Replace router firmware with OpenWrt

Modern routers offer all kinds of features: a guest network, VPN, media server and many more things are now more or less standard. But if you want more complex things, such as organizing devices into VLANs themselves or maintaining exotic infrastructures, you have to turn to an expensive business device. In that case, OpenWrt offers a compromise between flexibility and cost.

The OpenWrt project grew out of a modified firmware for the first Linksys WRT54G (hence the 'WRT' in the name). Its default firmware had a Linux base. Meanwhile, this open source router firmware works on hundreds of models of routers. Thanks to the same Linux base, you can also install additional software packages on it and there is room for all kinds of adjustments and extensions.

OpenWrt now has a web interface. Typing commands on the command line is no longer necessary.

Whether a particular router model is supported can be found on the OpenWrt wiki ( openwrt.org/supported_devices). You should keep in mind that many manufacturers release different hardware revisions of their routers under the same type name. Therefore, check on the packaging or on the type plate of a router which revision it is, and check whether that specific model is supported. Because the differences in hardware are large, your newly purchased router may not yet work with OpenWrt. This is especially annoying if the externally identical, but six months older model can handle it without any problems. The amount of RAM and flash memory in a router are also important. Newer OpenWrt versions do not support routers with less than 32 MB of RAM and less than 4 MB of flash memory. That simply offers too little performance.

If you have a router with a built-in DSL modem, you have the disadvantage that many manufacturers of DSL chips do not make drivers public. OpenWrt support is usually lacking with such routers. In the speed tests we ran, OpenWrt was often slower than the manufacturer's firmware because it can take advantage of the benefits of hardware acceleration. With some newer routers, this is now also possible with OpenWrt.

The ideal option is to buy a router that comes standard with OpenWrt by the manufacturer. But those are still rare. You have to be lucky with a Fritzbox from AVM, because OpenWrt only runs on a few models. In that case, DSL support requires artifice anyway.

If you are familiar with OpenWrt from the past and were mainly held back because everything had to be done with commands on the command line, you will be surprised: the extensive web interface LuCi is now a standard part of the installation. This allows you to control not only the basic settings for WiFi, local network and WAN, but also more extensive settings for infrastructures with bridges, VLANs and soft access points.

A special feature of OpenWrt is the extensive package library that comes with the project. It contains all kinds of software for network applications and more. You can find solutions there to run a chat server on your router as well as to transcode audio files. The so-called LuCi apps extend the web interface with an interface for services such as Transmission, Asterisk and Samba.

A popular alternative to OpenWrt is DD-WRT . That project has been equipped with a web interface from the start that is very reminiscent of the original WRT-54G. Unfortunately, it isn't as flexible as OpenWrt's LuCi. The Tomato project , on the other hand, offers a very clean interface, but supports relatively few router models.
In addition to OpenWrt, there is also the fork LEDE, but it has since been re-incorporated into OpenWrt. If you're using another LEDE firmware, you can seamlessly transition to OpenWrt.