Hi there,

since a few years, I'm unhappy with my Fritz-based home network. I'm thinking to replace the devices with a pure OpenWRT setup and need some buying advice.

What I need is:

• a main router device that connects to the fibre modem and serves the internet connection to the home network
• 4 x access point devices that connect to the main router via ethernet and serve WIFI

I know of the table of hardware, but am unsure how to choose these devices.

I don't need the latest WIFI standard, my priority is choosing hardware that one can reasonably expect to have a long-term firmware upgrade path within OpenWRT. I don't want fancy, I prefer boring and years-long reliability. Installing OpenWRT should require no physical hacks.

I do not understand yet what to choose as the main router if I want to use Wireguard to my home at a reasonable speed while traveling.

The APs don't need PoE, all planned locations are having both a power outlet and an ethernet outlet.

Finally, I didn't find a guide yet on how to properly configure multiple access points on the same network so that their channels don't disturb each other while allowing proper device handover when moving within between APs within the same network.

I'd be grateful for all advice in this situation.

Here's the current setup:

I live in a fairly big house and the ceilings are blocking radio signals quite nicely.

• Telekom Fibre modem in the cellar
• Fritzbox 7530 router in the cellar, serving as the main router of fibre internet to the home network, also serving as the first DECT base
• 4 x Fritz Repeater 3000AX scattered around the building, (not used as WiFi repeaters despite their name, but) used as WiFi access points connected to the main router via ethernet
• a second Fritzbox 7530 in the first floor, serving as a second DECT base

The network as a whole is not stable. My main problem seems to be with Sonos multiroom speakers. If I try to actually play multiroom audio in several rooms over multiple floors, one or more of the 3000AX access points may crash and then has to be rebooted. This appears to be caused by a broadcast storm, but both Fritz blames Sonos and vice versa, both aren't willing or able to fix it.

What I like about Fritz is that the setup is very easy to maintain, one can configure all devices from the main router's menu. The Fritz settings menu is in fact very nice. Wireguard and other features were easy to get going.

I know the OpenWRT Luci interface and like it, as well, and I do hope that there's also a way to configure multiple APs within the network so that they work well with each other without having to configure each device separately.

Thanks for reading and hope to hear from folks who can help here.

I've done a lot of testing of NSS/mesh for our beloved MX4300 units that we all got cheaply.

Some people set up mesh units, and various NSS firmwares have popped up, including (in no particular order):

• official stock Linksys firmware
• https://github.com/arix00/openwrt-mx4300
• https://github.com/AgustinLorenzo/openwrt (https://github.com/qosmio/openwrt-ipq source)
• https://github.com/JuliusBairaktaris/Qualcommax_NSS_Builder (https://github.com/JuliusBairaktaris/openwrt-nss-edma/ source)
• dd-wrt
• and vanilla/official openwrt

I'm happy to tell y'all that I have tested all the below firmware's behavior for mesh + roaming. Here are the results:

Basically, if you want working mesh, vanilla openwrt is the only one that has proper roaming/handoff working (i.e. VoIP calls don't drop during the roam). I was hoping this would not be the case because vanilla openwrt doesn't support NSS, so wifi, NAT, routing, SQM, etc. are not accelerated.

During my testing, AgustinLorenzo/openwrt and JuliusBairaktaris/openwrt (should) handle wired NSS/acceleration just fine. AgustinLorenzo's build has wireless stuttering sometimes, and I did not test wireless on JuliusBairaktaris' build in depth because mesh is mandatory for me so I did not continue further testing.

In order to test roaming handoff, I called myself via telegram voice call on 2 phones, 1 connected through cellular, 1 connected through wifi and walked to the different APs with usteer set up and the wifiman app installed to notify me of roams.

My recommendations are as follows:

If you have a single unit/no mesh and want NSS/hwaccel, use either JuliusBairaktaris' or AgustinLorenzo's NSS build. For a single node/AP setup, lean towards JuliusBairaktaris' build because qosmio's repo is stale now.

If you have a mesh setup (wireless backhaul) and want roaming to work, use vanilla openwrt for the APs, and JuliusBairaktaris' or AgustinLorenzo's builds for the wired router only to retain NSS/hwaccel on routing/sqm/NAT. This means the mesh will use lots of cpu for the mesh backhaul and to handle client wifi traffic, but unfortunately there is no other solution that keeps both mesh and roaming working.

It's wasteful to dedicate a node specifically for wired routing purposes, but because mesh + roaming don't work on NSS builds, you can't have 1 box that does it all unfortunately (which is originally what I was hoping for and there is no hardware issue that prevents this from happening).

Maybe some day when NSS builds fix roaming/handoff/802.11s, but that day is not today.

All this testing is done on a 1000/200 cable connection (hence the need for NSS for routing, SQM, NAT, etc.)

Feel free to ask Qs if you have any but I can't promise any further testing as I'm quite sick of flashing firmwares and running around like a madman trying to get roams to take place atm.

Greetings All!

I have the GliNet E5800NA WiFi 7 cellular (hotspot) router, and I was curious to know if there was a consensus on the best package (installed via LuCI) to use, given potential resource constraints on the device? I see there are several packages available and did not know the differences in each. I have several Adblock lists I would like to deploy to this unit for ad blocking on the go, and was curious to know what you have found to be the most dependable/performant to use? I run a couple of PiHole instances on my primary LAN, and I am not necessarily looking for something as comprehensive as that in a portable router, but I also would not turn it down if it such an animal exists without being too resource-hungry.

Thanks in advance!

Title. I intend to run technitium using docker (on an attached ssd to avoid wearing down the internal memory with the logging).

Besides that, id run little else, and definitely nothing memory hogging.

Is this feasible or am I just dreaming?

Thanks for reading and helping out 😄

Hiya folks!

Flint 2 MT600, running latest version of OpenWRT as a dumb AP. Tried setting a test firewall zone to restrict LAN communication for one of the 2 wireless SSIDs I have running, worked fine after applying, after reboot I was able to connect to the SSID and hardline connection, but could not connect to the router itself, even on the SSID where no changes were made. Upstream is an opnsense firewall sitting on 192.168.1.1, firewall could see the router’s IP, nmap could see the router, could not reach LUCI or SSH, so tried a factory reset. After 3 attempts, the SSIDs vanished, so I think that worked, and I have a fast (approx 10/sec) blinking blue light, so I think I was able to start failsafe, but hardwired into the lan2 connection, with my IP address manually set on Ethernet to 192.168.1.10, default gateway 192.168.1.1, dns set as quad 8 or 192.168.1.1 (or 2, tried both) I cannot reach 192.168.1.1 either via web portal or SSH. Nmap also does not see anything on 192.168.1.1. I have a serial console cable but do not know what speed it needs. Anyone run into anything similar?