Re: [PLUG] Router Projects and VPNs

[Soren Harward <stharward@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Sep 23, 2014 at 10:08 PM, Rich Freeman
<r-plug@thefreemanclan.net> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 23, 2014 at 9:31 PM, John Kreno <john.kreno@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm not sure if you've looked into Ubiquiti or Mikrotik, but they have some
> > hardware that may satisfy your requirements. The hardware is also fairly
> > reasonably priced, in the 80-150 dollar range.
>
> The hardware looks quite nice and in the right price range.
>
> How about the software?  Will it do everything I asked about (openvpn
> in/out, flexible routing, etc)?  If it involves using the command line
> to configure things, will that configuration persist through
> updates/etc (I'm sure GUI configs will, but if you're hacking away at
> it I suspect all bets are off)?  What is the commitment of these
> vendors to software updates (I'm very annoyed that my not-that-old
> Buffalo router does not have a firmware update that fixes heartbleed,
> which in theory means my WPA2 authentication is vulnerable)?  Or, are
> you recommending these with the intention that they be flashed with
> some other firmware?

OpenWrt will let you do all 7 points from your wishlist, (almost?) all
of which can be configured using the web GUI.  I'm running OpenWrt on
two Mikrotik RouterBoards (RB450G and RB2011UiAS), and two Netgears (a
WNDR3700v1 and a WNDR3700v4, which are actually two very different
machines on the inside).  All four of these are well supported by
OpenWrt.  OpenWrt has a new major version (Barrier Breaker) that
should be released imminently.

If easy upgrades is a concern, I recommend getting a Netgear
WNDR3700v4 or a WNDR4300 (which are almost identical).  The
RouterBoards are more powerful, but updating them is a bit annoying
because OpenWrt doesn't provide sysupgrade images for them.  You've
pretty much got to reinstall the system each time, which takes about a
half hour as opposed to the five minutes or so for sysupgrade.

-- 
Soren Harward
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