What wifi router to buy?

[LostInSpace]

Greetings all,

I've relied on Gargoyle for what feels like an eternity, finding great satisfaction in its performance and reliability. Currently, it's running smoothly on my TP-LINK TL-WDR3600, albeit on version 1.12 (a decision I regret, given the smaller memory foot of V1.8). Unfortunately, one of my routers has recently ceased to function, leaving me with just one operational unit. Given that it orchestrates my entire smart home, the notion of obtaining a new backup router is here.

While my existing model serves me well, I'm open to exploring alternatives if there's something that offers even greater functionality. Notably, I don't require 5G or 6G support, as all my smart devices are on 2.4G. Any recommendations or insights into potentially superior options would be greatly appreciated.

[pythonic]

Presuming you are looking for an all-in-one device like your current unit, my suggestions for researching your options would be as follows:
- don't consider anything with less than 16MB of flash, and prefer devices with 32MB or more flash;
- look through the lists of devices for which images are downloadable for v1.14 (based on OpenWrt 22.03) and cross check them against the hardware information OpenWrt has in it's wiki to make sure that devices have the features you want (e.g. USB ports, number & speed of WAN/LAN ports etc) and whether the process of installing OpenWrt (and thus Gargoyle) is something you're prepared for.

As a practical matter, many of the supported targets are no longer available new so you would be looking at second hand units. Sadly a lot of the newer devices that OpenWrt supports have installation procedures that can be onerous and in some cases have little margin for error.

You might also want to consider devices newly supported in OpenWrt 23.05 - while there is not yet a Gargoyle release built on this base I gather that there are development efforts towards this and devices newly supported with this OpenWrt release are more likely to have a longer life with full OpenWrt/Gargoyle support.

[Lantis]

From an OpenWrt 23.05 point of view there are many options.
One that is particularly interesting is the GLiNet Flint 2 (aka MT6000). Wifi 6, loads of flash storage and processing power, 2.5gbps WAN and LAN, and a built in recovery method making it very difficult to brick.
It is gaining a lot of popularity over at the OpenWrt forums.

[LostInSpace]

Wow, that's quite a nice device the MT6000
And as it's new too I can get hopefully get another 10+ years out of it.

Question: Will Gargoyle bring support to it eventually?

[Lantis]

Certainly!
viewtopic.php?t=17921

[angus]

Hi Lantis,
Is GLiNet Flint (aka AX1800) considered to be supported by Gargoyle? Thanks.

[Lantis]

No. It was only recently proposed for support in OpenWrt (14 days ago) and it still hasn’t been accepted.
This would be on master branch and so we are at least 12-18 months away from Gargoyle supporting it minimum.

Sorry!

[ActionHenk]

Follow,

Interested in the gl.inet flint 2 router.