Banana Pi BPI-R3 Mini Wi-Fi 6 Open Source OpenWRT Router Board, Wireless Dual-Band Mini WiFi Router, MediaTek MT7986 (Filogic 830) CPU, Support 5X GbE and 2X 2.5GbE SFP for NAS Smart Home Gateway

This is an awesome little router, SBC, or development board. However, a clear understanding of Linux is required.The board comes with an old and unofficial version of OpenWRT. And installing the latest vanilla version requires ssh and dd.It's a small but mighty and fast board if you know what you are doing. So I'll recommend it, but only if you are a penguin.

LAN port fried out of no where and stopped working.

Are you a nerd? Do you love to tinker? Well, you have to be for this project. I had an old router I was using for a long time that was pretty poor-performance, and I got a huge boost with it by flashing it with OpenWRT. I'm a business technology instructor, and an overall power user, so this is right up my alley.This is not a simple plug it in and turn it on situation. You will need to install OpenWRT, which is not a simple process. I would not recommend it to beginners, but a beginner might get a lot out of the experience if they're strongly interested. This is a degree of magnitude more difficult than flashing a Raspberry Pi with an emulator or pre-set configuration. There is little documentation to go with this, but they have a great forum. You will probably browse the forum for information for awhile, and don't be shy to post and get some help. YouTube can also be a great resource.Once running, purely as a router, this is an excellent product. Small footprint, great wifi range, and highly configurable. The computer itself has a lot of input/output for its size. It's incredibly useful. No matter your project goal: better home coverage, your own DNS server to block ads, network attached and/or media servers, set up a torrent box, extend wifi points, create a custom firewall - or heck, all of the above. This thing can do it. It's worth the effort if you're a networking nerd. You're going to get high-performance for a reasonable cost if you're spendthrift and computer savvy. If you're not savvy and just want a good router, you should probably pay more and save yourself the headache.It's not for everyone, but it's great. Everything you need is in the box or on the board. Great kit! And it offers excellent performance if you're willing to work to get it there.

Most routers that I've used come locked down with proprietary firmware. This router, however, is completely open and comes with OpenWRT pre-installed. I had to do some digging online to find a guide to assembling it. It's not difficult to assemble, but I wanted to ensure I was assembling it correctly. Starting up this router was as easy as assembling the kit and then plugging it in. The wiki includes some base information that I needed to log on. Once I had this information, I was able to navigate to the OpenWRT site and change my configuration. The router is fast. I ran some speed tests and was getting 500 Mbps over WiFi.In addition to being a fast open router, this kit has a couple of m2 expansion ports. This allows for the possibility to connect to cell networks. The case includes three additional holes for antennas for the add on. Given the advance capabilities and open nature, I have found this to be an excellent router for my lab.