OpenWrt Two Approval
29 points by icefox
29 points by icefox
Specs for the OpenWRT One: https://openwrt.org/toh/openwrt/one
Context for people who are not following closely (like me!): OpenWrt is the free/open source firmware for commercial grade routers, while OpenWrt One is a hardware unit with support for OpenWrt from the ground up https://openwrt.org/toh/openwrt/one
OpenWrt “Two” is the second version of the hardware, it is NOT a rewrite of the firmware.
Thank you, it’s easy to forget not everyone knows about these things already. I would like to suggest it’s for commercial grade routers ;-). I’ve used OpenWrt for a very long time exclusively on consumer-grade hardware. OpenWrt is transformative, taking okay-but-unsupported home routers and turning them into powerful and secure machines that will last years longer. I always look to the supported hardware list and buy used or refurbished routers that have OpenWrt support when I need an upgrade.
If anyone wants a piece of useless trivia, naming the device OpenWRT is oddly fitting because the name of OpenWRT came from the fact that originally it was developed as an alternative, FOSS firmware for Linksys WRT54G wireless router. But from the practical point of view, maybe a different name for the device would help avoid confusion with OpenWRT the OS that supports a lot of devices and is not limited to devices named OpenWRT. :)
Thank you for providing extra context; I thought I’d done enough but didn’t think it through to the next logical step. :-)
I’m excited for this. The One was a great first step, but not really for me. My home network setup has almost always been a single combo wireless router (currently a WRT1900ACS), so the Two looks to be more the form factor I’m used to. More powerful than I need, but that just means I won’t have to upgrade again for a long time!
The network specs look weird:
I had the following questions:
Looks like the answer is at https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2025-February/043734.html
we ware planning to use a realtek 5gbit phy. it is good value for money and does not require a FW blob.
the AQR phys cost 10-15$ produce lots of heat and require a huge binary blob.
And why the 1G ports? Is there a use case or price/power advantage over simply making all the “low speed” ports 2.5G?
they are for free. the mt7988 has a builtin 1gbit switch exposing the ports involves a rj45 socket and the magnetics so you are looking at a price point of 50cents for each 1G port.
And there’s plenty of stuff that’s 10/100 and will never need to be more, much like keyboards and mice are perfectly happy at USB 1.0 speeds.
Some stuff anyway; I wonder if it could be configured as a dedicated management port or something?
Yes, this port has its own PHY so openWRT will let you configure it to do whatever you want.
The only time you don’t get any choices is if a PHY is connected to a dumb switch IC (like the 4 LAN jacks on the back of most SOHO routers).
Does that include turning it into a serial port, or just network-level settings?
It sounds like you want RS232 management port, not an ethernet management port. That’s a completely different and incompatible electrical signalling protocol. It is very difficult to send them over the same physical port (one is transformer coupled and the other is not) but I would not be surprised if someone has done it at some point. It’s likely cheaper to add a second RJ45 instead.
N.B. if you want an RS232 port on an existing OpenWRT device’s case then you can mod it in to most devices (anything with identified UART pins/pads). You’ll want a low-voltage UART to RS232 module (common called “RS232 to TTL” and a few wires.
Yeah, I’m mostly ok with this giving a bit more thought. Just enough for a reasonable home setup (TV/AVR/AppleTV/IoT bridge/NAS with a port left over and SFP / 5GB for future concerns / faster NAS). Feels like it could be a relatively decent 5+ year device, which at $250 works pretty well.
How wide a connection could this device handle SQM for?
Is SQM still important for having low latency or have ISPs mostly mitigated bufferbloat from their end?
Hoping for either 2 SFP ports, or if that isn’t possible then PoE one of the ethernet ports would be pretty nice too