I would assume that if you use IPFire as Router, you control all network settings via your IPFire setup.
Does it matter how “intelligent” your other network equipment is?
I may of course be wrong, but when looking to extend and enhance my Wifi, I am leaning towards as stupid AP’s as possible, with no advanced system like Unifi or RouterOS, since IPFire will control them anyway. Yes, FW updates are needed regardless.
Is that reasoning correct, or does it even matter at all, since you should be able to put most AP’s in Bridge mode anyway?
I detest those “smart” things with a passion. The best IPFire setup for me is the following, IPFIre is the only router in the LAN (no double NAT) and the AP has only one job to do: convert the signal from electromagnetic air waves, to electromagnetic copper waves. That’s it.
for a family member I converted an old Asus RT-N66U router (I think it is not in production anymore), which has the possibility to install an opensource firmware and can be set very conveniently in bridge mode. Had it for years and has always been very reliable. The only complain I have is that the on/off switch broke years ago. However with a toothpick I managed to fix the problem.
Maybe you can find a similar asus model, which supports the open source firmware.
Asuswrt is the name of the firmware developed by Asus for use on all their recent routers. It was originally based on Tomato, and got extensively modified by Asus over the years as they added their own features to it. Asuswrt-Merlin is an alternative, customized version of that firmware.
I completely ignored all the features. Just set the one thing I cared, the bridge mode. Also, I disabled the 2.4 Ghz network and left only the 5 Ghz running.
maybe you could consider a completely different category of products. A range extender. As far as I know, those are quite dumb, basically already in bridge mode. A friend of mine uses one made for being outside (with POE) for his blue network with IPFire in an old APU1 machine.
A range extender still needs an existing wifi to hook up on and … extend.
I am finding getting another one of these the simplest and cheapest option since it is what I have already
and it is small enough for where I need to put it, plus PoE.
@hvacguy
I agree completely. Just keep in mind that Asus hardware has a completely different open source implementation from OpenWRT. The code-base is derived from Tomato which evolutionary speaking forked from OpenWRT a long time ago therefore I would expect the code has diverged.
yes, but for several of them it is better to use the asuswrt because the limited Broadcom chips support in openwrt, as that driver has a limited floss support. Asuswrt is a fork of Tomato and has been further forked by asus-merlin. Because they come from asus original fork, they maintain a fully functional driver.
