Hello dear selfhosters,
I’m planning to step up my WiFi game and after some research I feel a little lost. do have questions.
At the moment with an all in one router (a fritzbox ) and a WiFi range extender the coverage is not sufficient and the extended connection not reliable enough. So I plan to get two wireless access points. That would be all for now, in the future I am thinking about switching to opensense to get vlan support - I’d like to have one for iot devices, one for kids, one for guests.
The questions for now: If using access points with a software controler (I.e. T-Link EAP653 or UbiquitI U6+) can I just plug these into the router, turn WiFi in the router off and have the access points handle the WiFi? But IP addresses will still be assigned by the router, right? I don’t want to leave the router WiFi running with the same ssid because this will affect the smoth transition between access points managed by the software controler? If the software controller is down for whatever reason, will the WiFi still work?
Questions for later: Will opensense be able to handle vlans for WiFi connected decices or do they need to be configured in the controler software? Are the access points I mentioned suitable? I want WiFi6, not willing to spend more then double for WiFi6e, max 15-20 devices in the network, no cloud controller, generally I prefer open systems. Any better suggestions for devices?
Answers also to a single question are very much appreciated!
If you want really open then OpenWRT and a Banana Pi is the way to go. OpenWRT is compatible and well supported on this board https://wiki.banana-pi.org/Banana_Pi_BPI-R3. There’s a new coming up, the https://wiki.banana-pi.org/Banana_Pi_BPI-R4. Banana Pi invest a lot in supporting OpenWRT and they don’t provide any other option and the chips are MediaTek that kind of views Banana Pi as a testing ground for their next gen stuff.
Wow, just had a very short look,this looks like an amazing rabbit hole to get into. Do you run this yourself. Did you find the setup difficult? Is the,WiFi range compareable to a comercial access point?
The Banana Pi is easy to get going, simply download the image and flash on a SD card. We’re talking about a vendor that actively supports OpenWrt after all.
There are other devices supported by OpenWrt and this might interest you. Checkout the tables. There are also tons of Commercial routers / AP that are supported by OpenWrt and will provide a good experience but you’ve to pick them very carefully.
About range its mostly the WiFi chip manufacturer and if you want open software or not. It boils down to: the devices with the most range and speed are usually powered by Broadcom (Ubiquiti and whatnot) but you don’t have OpenWrt for those chips because they don’t provide open-source drives. MediaTek and Atheros are very open-source friendly and they perform well but Broadcom is Broadcom.
I’ve been running OpenWrt and DD-WRT (supports older routers some with Broadcom chips) for about a decade now and I don’t see me going back to bullshit vendors and their cloud stuff. I even deploy those on customers (usually small offices 10-50 people) and they’re happy with them as well. The Banana Pi BPI-R3 is my main router / AP and I’m very happy with it, more CPU and RAM than required for sure. I also deployed one at a customer and it runs flawlessly. Whenever the R4 is released I’ll deploy one to another customer who’s currently running a bit short as their current router is having trouble with more than 10 or 15 VPN clients connected at the same time.
Nice hints. Never really heard about the banana pie routers. Great to hear from someone with extended knowledge! You gave lots to read and think about. Setting up a mesh network requires some work but seems doable. Have you used it? Does it work for you once setup smoothly? Sounds great all in all but not sure if I can motivate myself for the extra effort (and the negative feedback for breaking the internet). Do you use the metal cases from banana pie and their WiFi antennas or are there better options? It will be in the living room and a not to techy look is required.
Mesh works if the hardware supports it, no problems there. I do use the metal cases and their antennas, they’re reliable and solid options.
As I said somewhere in this post the BPI-3 is overkill if you’re just looking for an AP, there are older older or newer commercial AP/routers that are cheaper that can also run OpenWrt. https://lemmy.world/comment/4971502
Have you ever flashed an upgrade to one of these boards? The directions on the wiki aren’t very clear and doesn’t explain the difference between flashing to the NAND or eMMC. Do they not support installing from a standard USB memory stick? The wiki seems to suggest this has a standard linux command line, does THAT support inline upgrading?
Also, any experience with the BPI mini? It looks like about the same hardware but in a smaller package, and for my own purposes this would be all I’m looking for (basically just provide the wifi connection via an ethernet port, I have DHCP, DNS, and everything else already covered from my firewall), or would you have any suggestions for something else?
Start by reading this comment: https://lemmy.world/comment/4966625
The directions on the wiki aren’t very clear and doesn’t explain the difference between flashing to the NAND or eMMC. D
What explanation do you need? You’ve multiple images, one for each storage type, pick whatever you would like to use and use it.
Also, any experience with the BPI mini
Never used that one. I’m not even sure about what board you’re talking about. Look up on the supported hardware table if it is supported and how good the support is.
