OpenWRT on RaspberryPi4 - works a treat

I've only recently found the time to sort it out, but have finally sorted out my new 'router'!

I'm using a Raspberry Pi4 (4GB model) running OpenWRT 21.0.2
I have two USB3 ethernet adapters attached to it.
One of them is connected to the OpenReach ONT for WAN access.
The other one plus the onboard gigabit ethernet are registered to the "br-lan" interface.

Initial results are very good, with system load being very low and I'm able to max out the gigabit switching abilities of the Pi (onboard ethernet<>USB3 bus) whilst doing a local speedtest from my laptop to the nas.

SQM, secure DNS & Adblocking are all enabled, as well as the usual internal DNS (I hate the usual ISP routers that don't allow LAN hostname lookups).

It's a nice (relatively low powered) little router package.

Interesting, can you access the Internet via the Pi4 wifi?

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

Interesting, can you access the Internet via the Pi4 wifi?

The WiFi can be set up in access point mode, so yes you could.
I don’t have it configured that way, but it’s possible.

When doing the initial setup I had the WiFi set up in client mode, so I could then download and install the RealTek usb driver for the USB adapters.

Just had a quick play...it's obviously not fast (no external antennas etc) but it technically works

https://imgur.com/a/rUUgTtT

I find this all very interesting, did you use any online guides to achieving it as I'm interested to learn.

Thank you. I do have a couple of Pi4s.

In reply to a post by dect:

I find this all very interesting, did you use any online guides to achieving it as I'm interested to learn.

Take a look here:
https://openwrt.org/toh/raspberry_pi_foundation/rasp...

I've been using OpenWRT for many years now, so a lot of it I already know to be honest, but there's tons of help out there.

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

Thank you. I do have a couple of Pi4s.

It's a fun little project to show another use for them 🙂
They can handle Gigabit WAN speeds with SQM on easily

Is that just gigabit on the NAT engine or would that include the Firewall / IP Filter too?

There’s a detailed thread on it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/openwrt/comments/l1m801/rpi...

It looks like it can do ~900Mbps both up and down…though it’s unclear if that is with SQM on

Huge levels of detail here:
https://forum.openwrt.org/t/rpi4-routing-performance...

My connection is only 500/75 so I’m not able to push it to the limits anyway

Just came back to post an update.
A little over a month later, still running perfectly

I saw there are some quite nice little OpenWRT dev boards available for not much money.
It seems that RasPis are rarer than a caveman's steak at the moment though.

For the same price as you will pay for a Pi4 currently I went for the virtualised approach shown here - https://www.servethehome.com/topton-intel-j4125-4x-i...

I can likely run a number of small appliances in this way such as Pihole and a Unifi mgt instance.

Yeah, I liked the idea of an x86 based solution, but couldn't find a reasonably priced option that I liked. Given I already had the Pi4 sitting there I only needed the extra USB network adapter. I could probably sell the Pi4 for a profit now 😄