|
I like the Pi, but am leaning away from it for routers. I haven't tried it for a router, so the following is just my initial impression, take with a grain of salt... The Pi is around a closed hardware SoC, you can't pick&choose devices (like people often do when they can), devices are limited (e.g., 1 Ethernet), RAM is limited, devices might be on funny buses internally (e.g., on internal USB), microSD cards are not very reliable. I don't know whether there's as solid a router software setup for the Pi as OpenWrt on a well-supported SOHO router. I don't know how well the built-in WiFi in the Pi 3 can be made to work as an AP, and I think it's only one radio. Picking&choosing a WiFi device(s) that you plug in via USB gives you more options. You might need a powered USB hub, depending on how much total draw you've got on USB, and whether you've hacked your Pi board for USB power limit. There used to be another consideration with the Pi, which is that I'd end up having to plug a bunch of things into it, including a powered USB hub, somewhat fragile, and I ended up putting everything into an electronics project box, and running just a power cable on a strain relief out. You also used to have to consult a list of known-good wallwarts and microSD cards, to reduce risk of flakiness, but I think that's improved. By comparison, a WNDR3700v2 with OpenWrt was an off-the-shelf appliance box, and could do more than the Pi, router-wise. There are SBCs with better specs for routing. Where the SBC (and SoC) is designed could be a factor. Separate from SBCs, of course there's amd64 PC hardware on a Mini-ITX or MicroATX board, with PCIe slots for your choice of NICs, and gigabytes of RAM (though AES-NI is in the minority of fanless-capable options I've found). All these boards are effectively unauditable, of course. (I'm not criticizing the Pi in general. I've used older Pis successfully, and currently use a Pi 3B+ with a 64-bit kernel as a builder&programmer&powersupply for PostmarketOS devices. I'm also thinking of putting a Pi into/onto the chassis of my laser printer, to provide a CUPS IPPS server that prints to USB, rather than try to keep firewalled in the router all the things this printer seems to want to do if you give it network access.) |