I've heard good things about PC Engines, although they don't have that many ports: https://pcengines.ch/apu4d4.htm

But if you're doing this for a home network you don't really need that much bandwidth out of the home and can use the 2-port one with whatever switch you want.

I ran openwrt on a laptop in a one-armed router network configuration and it worked quite well.

I have a pcengines box as my router/gateway (with OpenBSD, works absolutely wonderfully), but I need access points as well. Especially because I cannot lay cables in this house, so my home office is relying on a wireless uplink.

Got any recommendations for access points that support wireless uplinks? My Unifi ones unfortunately tend to reboot frequently, sometimes needing manual readoption/full reset. It's bad if it happens during a meeting.

I don't think I need many bells and whistles, at this point I'm just content if it's stable.

Mikrotik wireless wire? Sub $200 wireless link. It's a pair, not an ap. Anyway - it does what it says on the tin.

Thanks, but will this work through walls? (The wooden kind you get in Californian houses, not concrete or anything.)

No sorry it does need line of sight :/

I didn't even think of it when I wrote the original reply, but if the locations share power grid wires internally you can always g.hn over that copper to get the connection through the wall.

Ah, I thought about that as well, but I hear conflicting things about what that means for ham radio. I don't have a license yet, but certainly plan to have one.

Someone else suggested Ruckus in another subthread here. If they support wireless downlinks, that may be a good option.

EDIT: If it's known that (quality) power line stuff does not cause interference, it does become a good option.

haven't noticed any interference from powerline stuff, but the link-quality is definitely hampered by interference from other stuff (ie. temporary packet loss when some electric motor starts).

i consider it somewhere in between wifi and an ethernet cable in terms of quality.

Interesting, Winbox or WebFig/CLI? I find this clunkyness to be a good thing, compared to shiny and inflexible products. I have some experience of quite a few brands and so far Mikrotik is one of the most coherent and unified experiences. WebFig and CLI are the same across devices running RouterOS. Winbox is not my bag though.

RouterOS is not perfect but it does most things without being overly complicated. It's DHCPv6 relay agent is pretty much useless and I really look forward to WireGuard in RouterOS v7, if ever released as stable :D

The one thing that winbox gives you is the ability to connect directly to a MAC address - helpful if you've borked your IP address setup.

Are you talking about the windows-based software? It's clunky.

The CLI, on the other hand, is pretty great. Everything is consistent.

No the CLI too unfortunately. While it is consistent, the editing of row numbers and the display of settings is really cumbersome. Setting up VLANs in particular is really tedious. Compared to real enterprise grade networking (Juniper/Cisco/Arista) it's dangerously unintuitive.

I've also tried automating it via Ansible with no success, has anyone had any luck with that?

the mikrotik CLI is an abomination if you're ever worked with JunOS on a juniper.

I wouldn’t go that far. There’s often leaky abstractions, sure. But at 30% (or less) of the price of the equivalent Juniper hardware, I can usually live with it

Some Mikrotik hardware can run OpenWRT.

I have an RB4011iGS+5HacQ2HnD, oddly enough made by the networking company Amazon acquired (Annapurna). In theory, the CPU is supported in the mainline kernel, but I can't find an OpenWRT release or figure out how to package a custom Linux payload for flashing.

Mikrotik support refuses to provide me the uboot config they use or guide me through this process :(

Maybe ten64 or Turris stuff:

https://www.crowdsupply.com/traverse-technologies/ten64/ https://www.turris.com/en/