I looked at the specs. It's a BananaPi R3 mini with stuff added that nobody will ever use. I can't really find a use for such a device, unless you're the maintainer for some kernel driver used on that board.
Compared to an ordinary router:
1) There's a bit more powerful CPU, barely enough for TOR or wireguard VPN. Doesn't say anything about hardware crypto.
2) There's 1 GB RAM, way too much for basic routing, barely enough for TOR, barely enough to run a webserver, but not both.
3) There's NVME storage as an option, but NVME is too small, too expensive, and MUCH too fast for a NAS with that kind of networking, and there's no USB3 or eSATA to connect external storage such as a large HDD or a DAS.
4) I assume that the wifi chip (only one?) is soldered. If the driver ever becomes unmaintained, like it happend with mwlwifi, you throw the router into the garbage.
5) It doesn't even have a network switch.
6) They plan to load it with various features (serial, USB debug, JTAG (ffs! why??)) that only devs will ever use, and only until they get it booting. No use for all that once it boots reliably.
7) Modbus? Who uses that!? I want mPCIe, GPIOs, I2c, SPI, serial (other than the debug port), RS485, you know... actually useful stuff!
8) And there's RTC on a device that 99.9999% of users will connect to the internet. Why? For the rare situations when it boots after a power failure before the ISP network is up? If it had SPI/I2c out, there are Raspberry Pi RTC modules that could be added for $1.
9) The price: 100$ is waaaay to much for something that's only a micro-router. GL-MT3000 is in the same price category and has USB3.
My ideal router would have:
- 2 GHz 4 core armv8 CPU, or at least 2 core armv7+vfpv3
3: As a consumer, NVME drives are an off the shelf easy to source item. All of the storage cases you specify are better served by a 'full server', even if that is a desktop device running 'x86_64' OpenWRT.
8: RTC is SURPRISINGLY very important for E.G. Initial TLS / HTTPS connections and bootstrapping secure connections. It's also a serious quality of life aspect that doesn't cost that much to add. Surely you've seen the hell caused by Microsoft's attempts to fix this problem wreaking havoc with connection failures.
5: I suspect that was more to fit the form factor of an existing off the shelf case, and dangling a dumb-switch off the internal port is a reasonable option. This is annoying but I understand the reasons and tradeoffs.
I see using this device as a router for E.G. grandma's / friend / other family. Where someone tech literate buys the thing that does 99.9% of the desired work for a lot less headache and that you know will see updates because it's supported from day 0 by OpenWRT / the community.
Wifi 6E, with the upper band frequencies, might be enough to convince me to get it too.
3: True. x86 would be better, but that doesn't mean that NVME is of any use on a router like that. Like I said: it's too fast and too expensive at any size compared to alternatives. And not easy removable.
8: I'm not aware of any problems. Why would TLS and HTTPS not work? AFAIK, when NTP is not yet up, OpenWrt sets system time to the timestamp of the most recent saved file. That is good enough not to run into "certificate not yet valid" situations. And what HTTPS and TLS are you talking about? DNS over <something> won't work until WAN is up. When WAN is up, NTP is up too.
5: I don't. What good is a slow cheap router if I need another device next to it? Might as well put an old laptop/desktop as router instead.
Lots of routers are supported by OpenWrt, until they aren't. I already mentioned mwlwifi - they were the best routers, most recommended, until that driver was abandoned. Soldered wifi from another manufacturer won't change the situation. Works today; crashes tomorrow.
Compared to an ordinary router:
1) There's a bit more powerful CPU, barely enough for TOR or wireguard VPN. Doesn't say anything about hardware crypto.
2) There's 1 GB RAM, way too much for basic routing, barely enough for TOR, barely enough to run a webserver, but not both.
3) There's NVME storage as an option, but NVME is too small, too expensive, and MUCH too fast for a NAS with that kind of networking, and there's no USB3 or eSATA to connect external storage such as a large HDD or a DAS.
4) I assume that the wifi chip (only one?) is soldered. If the driver ever becomes unmaintained, like it happend with mwlwifi, you throw the router into the garbage.
5) It doesn't even have a network switch.
6) They plan to load it with various features (serial, USB debug, JTAG (ffs! why??)) that only devs will ever use, and only until they get it booting. No use for all that once it boots reliably.
7) Modbus? Who uses that!? I want mPCIe, GPIOs, I2c, SPI, serial (other than the debug port), RS485, you know... actually useful stuff!
8) And there's RTC on a device that 99.9999% of users will connect to the internet. Why? For the rare situations when it boots after a power failure before the ISP network is up? If it had SPI/I2c out, there are Raspberry Pi RTC modules that could be added for $1.
9) The price: 100$ is waaaay to much for something that's only a micro-router. GL-MT3000 is in the same price category and has USB3.
My ideal router would have:
- 2 GHz 4 core armv8 CPU, or at least 2 core armv7+vfpv3
- working frequency scaling and idle
- hardware crypto (wireguard, openvpn, TOR), hardware CRC32 (for btfs), hardware XOR (for MD RAID)
- RAM as SODIMM memory modules (even better if sold without them - recycle my own, upgrade any time)
- at least 3 mPCIe slots for wifi 2.4G, 5G, and WWAN modem (even better if sold without them - recycle my own, upgrade any time)
- 8 port switch with management
- WAN port separate from the switch
- eSATA with port multiplier support
- USB3 with UAS support
- GPIO identical to RPi, maybe one more serial port
- mounting holes that fit an ordinary GPU cooler
- temperature sensor on a wire
- PWM LEDs
- no GPU, no HDMI, no other video outputs
Unfortunately, no such device exists.