I have many nerdy friends who have been Linux users for ages. But most of them don’t know such a thing as Openwrt exists or have never bothered to give it a try. It’s a very fun piece of software to play with and can be extremely useful for routing traffic. Wondering why it isn’t more popular/widely used.
I mean, what does one have to do to replace an ISP owned router and what are the benefits? How much does one have to know in order to setup a connection? How does one get connection details from the ISP owned router? How much does a replacement router cost?
My ISP owned router allows me to configure NAT forwarding, replace the DNS, setup a DMZ, assign static IPs to MACs, turn off the internet at specific times (e.g at night), configure parental controls (allows websites, internet access) per device, and probably a few other things I haven’t discovered yet.
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For my ISP it’s actually cheaper to not use their modem+WiFi router as they charge a monthly lease on the equipment. I declined it and they provided me with a modem for free. All I have to do is plug the modem to my own router and that’s it!
The features you listed seems pretty standard to all routers these days.
You and @[email protected] have very different experiences 😄
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Haha, true. I was referring to routers specifically, not the all in one’s.
Most the things you mentioned are barely doable on some of the modern all in one modems where I live.
On mine I’ve got separate wi-fi networks for inside and guest, I run zenarmor for ads and malicious junk, I run a proxy, I do my DNS on it for all my internal docker instances, and more. I realize I am doing more than your average person, though.
I’ve always set the CPE modem to full bridge and put a router inside that I can control fully. Then you can swap equipment at will if you need to.
You can run a VPN like wire guard, ad blockers such as Adguard Home or pihole or even media servers on your openwrt router.
I see. Well, I have a homeserver for that, which runs all my services, so an openwrt router wouldn’t be an upgrade.
But probably without a homeserver, an openwrt router would make sense and use less energy.
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