A bit of a tangent, but I recently discovered GL.iNet[0] and ordered a couple of routers and hotspots. HK vendor for network devices running forked OpenWRT with a bunch of extras and customization.
I haven't had the time to dive deep enough into all of the code yet, but so far I'm very optimistic. Not perfect; some of the more interesting functionality (like site-to-site VPN) is tied to a proprietary closed SaaS with associated telemetry (and maybe even backdoors, intentional or otherwise). The Wireguard setup is for some reason (legacy?) not using the OpenWRT WG-interfaces but set up using custom init scripts. And getting anything else than OpenWRT/LEDE running on them with full hardware support will probably be a significant effort. I'm a bit wary of using the stock OS without compiling it myself because, well, you know.
Still, the sources are provided (including instructions on how to customize and compile your own OS/firmware). The locked-away functionality can be ported/unlocked if you're up for it. They fully support users hacking their devices all they want - and stuff like this[1] shows some hacker DNA. Out of the box the hotspot is by far the best I've found in the price-class.
The mudi's pretty cool; pocket wifi with swappable miniPCIe 4G/WiFi cards and a small dongle for Ethernet. So one could make it into a fully customized road-warrior bridge for any WiFi/Ethernet devices, or whatever other shenanigans you can imagine with that.
I really hope they steer course on the right track and don't fall to the same fate as Ubiquity. As mentioned I haven't battle-tested them extensively yet but so far I can warmly recommend them.
I just checked out their site and their offerings look underwhelming. Their top of the range home router costs $90 and supports 802.11ax... but only at 1200Mb/s. You could buy a mid-range 802.11ac router with similar speeds, made by ASUS years ago, on sale. I guess you could argue "Openwrt" is worth the premium, but ASUS routers have asus-merlin for open firmware.
I have their AX router, Flint and the CPU is actually good on this thing - ARM-A53, Quadcore 64-bit, basically it's a Raspberry PI 3. Most routers come with ARM-A7, an old 32 bit arch, and not all of them are quad-core.
When I use OpenVPN, I get over 100 Mb/s with Flint, and <30 Mb/s on ASUS RT-Ax55.
I do not think your wireless performance comparison is right, you need 3 antennas to get 1200 Mb/s on AC/Wifi 5, and there are only a couple niche desktop PCIE adapters that can do that.
I get 30-40% higher real-world wireless throughput from Flint compared to two high-end AC routers I tested. If you want to really dig into wireless performance, you would have to test real-world throughput. It certainly doesn't have all the bells and whistled of Wifi 6E and 160 Mhz channels.
Horses for courses, I guess. For my purposes, Asus-Merlin does not even come close to cutting it - and I have ran it before on a couple of different devices.
Asus routers are what's underwhelming in my experience - very unreliable and if you buy anything that's been on the market for <1-2y you never know which one will end up an expensive paper-weight down the line and which one will have decent support. The chipset vendor - avoid Broadcom - is a decent heuristic but not 100%.
YMMV but the GL-AP1300 improved throughput, coverage and reliability significantly compared to my old RT-AC66U (which is one of the Asus devices that can actually run OpenWRT without jumping through hoops).
I’ve got one of those, it’s pretty nice. Last I checked (multiple years ago) it phoned home to a .cn address by default. I don’t remember the details – please verify for yourself.
I will! Without the cloud stuff, the only thing I found so far was stuff like this, which I remove myself but is fully understandable - if you want to do zeroconf connectivity-checking on devices used in Mainland China you don't have much options otherwise. 8.8.8.8 certainly won't work.
If anyone remembers seeing an article about using a gl.inet mango as a way to mitm cellphone apps on your own network, I'd like to request a link. I read it, and bought a couple mangos a couple months later, and now, a couple years later I cannot find the page anymore.
Coming from a more remote country, that sounds completely normal when buying electronics directly from international manufacturers these days.
And, not saying anyone should do anything stupid, but sometimes these companies can be willing to send you less valuable but otherwise identical products if you ask nicely (wink wink)
I haven't had the time to dive deep enough into all of the code yet, but so far I'm very optimistic. Not perfect; some of the more interesting functionality (like site-to-site VPN) is tied to a proprietary closed SaaS with associated telemetry (and maybe even backdoors, intentional or otherwise). The Wireguard setup is for some reason (legacy?) not using the OpenWRT WG-interfaces but set up using custom init scripts. And getting anything else than OpenWRT/LEDE running on them with full hardware support will probably be a significant effort. I'm a bit wary of using the stock OS without compiling it myself because, well, you know.
Still, the sources are provided (including instructions on how to customize and compile your own OS/firmware). The locked-away functionality can be ported/unlocked if you're up for it. They fully support users hacking their devices all they want - and stuff like this[1] shows some hacker DNA. Out of the box the hotspot is by far the best I've found in the price-class.
The mudi's pretty cool; pocket wifi with swappable miniPCIe 4G/WiFi cards and a small dongle for Ethernet. So one could make it into a fully customized road-warrior bridge for any WiFi/Ethernet devices, or whatever other shenanigans you can imagine with that.
I really hope they steer course on the right track and don't fall to the same fate as Ubiquity. As mentioned I haven't battle-tested them extensively yet but so far I can warmly recommend them.
[0]: https://www.gl-inet.com/
[1]: https://github.com/gl-inet/portal-detection