OpenWrt's first router costs 100 euros
OpenWrt, Banana Pi and Mediatek have jointly designed a Wi-Fi 6 router. It should be available on Aliexpress soon.
The OpenWrt One in a standard housing without WLAN antennas.
(Image: Banana Pi)
The developers of the open source router operating system OpenWrt are offering their first own WLAN router. It was created in collaboration with Banana Pi and Mediatek: Banana Pi produces the underlying circuit board and Mediatek contributes the processor and the wireless technology.
The OpenWrt One is designed to be low-cost yet highly expandable. At its heart is Mediatek's low-cost ARM processor MT7981B aka Filogic 820 with two Cortex-A53 CPU cores. The Mediatek MT7976C Wi-Fi module spans two wireless networks in the 2.4 GHz (2 MIMO streams) and 5 GHz (3 streams) bands.
The router is compatible with Wi-Fi 6 and features Zero Wait Dynamic Frequency Selection (DFS) wireless technology. It ensures low-interruption Wi-Fi operation in the 5 GHz band by allowing the router to continuously monitor the spectrum for free channels and switch with minimal waiting time when radar pulses are detected.
A modem is not integrated, so a second device is required for operation as an Internet gateway. The associated WAN port transmits up to 2.5 Gbit/s and, if required, accepts power via Power over Ethernet (PoE) via the Ethernet cable. Alternatively, a power supply unit can be connected via USB-C. A LAN-only port transmits one Gbit/s.
OpenWrt + U-Boot
The firmware – the bootloader U-Boot and the Linux-based OpenWrt operating system – is stored in a 256 MB NAND flash module. There is also a rescue system in case a firmware update goes wrong, for example due to a power failure. With a recovery bootloader on a separate 16 MByte SPI-NOR chip, the device can still be repaired even if the bootloader itself is damaged. This bootloader is write-protected by default, but can be replaced by setting a jumper. A switch on the front panel determines which storage the router boots from. The developers consider the OpenWrt One software to be "almost indestructible".
The Wi-Fi calibration data is also stored in a partition of the SPI-NOR memory. A GByte DDR4 RAM is used as main memory.
OpenWrt One (7 Bilder)
Banana Pi
)SSD slot
Charming: An M.2 slot accepts NVMe SSDs with a length of 30 to 42 mm (M.2 2230 or 2242). Although the SSD is only connected via a single PCI Express 2.0 lane, this is easily sufficient for the 115 MByte/s possible via Gigabit Ethernet. 30 mm models with 1 TByte capacity are available from 80 euros; 2 TByte variants from 130 euros. Interested parties can thus set up a small network storage (NAS). External storage can be connected via a single USB 2.0 port, which transfers 35 MByte/s at best.
A mikroBUS provides GPIO headers for hardware expansions, a USB-C port enables debugging – the Holtek add-on chip HT42B534-2 serves as a bridge between USB and Universal Asynchronous Receiver / Transmitter (UART). Radio antennas can be attached to three MMCX sockets.
Documentation is provided by OpenWrt and Banana Pi.
For 100 euros from Aliexpress
It will initially be sold via the Chinese platform Aliexpress. A kit with the mainboard, a heat sink, housing, three wireless antennas and USB-C power supply costs just under 100 euros including import VAT for EU citizens. heise online has had the developers confirm that the offer is genuine. According to them, the first batch of several hundred routers sold out quickly. Production is now to be ramped up – it is currently not known when exactly the OpenWrt One will be available again.
The board will also be available separately for around 70 euros at a later date. Housings for the more powerful Banana Pi router board PI-R4 (ab 119,99 €) are compatible.
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