I recently have been on the search for a new Wi-Fi AP.
My by now ancient TP-Link TL-WR1043ND v3.0 needs a replacement.

The OpenWrt One

The Ol’ TP-Link

I’ve kind of always had issues with this router. The range and speed of the Wi-Fi Network was always OK, but recently I’d get a lot of dropouts. My smartphone (emphasis on smart) always switches networks for some reason. It always switches from best/closest Network, to worse Network that is 2 stories down. This might be more of a phone than an AP problem.

God, I dislike the state of mobile computing

The OpenWrt One

I somehow managed to miss the launch of the OpenWrt One completely. It’s the first piece of Hardware released under the OpenWrt Project.

It was released in November 2024, but I only got wind of this awesome piece of tech in December, immediately placed an order, and it came mid-January.

It comes with a full 1 GB of RAM and 256 MB of NAND Flash. A Recovery Image is located in a separate NOR Flash (by default write-protected). In Addition to this Recovery Image, the front USB-C is a Serial Shell, enabling insanely easy catastrophe recovery. The OpenWrt One also has an M.2 Key-M Slot (unknown PCIe routing?) and a mikroBUS header for expansion boards like LoRa, SDR, more interfaces and many more.

The Specifications are pretty good for a price of US$89 or 82€ (for the bare PCB, no case, antennas and power brick). I paid closer to 110€ for the package that includes the case, Wi-Fi antennas and USB-C Power Adapter. (includes Shipping and Import VAT from China) You are less paying for the hardware and more for the easy recovery options that are built-in. This Router is unbrickable!

The nice vibrant blue aluminum extrusion case is a real looker! Shiny! A small donation to the OpenWrt Project is included in the Price!

Power Consumption

The USB-C “Power” Port or the 2.5Gb “WAN” PoE Port can be used to supply the Router with Power.

I measured the power consumption with a USB-C PD power meter. It draws 3.5-3.7 Watts on average, broadcasting its Access Point to 2 devices (laptop and phone) being mostly idle. Running a speed test from my laptop over Wi-Fi (520Mbps down, 48Mbps up), it’s peaking at 7.4 Watts. Running the same speed test over Ethernet 100Base-T yields a power consumption of 3.8 Watts. 1000Base-T yields a power consumption of 4 Watts.

Sadly, I have no way of measuring the power consumption via PoE.

While scanning the Schematic, I found that the PoE module generates 12V internally. Meanwhile, USB-PD requests 15V. I wonder if there is a specific reason for this mismatch. Might be that 15V is more supported compared to 12V?

Note the Penguin, Submarine and CircuitTree(?), but also the text on the PCB:

OpenWrt One / HW 24.03
You are free to share and change the software on this device.
For details and source code, see: https://one.openwrt.org/sources/

friends don't let friends run vendor firmware

The DateCode (bottom right) indicates it was produced the 49th week of 2024.

My Setup

It’s a little weird as the standard WAN and LAN being separate Firewall zones setup doesn’t work for me. I’ve run my previous Router as a bridged AP / dumb AP too. A configuration mistake on that device made the LuCi web interface inaccessible…

This guide shows how I set up my Router as a dumb AP. I set my lan interface to a static IP in my already existing network. A PiHole takes care of DHCP and DNS, so those are also setup in the lan configuration. Next was the deletion of wan and wan6 and bringing their physical interface eth0 to the lan virtual interface.

My Wi-Fi devices now have access to the entire network, even stuff before the “WAN” Port (though it no longer is WAN).

Another Thing I configured was attended sysupgrade. This package takes care of fetching new OpenWrt Releases. I believe my device originally shipped with OpenWrt 24.10, which release candidate, I’m not sure… This plugin simplifies the upgrade process a lot.

Some Future Ideas include the setup of a walled-off IoT Zone, so my stupid smart lights don’t talk to the internet. They’ll get their own Wi-Fi network too.

My Thoughts

It’s obviously a little expensive for just a router. But it’s for a good cause: Wireless Freedom. Build quality is great as it’s manufactured by BananaPi.

I really like it so far. The web interface is blazing fast to navigate compared to my old router, and the Wi-Fi 6 Throughput is excellent.

The best part is, when I tinker with it, I’m sure no matter how bad I fuck it up, there is always a way to recover it to a fully working state.

Some great resources

Generally, the OpenWrt Site is a good first starting point.
The Banana Pi Wiki is also great.

The OpenWrt Firmware Selector is great for quickly finding firmware for a specific device.

Probably the best explanation on Firewalls and Zones: