Libre firmware for a router that has stable, secure wireless connection, at least 4 ethernet ports and doesn’t cost a fortune. Only real features I’m looking for is guest wifi area and port forwarding. I want the firmware to be as free as possible. Please recommend hardware and firmware. Currently looking at getting a R6400 with fresh tomato.
I’m just going to say I’m in love with VyOS. Not GUI-friendly, but hits the sweet spot of power/ease of use for me. Sadly, there are only x86 builds.
Sadly there’s no fully libre hardware I’m aware of.
Personally I’m using the Turris Omnia which uses fully libre software except the driver for the 802.11ac card, which you can remove if you don’t trust it.
If you’re looking for complete libre routers (open hardware and opensource software) and find something, I’d be happy to know about that, even if I’m pretty happy with the Omnia.
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For free router firmware, there is libreCMC.
The router I use has only two ethernet ports - one to the cable-modem, and one for use by computers. It is the Wireless-N Mini VPN Router (ThinkPenguin).
I use an older version of this router.
libreCMC’s website has a list of supported hardware.
Those devices are running libre software, but they’re also heavily outdated and sometimes not supported anymore through their respective manufacturer. So they might (!) be far less secure than up-to-date devices like the Omnia.
I have an apu2 with 4x NIC & WLAN running openwrt with coreboot.
https://www.pcengines.ch/apu4d4.htm
https://openwrt.org/
Openwrt is a linux distribution made for routing/firewall. For each device I have an own interface (WAN, LANx, WLANx) with a minimum set of permissions.
I was running opnsense on the device before but the Wifi strength/throughput was bad. With openwrt I can reach up to 60 MB/s.
Very happy with this little thing!
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I can recommend these devices as well, but I’m not sure if they’re blobless, so you have to check yourself if the firmware loads proprietary firmware bits
I participated in the crowdfunding of the Traverse Ten64: https://www.crowdsupply.com/traverse-technologies/ten64 (didn’t receive it yet though).
It does not meet the spec of the OP but it can be extended with mini pcie wifi card.
I assume that one could purchase the same WiFi mini pcie card as the one delivered with the Librem laptops and use it to build a blobless router / access point.
For the rest, this Ten64 board seems to be blobless and the vendor is also working on upstreaming the board support to mainline kernel.
In term of UI, one can run OpenWRT on this board (using their image until kernel support is upstreamed), same for Debian and few other images
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ProtectCLI has CoreBoot-based, air-cooled, multiple LAN devices that are tailor-made for being routers. The devices run Linux, BSD and Windows; something for everyone.
I don’t know if they have been completely de-blobbed.
HTH
(No, I don’t work for ProtectCLI. I have several of their devices and I am very pleased with them.)
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