I have multiple remote locations where I currently use OpenWrt combo router/APs for purposes like connecting to network, running VPNs, extending LANs to these VPNs, adding Wi-Fi APs - you know, normal router stuff.
I recently came into possession of multiple 3.5" HDDs and was looking for ways to utilize them best. My servers run on NVMEs and I have plenty of storage already, so I was thinking that I’d like to replace the routers with something that can take the HDDs to have a more distributed backup infrastructure.
The requirements are:
- Be a normal PC with UEFI. I prefer ARM, but this is not realistic, so probably x64. I came to the conclusion that I hate OpenWrt and everything not normal GNU/systemd software.
- Have at least two Ethernet ports, preferably 2.5 gigabit - I intend to keep using the existing routers as Wi-Fi APs and those have 2.5G ports.
- Have a small physical footprint and be quiet, ideally something like the AirPort Extreme of the olden days - people are less likely to unplug something that looks more like a router than a server. The routers are extremely remote (think 3 days travel time), people who live nearby are elderly (more blinking lights must mean more expensive), Wi-Fi provided by my hardware is their only connection, no cellular or anything, they’d get completely cut off from the world, so calling them and saying they need to do some maintenance is not an option.
- Have two 3.5" bays - my normal servers reside on RAIDZ as root filesystem, here I’m thinking of mirroring the drives to have at least some hardware redundancy. Having more than two is bad due to the reason above.
- Be decently powerful - routing sounds like an easy task, but I need to keep a convoluted VPN setup (plus syncoid backups!) and that overwhelms 2 core celerons pretty quickly. Since I’m adding storage I also wanted to add some local mirrors for services as well, but that’s low priority.
- Be in the 200-300€ range. I need to buy at least 5 of these. Blowing through my entire 2027 hardware budget before the year even starts sounds a bit painful.
Web search gave me an AOOSTAR R7 small PC that looks like a perfect match (the ports, the bays, Ryzen 7 5825U and DDR4 RAM! for about 300€), but sadly I can’t find it in stock anywhere.
Small note about the Ethernet ports: one to the upstream network (an option to have more than 1 gigabit exists in some places), one to the AP, that is 2.5G. If there’s an option to have more ports, that would be mad, I’d replace even the hardware at my home.
I also kinda dislike the idea of having SFP ports, I can’t go pure fiber (the upstream networks use proprietary connectors that are a pain to source and setup, I just use the bridges provided by them; the AP has copper Ethernet) and had a bad experience with the SFP to copper adapters.
I’m sure someone in this community has already solved this problem, so hoping this discussion will be useful for someone else as well.
I don’t have a suggestion for what you’re searching but my 2 cents are that maybe reconsider replacing OpenWRT routers with custom boxes. Generally speaking it’s a bad idea to mix a router with other purposes, especially if maintenance is such a big issue and the router connection is their only internet.
You may not like OpenWRT but it’s reliable, and devices that were designed to be a router are much more reliable for this purpose than a NAS box with an USB adapter.
Add the servers next to the router, sure. Maybe add a JetKVM Mini to the server to help with remote maintenance. But leave their routers alone IMHO.
All my servers are routers, I have a mesh network. OpenWRT routers do not participate in the mesh since that is a pain to set up and maintain, that’s part of my desire to move the routers to my unified NixOS config. Since my repo is larger than the available storage on most consumer routers, you’re right, I’d need a small custom box, be it a small pre-built NUC-like thing or something I build myself.
I dislike OpenWRT because it does not have automatic updates, and updating remotely while keeping all the packages required for the network to work is extremely risky.
I did it once
by pre-downloading the newer versions of the required software and putting in the launch script a bunch of commands telling it blindly to basically to install all those packages, use the configs, and reboot. The update seemed succesful, but a few weeks later it turned out that sometimes (like for an hour every three days) wireless clients could not connect to one of the APs because DHCP failed for some reason. Nothing in the config looked wrong, and the only thing that fixed that was completely wiping the router and then applying the configuration again from a backup. I did not like that at all since I had to send a relative with a laptop and different router (remember how no network without the router) to try to troubleshoot that remotely, that quickly failed due to taking too much time to reproduce the issue so I ended up just replacing the router.
I can’t just ignore the updates due to all the zero-days we are getting almost weeky with the LLMs and my ISP or someone on the network is trying to actively get into my stuff. The routers behind CG-NAT are getting almost the same kind of obnoxious port scanning and ssh login attempts as my servers with public IPs, drastically less volume though.
USB adapter sounds extremely flaky, I agree, and that would never be something I’d use here, but! my first NAS was a windows 8-era tablet with an HDD connected via USB 3.0 adapter. It was way more reliable than you’d think.
I also got the impression that you think that I’m messing with people’s routers just for the fun of it. That is not the case, the problem is that there’s no internet without VPNs provided by my routers (that’s a simplification of the situation, but just accept this explanation). JetKVM would also not work for that reason. My goal is to be able to monitor that the heating and water supply still work and my 80 year old grandmother will not freeze to death because her CNG supply ran out and she has too much pride to ask someone to do something about that.