at my house.
But honestly, I don’t think most people need hyper fiber anyway, so that’s probably why we havent seen it.
I would say most people do not need a home connection that is in the same order of magnitude as the average data center server connection in use at the same time. Mostly because by definition there won’t be many servers to transfer data from and to at that speed and the average person doesn’t run too many connections in parallel.
Then again, with federation and people “taking back” the internet, it could be useful… One day that is ofc.
Realistically most people will still not run devices 24/7 at home. Data centers will always have a place for that kind of service, even if they host a lot of small, independently owned devices by the very same people whose home connections we are talking about.
You don’t need to run your pc 24/7, if you share the load with others.
This week I was discussing with a friend trying to check some boxes and see if she really needed the 10Gbps connection they were planning to subscribe to on the new house. The usual 1Gbps connectiom we already have is more than enough. But we considered that in very small cases it might be useful.
I have gigabit (0.7 up) and for 10€ plus (so a total of 40€/month. Just to annoy our American friends ☺️) I can get 10Gb symmetrical. The nerd/geek in me wants it but I just don’t need it
As an American that lives in a civilized state in an urban area, I too have fiber and can get 10gb symmetrical.
Yeah but 1gb/s by me is $80/mo minimum…
I CAN get that 10gb, I wouldn’t want to pay for it.
I am jealous. I live in Australia and because of where I live the only way to get anything symmetrical is enterprise Ethernet. As you can imagine, it is outrageously expensive. So I am stuck with 50 Mbps upload for the foreseeable future.
Which country is that? I just recently got fiber, but 1G down 0.5G up would cost me 90€/month, and that’s the fastest they’re offering.
France.
My best friend is still on 15Mb/s in central London 💀
I just moved to a new place with full fiber optic and it’s the first place I lived in where that’s a thing.
Lived in germany. Litterally 3 world country when it comes to internet. And i was not in some village but Berlin
I think a lot of the reports of high bandwidth/cheap rates around Europe are cherry picked. When I looked a nationwide averages, it doesn’t seem particularly better or worse than much of the US. At least, not in the populated areas of the US. Rural access is another issue.
We don’t have data caps which is the most important thing.
If we want to cherry pick …. Here in the US, i switched over to gigabit symmetrical over pandemic, but fiber has been available from three providers at that speed over a decade. Of course IPv6 has been “in progress” for that decade, with no sign of progress
I’m outside of Houston and sure I get 70-80mb down and 20 up on conventional copper but I would greatly prefer fiber…
Hyperfibre sounds like some weight-loss supplement.
With new HyperFibre I can shit through the eye of a needle at 20 paces!
Gulp that thing and you’ll shit it right out!
I was recently looking for a decent WiFi 7 router to replace my aging Archer A6. Then, looked up the table of hardware at toh.openwrt.org and almost none of the WiFi 7 routers from mainstream brands was supported. Glad to see something first-party releasing soon. I’ll definitely buy one when it releases.
The Asus BT8 has recently had support added in snapshots.
I just want standalone wifi7 aps with openwrt
From the image, it doesn’t seem like it has rack mounts, which is kind of an odd choice. There are lots of switches that have a similar form factor, but can be put in 10" or 19" racks depending on which rack ears you put on it
It really grinds my gears how many things could be almost trivially designed to be rackmountable, but aren’t for no good reason. I guess in some cases it’s for market segmentation so they can charge more for “enterprise” gear, but in a lot of cases they don’t make any of that stuff to begin with so it clearly isn’t.
I’m actually so fed up with it that I’m seriously considering learning how to do sheet metal fabrication so I can make my own damn rackmount cases for stuff (with blackjack and hookers).
Also, what I really want is a version of this thing that’s rackmountable but has no wifi, and then another in the form factor of a ceiling-mounted PoE access point.
(And yes, this is just for my house, not “enterprise.” It’s not even a very big/fancy house; I just like my tech to be cleanly installed.)
I could whip up rack ears but making threaded holes confounds me. Even got a tap and die set, still can’t figure it out.
Rivnuts?
I was literally just researching how to do that yesterday (told you I was serious). It turns out that those threaded holes in sheet metal with the little dimples so there’s more thread than the sheet metal thickness are made with “roll taps” or “forming taps,” not “cutting taps” (which is what your tap and die set probably is). Instead of creating chips, they push the metal out of the way to form the threads.