There is 128MB of NAND and 8GB of eMMC… so does that mean one version is very barebones and the other version is feature-rich? I just don’t see anything explaining why you should choose one over the other, especially when both storage chips are part of the board and not upgrade options.
This is the BPI-R3 mini board I was referring to. The main difference I see is that it only has the pair of 2.5Gbps ethernet ports and does not include the five gigabit ports, so it’s in a much smaller package.
There is 128MB of NAND and 8GB of eMMC… so does that mean one version is very barebones and the other version is feature-rich?
No. All versions have all features, the thing is that OpenWrt is modular and you can install thousands of packages from the repository just like in any Linux system. I would go with eMMC or an external SD card and call it a day. The advantage of the SD card is that it is easily replaceable.
Here is a detailed comparison of each storage and use cases: https://forum.banana-pi.org/t/sd-vs-nor-vs-nand-vs-emmc-installation/14745/4.
This is the BPI-R3 mini board I was referring to
Check this post here, apparently the BPi guys already provided a bunch of their own builds for the board. Eventually you’ll get an “official” OpenWrt image. It seems to be out of stock tho.
Say whaaaaat? Wow it’s sure evolved a lot since the last time I looked at it. I literally have a pair of WRT54G routers in my house running dd-wrt but my wife has been having trouble with one of them lately so I thought it might be a good time to start looking at upgrading. Wonder if I can get 20 years out of a banana pi? 😆 I do like the idea of just building my own box this time around and these boards look like some serious hardware so I’ll keep reading into it. Thanks for all the links and info!
Wonder if I can get 20 years out of a banana pi? 😆
Well If the hardware doesn’t fail - something that also happens to the WRT54G - you might. After all the hardware is way more open, there aren’t any MIPS shenanigans and other restrictions that the manufacturer may have added.
Another great hardware (not high end, mid range, older, but still solid) for you is the Netgear R7000 (dd-wrt only) or the R7800 (supports OpenWRT). I personally would avoid DD-WRT and stick with OpenWRT as supported devices are more open (no proprietary drivers thus more future support). Check OpenWrt’s supported hardware tables.
If you’re looking for new hardware to use as an AP (no USB) the Netgear WAX206 is also supported. https://openwrt.org/toh/netgear/wax206
Most standalone APs can be plugged into the router and immediately start working, they’ll forward along DHCP requests. You can turn off your router’s wifi after they have been configured. For Unifi APs you only need the controller running when you want to manage/update the APs and for stats collection, I only power mine up to check for new firmware updates once a month. Can disable Unifi analytics/telemetry with a config file option too but no way to do it via web UI.
For VLANs you will need to configure the VLANs on Opnsense and the APs. Unifi lets you specify the mgmt VLAN and VLAN per SSID. For my setup I have vlan 5 for work ssid, 10 for mobile devices, 15 for IoT and other things that don’t need internet, and 20 for a couple temporary & guest SSIDs.
The Unifi APs are alright but the controller software itself is fairly limited for stats/data, still better than other standard consumer APs I’ve used though. I’ve been wanting to try out Grandstream Wifi APs for replacement as most models include a built-in controller capable of managing more than enough APs for my home uses and still have option of standalone controller or cloud managed but it’s not priority as my current APs still receive firmware updates,
Unifi ticks most of the boxes you have. Wifi will work without controller and they act as an bridge, so DHCP and other services work as-is, VLAN support is there (if you want to use different SSID for different VLAN then you need a controller) and so on. I have couple of their APs and I’ve been pretty happy, but that being said, their push for their own cloud-only products and the way they manage updates, longevity and other stuff isn’t the best (to say the least). For now it works absolutely great for what I need it, but at the future situation may change with a short notice.
No idea about T-link, but mikrotik devices are interesting. For wifi I don’t have any kind of experience, so I can’t recommend them, but on paper they seem pretty nice.
Thanks. Yeah people say not so nice stuffed a out unifi and Ideally don’t want to,be pushed in somebodies cloud. Mikrotik looks good. Will do some more reading about them. Your comments were really helpful!
Don’t bother with Mikrotik, way too overpriced for what they deliver nowadays.
if you want to use different SSID for different VLAN
With newer versions of the controller you can actually use PPSK for a different VLAN per password (same SSID), but at the moment you’d be stuck using WPA2.
I’ve had my TP-Link Omada server go down and I still had WiFi. I would guess that auto AP roaming might not function correctly, but I’m not sure.
I use TP-Link AXE5400 Pros. They’re a pretty great bang for the buck. The only downsides are that they don’t allow for separate 2.4GHz and 5GHz SSIDs, and they aren’t PoE powered.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters AP WiFi Access Point DNS Domain Name Service/System IoT Internet of Things for device controllers PoE Power over Ethernet Unifi Ubiquiti WiFi hardware brand VPN Virtual Private Network
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