
I'll be getting my NBN connected in a few weeks and it seems like a good time to retire my old WRT54G routers. Does anyone have a suggestion for a router that is: cheap reliable 802.11n dual band easy to put OpenWRT on Also, does anyone have any good advice about getting OpenWRT working with the NBN? Maybe it's trivial - I don't know... thanks, Cory

On Sun, Mar 2, 2014 at 11:19 AM, cory seligman <coryms.luv@gmail.com> wrote:
I'll be getting my NBN connected in a few weeks and it seems like a good time to retire my old WRT54G routers.
Does anyone have a suggestion for a router that is:
cheap reliable 802.11n dual band easy to put OpenWRT on
I'd highly recommend the RT-N66U. There's a newer version now as well with 802.11ac but that's more expensive. I don't know about OpenWRT but I'm a TomatoUSB user and it was a breeze to put Tomato on it. Fast 600 Mhz Broadcom CPU with lots of RAM, 4 GigE, 3 Wifi antenna and so robust and reliable, it has not rebooted on me once in over 1 year of usage. As for NBN compatibility, these are just routers and as long as your modem supports NBN and then you configure it for passthrough, the router will just work with whatever connection it is getting. I used to be with iiNet and they used to support it fine, they're engineers actually appreciated the unit. I've since switched to Internode and those guys are also fantastic in support. Cheers -- Aryan Ameri

cory seligman wrote:
I'll be getting my NBN connected in a few weeks and it seems like a good time to retire my old WRT54G routers.
Does anyone have a suggestion for a router that is:
cheap reliable 802.11n dual band easy to put OpenWRT on
Also, does anyone have any good advice about getting OpenWRT working with the NBN? Maybe it's trivial - I don't know...
Just out of interest: 1/ Your ISP won't support any form of Linux ? 2/ so their NBN router preferences are not relevant ? regards Rohan McLeod

On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 5:59 PM, Rohan McLeod <rhn@jeack.com.au> wrote:
cory seligman wrote:
I'll be getting my NBN connected in a few weeks and it seems like a good time to retire my old WRT54G routers.
Does anyone have a suggestion for a router that is:
cheap reliable 802.11n dual band easy to put OpenWRT on
Also, does anyone have any good advice about getting OpenWRT working with the NBN? Maybe it's trivial - I don't know...
Just out of interest: 1/ Your ISP won't support any form of Linux ? 2/ so their NBN router preferences are not relevant ?
My ISP is iiNet. They want to sell me one of their BoB router/modems. That's fine, but they don't support GigE and the default config is pretty insecure. I reckon for the similar money I can get a router with better radio performance and GigE that can be configured to have no known backdoors. iiNet have been pretty good about support. I've been using an "unsupported" ADSL modem for years. The only time I ever had a problem I rang them an explained what I had and the tech acknowledged that the problem must be at their end and fixed it anyways.

On 2/03/2014 11:19 AM, cory seligman wrote:
I'll be getting my NBN connected in a few weeks and it seems like a good Does anyone have a suggestion for a router that is:
cheap reliable 802.11n dual band easy to put OpenWRT on
Also, does anyone have any good advice about getting OpenWRT working with the NBN? Maybe it's trivial - I don't know...
It might fail on cheap and then DD-WRT instead of OpenWRT ? - but it does have the latest 802.11ac wireless.... and looks like a dream router. But, how about this one for DD-WRT ? http://www.mwave.com.au/product/netgear-r7000-nighthawk-ac1900-smart-wifi-ro... NETGEAR R7000 Nighthawk AC1900 Smart WiFi Router w/ 1GHz Dual Core Processor - 802.11ac Dual Band Gigabit - 5x GbE Ports - 1x USB 3.0 & 1x USB 2.0 - QoS - VPN Passthrough - 128MB Flash & 256MB RAM - Beamforming - NETGEAR Genie http://forum1.netgear.com/showthread.php?t=88127 NETGEAR Forums > Home Products > Wireless Networking Products for SOHO applications > Wireless Router & Modem Gateways > 802.11ac Routers > R7000 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYJh4bKJkSU Alternatives on this OpenWRT thread: https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=46717 Cheers A.

cory seligman <coryms.luv@gmail.com> writes:
I'll be getting my NBN connected in a few weeks and it seems like a good time to retire my old WRT54G routers.
Does anyone have a suggestion for a router that is:
cheap reliable 802.11n dual band easy to put OpenWRT on
Also, does anyone have any good advice about getting OpenWRT working with the NBN? Maybe it's trivial - I don't know...
What comes out of the NBN CPE? A point-to-point IP link over cat5/8p8c ethernet? If so, any old device will do. For OpenWRT I recommend the Netgear WNDR 3700/3800 & the TP-Link 1043ND. Check http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/start to ensure your SKU is supported. The WNDR is more expensive, has more RAM, and can be reflashed by TFTP (the 1043ND can, if you open it up). The 1043ND has external aerials. Price check at MSY yields: 57 TP-Link TL-WR1043ND 95 Netgear WNDR3700 * * * Hackett was suggesting a dead simple CPE modem that had fibre on one end and ethernet on the other. Are they still doing that monstrosity with fibre, four 8P8C, two 6P2C and a built-in UPS?

