Gl inet devices have open WRT support out of the box, more first class experience
Self-hosting
Hosting your own services. Preferably at home and on low-power or shared hardware.
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Was coming here to say this. GL-Inet routers are awesome for the price. I have a Slate. Friggin love it.
I'll consider it, but the Flint is a little more expensive than the Archer I found, and the Velica doesn't have enough LAN ports.
Tbh, if you’re really serious about getting customizable home infrastructure, just get (or cobble together/upcycle a thin client into) a 2-port router, a good switch (managed/unmanaged as your needs dictate), and a solid WAP.
This. My first serious network upgrade was splitting out the router/firewall, Wifi, and switching to a Ubiquiti Edgerouter Lite, 8 port Netgear managed switch, and a Ubiquiti AP Pro.
It ended up being around the price of a night hawk, but I had way better control over the firewall/NAT rules and it made future upgrades less painful as I could just target the switching vs WiFi for a change.
As a side note, nearly all wifi routers that I've come across can act as just a access point. My current setup is using the Orbi mesh wifi system to get a decent signal to my attic bedroom.
I have a Tplink Archer C7, which works great with OpenWRT. I also have a gl-inet device, which is fine, but WiFi reception is better with the C7.
If you end up buying a gl-inet device, first check if you can flash a recent mainline OpenWRT image on them. The modified OpenWRT they come with out of the box is often based on an outdated version.