Hello pals,
As in the title, is there any opensource or friendly open Wireless Access Point? or DIY solution ? I don’t ask for easy one, as long as it is performant.
I have actually two UniFi AP but these cloudy devices are getting on my nerve and honestly.
How much wifi and open-source do you really want?
If you are willing to go with commercial hardware + open source firmware (OpenWRT) you might want to check the table of hardware of OpenWrt at https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_available_16128_ax-wifi and https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_available_864_ac-wifi. One solid pick for the future might be the Netgear WAX2* line. One of those models is now fully supported the others are on the way. If you don’t mind having older wifi a Netgear R7800 is solid.
If you want full open-source hardware and software you need a more exotic brand like this https://www.banana-pi.org/en/bananapi-router/.
Both solutions will lead to OpenWRT when it comes to software, it is better than any commercial firmware but there’s a catch about open-source wifi. The best performing wifi chips are Broadcom and those don’t usually see open-source software support**. MediaTek is the open-source alternative and while they work fine they can’t, unfortunately, beat Broadcom. As most hardware is Broadcom they have hacks that go behind the published wifi standards and get it go a few megabytes/second faster and/or improve the range a bit.
** DD-WRT is another “open-source” firmware that has a specific agreement with Broadcom to allow them to use their proprietary drivers and distribute them as blob with their firmware. While it works don’t expect compatibility with newer hardware nor a bug free solution like OpenWRT is.
I would have expected something with Atheros, they were known to be FOSS friendly. but yeah, I didn’t encounter such chip for a while now. I don’t mind too much the drivers are closed sources - even though Broadcom is known to be a pain in the ass - as long as the “OS” and control software are opensource.
Okay, at the end of the day: DD-WRT does bad job even with Broadcom drivers (lack of recent device and wifi 6 support) + bugs and OpenWRT does a very good job software wise but it doesn’t support Broadcom at all.
There’s support coming for wifi 6 Qualcomm Atheros chips. The images are still in the snapshot/release candidate stage, so not a full release yet, but they are working.