ELi5: Why is Openwrt better than my regular home router?
Posted by zandubalm123@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 12 comments
I have heard Openwrt being discussed everywhere. But what are the benefits that it offers over the proprietary market available routers? I know about opensource being one factor. But what else?
juanjux@reddit
I'm using Tomato instead of OpenWRT but for me the best things are:
Torrent client in the router so I can download things to the attached usb drive without leaving my home computer on all day (energy is expensive in my country). I can also control it from work with a web interface.
Tor client at the router level
Auto update dynamic dns services so my router and home network machines are always available with the same hostname.
mikeymop@reddit
How does router level tor affect your speeds?
boomertsfx@reddit
isn't Tor super-slow to begin with? So I would assume a low-powered router would be perfect for it.
Program_Filesx86@reddit
Tor and Torrents are very different things
boomertsfx@reddit
You don’t say! Thanks for the timely reply
Lifeissometimesgood@reddit
Lol, this has me cracking up in 2026. I’m learning about openwrt and realized this is ten years old.
Pyryara@reddit
Honestly? If your router is working fine and stable, and you don't want any of the additional features offered by OpenWRT, you don't need it.
But there are some really, really neat things you can configure when you really dig into it, and fiddling with the bits and seeing how much you can fit into the e.g. 16MB flash memory is amazing. For instance you can connect an external hard disk via USB and make it download torrents to it, and make this HDD accessible for your whole network. Or an OpenVPN server so that you can access your internal network even when you're outside the house, or to tunnel all traffic through your home internet connection when you're connected to an unsafe public wifi.
The most complicated bit I did was setting up some own routing rules using BGP, connecting to a friend's darknet, and making it available to the whole LAN. Filesharing the GNU/Linux way. ;)
deleted_by_reddit@reddit
OpenWrt is not GNU/Linux. It does not have any GNU userspace and doesn't even use the GNU C library.
ric2b@reddit
So why do I see glibc on the sources of openwrt?
https://sources.openwrt.org/
tyami94@reddit
You can build it with glibc, but all the binaries they ship only link to musl.
ThirdEyeSuspect@reddit
I appreciate the thread. It's been good use 8 years later. Now, I have a question for you, OP: If you've utilized what you know about OpenWrt, how has your experience been, and what have you accomplished with this? I'd love to know your input on this.
Nuts64@reddit
For me the absolute clincher for openwrt is SQM. I work from home with kids that online game and smart queue management means real-time networh response is truly stable. Response is within a couple of milliseconds between a no load and fully loaded network. All on a router costing a fraction of the cost of one running the factory firmware with similar features.