maybe interesting for one or the other
Translation by DeepL:
The OpenWrt One combines Wi-Fi 6 with open-source flexibility and is as versatile as a Swiss army knife. Whether as a VPN control center, NAS or travel router – the 100-euro router offers features that standard devices can’t deliver. However, know-how and patience are required, because setting it up is not for beginners. c’t 3003 shows why the OpenWrt One is still exciting.
Transcription of the video
(Note: This transcription is intended for people who cannot or do not want to watch the video above. The text does not reproduce all the information on the image track.)
Look here, this is the OpenWrt One. It’s a completely open router that costs only 100 euros. And what does open mean? The hardware and software are open source. Yes, and what’s the point of that? The point is that you can do almost anything you want with it. In any case, a lot more than with normal commercial routers. Not only can you configure more, but you can also easily install software on it. The associated app store has almost 10,000 software packages in it. For example, I installed AdGuard Home with a single click, on the router. Pretty cool, right? The fact that I put quotation marks around “app store” is because it’s just a long package manager list. So you have to know what you’re doing. There are no detailed descriptions or anything like that.
And knowing exactly what you’re doing is the key point with the OpenWrt One. The learning curve is pretty steep, but I was up for it. And professional networker Andrijan helped me a lot with my OpenWrt journey. And in the end, we had created something really cool with the thing. Something that you definitely couldn’t do with a standard router. Stay tuned!
Dear hackers, dear internet surfers, welcome here at…
Yes, folks, first the obvious. The router is of course called OpenWrt One because it runs OpenWrt. And to explain what OpenWrt is, I have to go back a little way. But this is really an interesting story. So, once upon a time there was a router from the company Linksys called WRT54G. That was in 2002. Yes, and its integrated software used a modified Linux kernel. This was allowed, but the underlying license, the GNU GPL, requires that the modified source code be published. Yes, and Linksys didn’t do that at first. But months of pressure from the community eventually wore them down, and then the source code was made available. Well, almost the complete source code, only the drivers for the WLAN chipset were missing.
In any case, the open-source community then had access to a complete router software, and it has been continuously developed ever since under the name OpenWrt – you notice, Wrt, WRT54, Nicknack, the product name of the Linksys router. So for over 20 years. And in such a way that the software runs on as many different routers as possible. Over 1,800 router models are now supported. Of course, there are many old models, but also many that are at least reasonably modern, for example the Asus TUF AX6000 or the Fritzbox 7530.
So, but to get OpenWrt on commercial routers at all, that can be quite a pain in the ass, so a bit fiddly. And then it can also happen that there are no drivers for all the router’s features, so some things don’t work. And that’s why there is now the first official OpenWrt hardware, developed by the OpenWrt community together with the hardware manufacturer BananaPi. OpenWrt One is the name of the thing and can be ordered from AliExpress, for example – for about 100 euros. When I looked, it was a few euros more. Prices always fluctuate a bit.
Yes, and the hardware is quite usable. So: fast Wi-Fi 6, a fast ARM dual-core processor with 1.3 GHz, two Ethernet ports, unfortunately only one of them with 2.5 Gigabit. The other one has only one Gigabit. And for OpenWrt conditions a lot of RAM, namely one Gigabyte. The software would also get along with 128 Megabyte. So the thing is definitely future-proof. But three things are really unusual. First, the part has an M.2 slot for an SSD. It is connected with PCI Express 2.0. So 500 megabytes per second gross transfer rate is possible. That means you just plug an SSD into it and then configure a simple NAS.
And we tried that too and measured large files for that 150 megabytes writing and 170 megabytes reading. These are pretty good values for such a simple router NAS – so significantly better than many other commercial routers with such a function. What has been announced but is not yet possible: at some point, it should be possible to boot directly from the SSD, so that you can start real Linux distributions on it, for example. But, as I said, it’s not ready yet.
The second unusual feature is the so-called Mikrobus socket. This enables you to attach homemade hardware to the router via GPIO pins, i.e. General Purpose Input/Output, for example sensors. The third thing is that it’s almost impossible to break the device. If you somehow brick the router, you simply switch this switch here at the back to NOR, and the router can then be reanimated. In addition to the 256 MB NAND flash memory on which the system is installed, there is also a write-protected 16 MB flash chip. A bootloader is stored on this that can reset the device in an emergency.
Nice. And even without the emergency function: the router can really be reset in five seconds, without exaggeration. This means you don’t have to be afraid when playing around. If something doesn’t work anymore: zap, back to zero. All easy. But just on the command line. And I really have to say this about it: you really have to be in the mood for tinkering with the OpenWrt One. And you also have to remember that there is no modem in it. That means you either need an additional router with a modem or a separate modem, which is rather rare to find.
And I have to admit: when my network colleague Andrijan told me about the thing, I thought: Yes, cool, a Wi-Fi 6 router for 100 euros, that’s great. I’ll make a video right away. I tested the OpenWrt One as my main everyday router. Yes, and then Andrijan said: Nah, it’s not for everyday use. It’s more of a buster router. And I’m like, “Huh, what’s a buster router?” But I’ve now understood that to some extent. And I’m trying to give you a better understanding of it in this video. There’s one point that’s really important here: you can simply reset the whole thing. So, I can just fiddle with it without anything happening. From a psychological point of view, I find that a big advantage with this box.