I've got 100/40 NBN with iinet.. I just used my old Asus rt-n16.. NBN gives you a plain old Ethernet with DHCP. No auth. Simple as. However, I tried latest openwrt trunk on my router.. Worked great but limited the speed to about 40Mbps. Turns out the native firmware uses 'hardware NAT' which works much better.. (Wire speed, 95/38 on speedtest.net). Unfortunately the native firmware is full of bugs.. This hardware NAT is a part of broadcoms binary blob, is a hack, and it's unlikely you'll get it to work on any open firmwares. I suspect you may have trouble with NBN on any router running open firmware, unless the CPU is ridiculously over powered. On Tuesday, March 4, 2014, Trent W. Buck <trentbuck@gmail.com> wrote:
cory seligman <coryms.luv@gmail.com <javascript:;>> writes:
I'll be getting my NBN connected in a few weeks and it seems like a good time to retire my old WRT54G routers.
Does anyone have a suggestion for a router that is:
cheap reliable 802.11n dual band easy to put OpenWRT on
Also, does anyone have any good advice about getting OpenWRT working with the NBN? Maybe it's trivial - I don't know...
What comes out of the NBN CPE? A point-to-point IP link over cat5/8p8c ethernet? If so, any old device will do.
For OpenWRT I recommend the Netgear WNDR 3700/3800 & the TP-Link 1043ND. Check http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/start to ensure your SKU is supported.
The WNDR is more expensive, has more RAM, and can be reflashed by TFTP (the 1043ND can, if you open it up). The 1043ND has external aerials.
Price check at MSY yields: 57 TP-Link TL-WR1043ND 95 Netgear WNDR3700
* * *
Hackett was suggesting a dead simple CPE modem that had fibre on one end and ethernet on the other. Are they still doing that monstrosity with fibre, four 8P8C, two 6P2C and a built-in UPS?
_______________________________________________ luv-main mailing list luv-main@luv.asn.au <javascript:;> http://lists.luv.asn.au/listinfo/luv-main

Noah O'Donoghue wrote:
I've got 100/40 NBN with iinet..
I just used my old Asus rt-n16.. NBN gives you a plain old Ethernet with DHCP. No auth. Simple as.
Well, DHCP (and SNAT?) is a bit gratuitous for a point-to-point link. I can understand why they do it, though. Fewer derps from their non-technical customers.
However, I tried latest openwrt trunk on my router.. Worked great but limited the speed to about 40Mbps.
Turns out the native firmware uses 'hardware NAT' which works much better.. (Wire speed, 95/38 on speedtest.net). Unfortunately the native firmware is full of bugs..
This hardware NAT is a part of broadcoms binary blob, is a hack, and it's unlikely you'll get it to work on any open firmwares. I suspect you may have trouble with NBN on any router running open firmware, unless the CPU is ridiculously over powered.
Interesting and horrible. I am surprised the system can't handle at least 100mbps doing NATting in netfilter -- NAT state is not terribly expensive to maintain. Worst case, of course, you can just put down an x86-64 whitebox desktop as your bastion router, and relegate the WRT to doing only switching & wifi AP. If the bottleneck really is the CPU, that'll fix it. Hmm... NT-R16 is a 480MHz BCM4718, WNDR3800 is a 680MHz AR7161. Are they of comparable speed?

Not sure what you mean by SNAT. There doesn't seem to be any NAT involved, I get a public IP and I use it to host services. You can't plug more than one device into each port of the NBN device, it's not a router. On Tuesday, March 4, 2014, Trent W. Buck <trentbuck@gmail.com> wrote:
Noah O'Donoghue wrote:
I've got 100/40 NBN with iinet..
I just used my old Asus rt-n16.. NBN gives you a plain old Ethernet with DHCP. No auth. Simple as.
Well, DHCP (and SNAT?) is a bit gratuitous for a point-to-point link. I can understand why they do it, though. Fewer derps from their non-technical customers.
However, I tried latest openwrt trunk on my router.. Worked great but limited the speed to about 40Mbps.
Turns out the native firmware uses 'hardware NAT' which works much better.. (Wire speed, 95/38 on speedtest.net). Unfortunately the native firmware is full of bugs..
This hardware NAT is a part of broadcoms binary blob, is a hack, and it's unlikely you'll get it to work on any open firmwares. I suspect you may have trouble with NBN on any router running open firmware, unless the CPU is ridiculously over powered.
Interesting and horrible.
I am surprised the system can't handle at least 100mbps doing NATting in netfilter -- NAT state is not terribly expensive to maintain.
Worst case, of course, you can just put down an x86-64 whitebox desktop as your bastion router, and relegate the WRT to doing only switching & wifi AP. If the bottleneck really is the CPU, that'll fix it.
Hmm... NT-R16 is a 480MHz BCM4718, WNDR3800 is a 680MHz AR7161. Are they of comparable speed?

"Noah O'Donoghue" <noah.odonoghue@gmail.com> writes:
Not sure what you mean by SNAT. There doesn't seem to be any NAT involved, I get a public IP and I use it to host services. You can't plug more than one device into each port of the NBN device, it's not a router.
Oh, DERP. I was thinking the DHCP server was running on the CPE.
From what you're saying, it's at the exchange? That makes more sense.

Yeah, basically. I assume it's located somewhere within iinet's network boundary. Maybe someone else knows more. On Wednesday, March 5, 2014, Trent W. Buck <trentbuck@gmail.com> wrote:
"Noah O'Donoghue" <noah.odonoghue@gmail.com <javascript:;>> writes:
Not sure what you mean by SNAT. There doesn't seem to be any NAT involved, I get a public IP and I use it to host services. You can't plug more than one device into each port of the NBN device, it's not a router.
Oh, DERP. I was thinking the DHCP server was running on the CPE. From what you're saying, it's at the exchange? That makes more sense.
_______________________________________________ luv-main mailing list luv-main@luv.asn.au <javascript:;> http://lists.luv.asn.au/listinfo/luv-main
participants (7)
-
Andrew McGlashan
-
Aryan Ameri
-
cory seligman
-
Noah O'Donoghue
-
Rohan McLeod
-
Trent W. Buck
-
trentbuck@gmail.com