Replacing router with OpenWRT on Proxmox

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I will definitely check this out. Sounds really promising from the quick glimpse and most importantly, adorable.

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Adorable? How is that?

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Back in the day I ran a pfsense VM on ESXi before broadcom bought them. I found it easier to just purchase a cheap Unifi AP and spin up a VM for the Unifi controller app (I'm assuming you can still run that on your own hardware, its been a few years). I think I got a UAP 6 lite or something like that. If I recall it was about $130 CAD with the PoE injector.

Techincally its not ideal to run your firewall on the same device as other things, but I never had any issues.

Also, does the mini PC have multiple NICs? You will have a bad time if it does not.

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If you're going to dive in to openwrt from google wifi you should probably start with ready made hardware.

https://forum.openwrt.org/t/best-newcomer-routers-2024/189050

Please keep in mind that to duplicate mesh functionality it's going to take a significant effort and you need to make sure the hardware you buy is compatible with 802.11s. Open WRT forums have hardware compatibility rundowns of known working routers so it's not too difficult to find them.

This is a much bigger uphill battle rolling your own hardware unless you just plan to buy a separate access point or two for hardware and skip the mesh functionality.

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It can be used as a VPN router, any VM that needs a VPN can be connected to a network bridge that is forward through the VPN. This could also be done on the primary router and a VLAN.

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For just an AP, I've used a number of the GL-AR300 and they've been fine as AP and repeaters, but only 2.4 GHz. I have no interference issues where I am so that's fine for me, but if you're somewhere populated, YMMV.

They also have the full firewall/router set on them, but I generally don't use them for that.

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These days almost all hardware is compatible with 802.11s

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If you plan to do it on openwrt I would make sure before you buy. Especially if you're trying to save on the mesh nodes and not buy a fully outfitted router for each node.

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I've never virtualized OpenWRT, but with hardware passthrough I don't see why it shouldn't work.

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I'm gonna LOL the absolute fucking fuck out of this.

Try it. You have no understanding at a minimum of how it works not only at a hardware level, but at a virtualized level.

I'm absolutely sure you're going to be the brilliant mind who fixes the problem though. See you next Tuesday!

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If thats what your needs are. But proxmox has nothing to do with the hardware being better.

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Yeah start with pass through, without that no physical hardware will show up inside the VM

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If you do the PCI passthrough Wifi adapter to openwrt, look for name of adaptor and search okpg for in kernel driver for that. Maybe you will face with no driver support, try installing openwrt pre-relase for up to date driver support, or driver only support client mode, Intel Wifi.
You can get cheap USB Wifi adapter from Aliexpress that openwrt support but mostly have only one radio so your access point will have one 5Mhz or 2.4Mhz not both at the same time. you can try two adaptor to get both.
For supported Wifi adapter and more information https://github.com/morrownr/USB-WiFi?tab=readme-ov-file

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Compared to other embedded devices, ease of installation, less chance of driver quirks and much higher performance (especially relevant if you're running a VPN on the same device).

Compared to other x86 software based routers, a UI that is familiar, and the Linux kernel which generally means it gets new features quicker than its BSD based counterparts.

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I does though since there is the added overhead.

You want hardware that is designed for networking. Networking pulls the CPU away from other things. It might be fine if you only ran a router in Proxmox but that's about it.

Also, good wireless hardware is needed for any decent speeds. You want good antennas connected to hardware that has MU-MIMO. It is also important to pay attention to the Wireless version. (You want at least WiFi 5 if not 6)

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True, modern hardware can easily route 10gbps or more though so for most of us that won't be an issue.

I agree on the external AP, that is needed.

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you can simply use passthrough. openwrt acts like any other minimal linux distro.

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id use a pci express or better card with AP mode.

i use a similar setup than what you want and it works well, you just want to make sure you use passthrough for the wireless and wired cards, and use the correct wifi card.

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Read the post

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whoops i meant to respond to another comment

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Replacing router with OpenWRT on Proxmox