Did you know that your router at home isn’t running to its full potential, in fact it has massive potential under the hood but it is stuck in valet mode (the mode you put a Tesla into when you don’t want someone to drive it at full speed). With the exception of enterprise networking hardware, most router manufactures don’t put a huge effort into the software they put on their hardware because a lot would subscribe to the “if it ain’t broke why fix it” mentality. This has worked well for people who require the basics and are happy with average performance of their home networks but the landscape has changed and we now demand more from our devices. So why aren’t we getting what we paid for?
Most brands of consumer WiFi equipment work off the same old software they have been using for years with minor updates as new equipment comes out but they often do the bare minimum to get the new equipment running because they don’t want to invest in software when they make money selling hardware. A lot of the firmware (this is the software that runs on the hardware) is basic and bloated from many generations of small incremental updates and this is slowing you down. Years ago routers were very basic with very little computing power but we now have routers that have quad-core, hexa-core and sometimes even octa-core processors so they have massive headroom to be able to run additional features but we still only see them do the basic fundamentals.
Another sad reality is there are so many more features that your router could do but they decide it isn’t worth installing on your device for some reason. Things like parental control, ad blocking, custom VLANs & VPNs are all features a consumer WiFi router can easily handle but they just aren’t available on the device.
If you do want to ditch the old bloatware and install a more regularly updated firmware that has over 3000 additional features available to it unfortunately you need to be quite computer savvy or at the very least have a few hours of time up your sleeve too learn how to install OpenWRT or one of the many other 3rd party firmware packages. One sad fact about upgrading to these 3rd party packages is manufacturers say that it will void the warranty on your router. Admittedly there is a very slim chance you could end up “bricking” your router if there is a failure during install and this is one of the main reasons why many people are reluctant to run the risk on a new device that is still under a warranty. But once the firmware is installed correctly it can’t actually do any damage to the device so it is a shame that manufacturers are so strict on this warranty coverage.
So why don’t they have these third party packages installed on the devices if they are so good? Well they sort of do already use it, in fact most brands have an old outdated version of one of these packages that they have shaped to their likings over the years. They have modified the user interface to their likings and reduced and removed a lot of the advanced features because the majority of users don’t use these advanced features. But times are changing and we are now demanding more from our devices. For example I don’t want my IoT (Internet of Things) devices on my home LAN (Local Area Network) because I can’t trust a random $20 WiFi smart light to not be a security risk to the rest of my network. Instead I want a separate VLAN (Virtual Local Area Network) for these devices to connect to where they have access to the internet but they can’t see my media server that holds all my documents and family photos. This is why a lot of IT experts prefer to run commercial equipment at home or install 3rd party firmware.
So would I recommend the average Joe to install a package like OpenWRT onto their router? No, no I would not, unless you are IT savvy it would be a bad idea. These packages can be easy enough to install but they aren’t the easiest to use once you are inside of them and you can easily get lost inside the navigation menus plus there is no mobile app. Also if your router is still under warranty you want the ability to take it back and get a replacement if something does go wrong.
If only there was an outfit out there who was going to make this simple and user friendly ;)