And I’ll show you what I meant by the steep learning curve at the beginning. So, I connected the OpenWrt One to me and yes, I couldn’t get to the graphical user interface even though I had entered the correct IP address. It turned out that the graphical user interface of OpenWrt, called LuCI, is not even on it. Why? Because the router software does not yet exist as a final release, but only as a so-called pre-snapshot version. And that’s why LuCI is not preinstalled. This means that you have to access the router via SSH, i.e. via the command line, and install LuCI manually.
So let’s see how to do that, with LuCI in the official documentation. Aha, okay, all right: opkg install luci. Error message. Oh, okay. It turns out that opkg is no longer the default preinstalled package manager, but the whole thing is now called apk. So: apk install luci? No, that doesn’t work either. It’s now called apk add luci. But it’s not mentioned here on the official support page. I had to find that out myself – or rather, Andrijan helped me along the way. As soon as the OpenWrt-One software is available as a final release, LuCI will of course be preinstalled. That won’t happen anymore. But I think this anecdote vividly illustrates what is meant by “Buster router”.
Once you have installed LuCI, you can log into the router via a browser. And yes, okay, that’s not quite as easy to understand as the user interface of a Fritzbox. But it’s really cool! For example, there is this package manager that we’ve already mentioned. Under “System > Software” I can easily install things like AdGuard Home for malware and ad filtering. In case you don’t know what it’s good for: We’ve already made a video about Pi-hole. That’s basically the same as AdGuard Home.
In general, though, I’d say the whole thing is a bit dry. Nevertheless, some of the basics explained themselves to me. For example, if you want to add Wi-Fi, you select whether it should be 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz. Then you click on “Add”, enter the desired name at ESSID, set “Channel” to “Auto” (if you don’t want to specify your own channel), select the encryption under “Wireless Security”, for example WPA3, and then enter the desired password at “Key”. Finally, click on “Save & Apply”.
At first glance, this is not so fundamentally different from normal routers. But with OpenWrt, for example, I can create a lot of WLANs. With normal routers, there is often a maximum of one guest WLAN, and that’s where it ends. With OpenWrt, there are no limits. Take a look here, this is what it looks like for me right now: six WLANs! Yeah, do that with your normal router.
Now you’re probably wondering: Yes, fine, guest Wi-Fi is switched off, I understand. But why do you need more Wi-Fi networks? I actually had a real use case for this. I wanted to install the controversial Microsoft feature “Windows Recall” on a notebook. At the time, the dev version was still USA-only and apparently was not delivered in Germany. Even a VPN on the notebook itself did not help, because the first contact with the Internet still had a German IP address. So I wanted to try a completely reset Windows installation, whose first Internet contact is directly American.
This is possible if the router tunnels itself to the USA and the Windows computer connects directly to the router – virtually in the USA, so to speak. No contact with a German IP address. And that doesn’t work with a Fritzbox and my VPN provider because the Fritzbox only supports IPsec and WireGuard, but my VPN provider doesn’t support either. OpenWrt, on the other hand, can do OpenVPN, and my VPN provider supports that. So I configured OpenVPN in OpenWrt – with login, password and all the trimmings.
And just like that, I was able to install “Windows Recall” on the notebook. And then I thought to myself: how cool would it be if the router could set up several WLANs at once, each tunneled to a different country? Then, for example, I could dial into different WLANs with my TV to watch different content from streaming providers. It’s different depending on the country.
Okay, maybe you’re thinking: that sounds a bit special. But there are other advantages to connecting VPNs directly to the router. For example, you can use it to get devices onto the VPN that you can’t actually install a VPN client on – such as a TV, a Nintendo Switch or other Wi-Fi devices. I think it’s pretty elegant that if you want to use a VPN, you just switch to the corresponding Wi-Fi network. You don’t need to install client software or configure it for each device; you just do it once on the router, and that’s it.
If that hasn’t convinced you yet, I have another feature: the Reiserouter software “Travelmate”. If you travel a lot, you know the problem with annoying hotel Wi-Fi networks where you always have to click through captive portals or can only connect one device. With the OpenWrt One, the Travelmate software controls the uplink to the hotel Wi-Fi and creates its own private Wi-Fi network that you can use to connect any number of devices. And voilà: no more fiddling with captive portals and limited numbers of devices.
My conclusion
The OpenWrt One is not an everyday router – it never will be, if only because it doesn’t have a built-in modem. But if you’re into tinkering with networks, like my VPN WLANs, or want to use the router as a travel router, then it could be just the thing for you. It’s a real Swiss network pocket knife for offbeat network ideas. If you just want a router that gets your devices online quickly and reliably, then this probably isn’t for you. But if you like tinkering, you should take a look at this thing.
I have to say that I learned a lot about networks during my experiments with the OpenWrt One – about routing, VLANs and other things, often without even realizing it. I really enjoyed it! What about you? Would you find something like this interesting? Would you be able to use it? Or would you say: I just want my all-round carefree router and that’s it? Feel free to write about it in the comments! Bye!
