Introduction

We are getting a new 150Mbit/s (down) Internet connection in the ungleich office in August 2013. Unfortunately, our current router katze, a Soekris net5501, is not able to process 150 Mbit/s, as it contains only Fast Ethernet interfaces.

So it's time for a geeky replacement.

Searching for available products

What's the best plattform to search for a Linux based router that is probably good supported by FOSS?

I started to cross match devices from the local vendor digitec with the list of supported device of OpenWRT.

Essentially I was looking for devices with

• high cpu speed (to be able to handle gigabit traffic)
• some memory to flash an open image like OpenWRT on it
• support for hardware already in the Linux kernel
• support for at least 802.11n, 802.11ac optional

Selecting a router

After digging into the specs of many routers, the TP-Link Archer C7 looked pretty well and even supports 802.11ac. Drawback: It has only 8 MiB of flash attached and its OpenWRT and 802.11ac support is still work in progress.

Given that all our clients support 802.11n only currently, I was considering other routers as well. Remembering that I've recently installed a RB750GL at panter and seen some Mikrotik devices on the OpenWRT page, I also checked out their website, which brings me to the router I chose: RB2011UAS-2HnD-IN:

• Gigabit, 802.11n supported
• Should be OpenWRT supported using nand flash
• Geeky LCD
• 11W power consumption

As Mikrotik seems to produce a lot of cool devices, the decision was also made to support this company instead of the usual big ones.