By the way, similarly thickened but unthreaded holes are made with something called a “friction drill.” It doesn’t have any flutes, so it just heats up the metal until it gets soft and gets pushed out of the way. Kinda neat.
Anyway, I just ordered a 6-32 forming tap off AliExpress; I’m gonna see if I can add some more motherboard standoff holes to one of my computer cases because it’s big enough for an EATX board but isn’t drilled for it.
I also wouldn’t use the built-in Wifi on this, but I can understand why they’d want to offer an all-in-one solution
I run an older half depth supermicro server with a sfp+ PCI card for my router. At this point, it feels like dedicated boxes just aren’t worth it for routers except for enterprise where I need a support contract.
I was just about to cough up for a Banana Pi R4, but I might wait for this now.
I have a bpi-r4, it’s fantastic, totally recommended.
No idea about its wifi 7 though, I didn’t buy the addon board, and went with unifi u7’s instead.
Also, looking at the specs of the upcoming openwrt two devices, with only a single 10g port, it won’t work well if you’re getting 10gig service from your ISP, and have a 10g lan as well
Have you heard of our lord and saviour the used Thinkcentre tinys? (Like m710)
Interesting that it will only have 1 10GbE port, I’m not really sure how you’re supposed to use 10Gb internet service if you can’t get 10Gb out of the router into your LAN.
The idea is that you use the 10Gb port as a trunk, then you use your switch to split it into separate physical ports using VLANs.
Ah that makes sense, so not very useful if you have over 5Gb internet service I suppose.
The 10Gb is full duplex, so you can transfer at the full 10Gb though that is split between upload and download. These and the kind of ‘problems’ I wish I had to consider.
Fair, I guess the chances of needing simultaneous 10Gb download and upload on the internet connection are pretty slim.
My ISP does offer 6 Gbps, but 1 Gbps is far more than I need already. I would drop down to like a 500 Mbps plan if they had one but it jumps all the way to 100 Mbps.
Can you do “roaming” / “fast-transition” solutions with the openwrt one and/or two? (What is called “mesh” by e.g. tplink)
Sure, 802.11k,r,v is supported and Dawn/usteer can handle steering.
Awesome. Thanks. What is dawn/usteer?
Edit: nvm, I see it mentioned in the openwrt docs. I’ll check it out, thanks.
I’m in the process of setting up usteer myself but haven’t quite finished. I think Dawn is easier but usteer seems more complete. Dawn doesn’t require a central controller which usteer does, but the usteer central controller can run on an non AP install which makes for nice centralized information.
What would be a good alternative to go between the modem and a mesh access point?
Two Ethernet (gigabit) would be required.
250$?! I can buy n100 minipc with 90$ and wifi7 intel card for 20$
Will that minipc have those 10g/5g/2.5g ethernet ports? If you don’t need that ethernet bandwidth, we all know there are cheaper options.
You and me know, but not everyone, most people don’t even know what lemmy is
People reading about OpenWRT based network devices, probably know about their needs. They are usually already looking for devices with OpenWRT support, without being too expensive.
Also, people not knowing about Lemmy is completely irrelevant on this context. I highly doubt that all friends on the network engineering field know about Lemmy, but they surely know whether they need 10g or not. Besides that, you are talking about people not knowing about Lemmy ON Lemmy.
Where can you buy an N90 for 90$? Legit question.
Aliexpress
GMKtec G3 Mini PC Intel Alder Lake N100 Windows 11 Pro Mini PC 8/16GB DDR4 256/512GB PCIe M.2 SSD WiFi 6 BT5.2 Desktop Computer https://a.aliexpress.com/_mLn5rCb
1 Ethernet port does not a router make.
Router-on-a-stick would work, but I’d like a 10G SFTP for that.
Have you seen Xiaomi WiFi routers?
thats garbage marketing naming. that is an access point
Only 1 ethernet port.
They often only have 1 ethernet port that’s 1GbE or 2.5GbE at that price, and a wifi client card doesn’t make a very good AP.
With this kind of speed, we could invent Call of Duty games where the Zombies want slightly more than brains. Generative A.I. uses internet data for training so at first, the zombies will probably request Doja Kat in the racial chat rooms showing feet but human progress marches ever forward. Within a decade, Zombies might just want to get drunk and go to Popeyes.
Braaaaiiiinnns. And a 16 piece family deal, spicy, with a side of red beans, mashed potatoes, and extra biscuits.
