5 features my router has with OpenWRT that I thought were impossible

Routers are tiny computers. They come with their own RAM, CPU, storage, and a barebones operating system glued together by whatever software the manufacturer ships. The problem is that most of that hardware goes to waste. You have a perfectly capable little machine on your shelf, but the stock firmware keeps it muzzled.

Router companies are also terrible at maintaining their hardware. It’s painfully common for a router to become “irrelevant” after a year. But these devices deserve more. With OpenWRT, you can actually give them more. Not long ago, I installed OpenWRT on my old router. It’s been a while since then, and here I am again trying to convince you to give it a shot — except this time, I’m coming with a pile of real examples.

Run a network-wide VPN

One tunnel for every device (even the weird ones)

I use a VPN at all times. A network-wide VPN was one of my biggest motivations to buy a new, expensive VPN. But then, I found out about OpenWRT. My VPN provider has apps for almost every platform I use — but that only solves half the problem. What about the devices that can’t run apps at all?

For example, I have a smart clock running some half-baked version of Android. It’s tied to my Google Home. How exactly am I supposed to install a VPN on that thing? My smart TV is already choking from all the bloat and ads; running a VPN app in the background would only make it more miserable.

I have nine devices that connect to the internet, and I need a VPN on all nine. Does that mean running a VPN client nine separate times? Absolutely not. Instead, I run the VPN once — at the source.

Network-wide VPNs aren’t a novelty anymore. What is a novelty is a router that supports basically every protocol under the sun. I use WireGuard and Xray. A $700 high-end router (like the Asus ROG Rupture) could probably handle WireGuard, but I still haven’t seen a commercial router that supports Xray.

Wi-Fi Bands

Quad-band Wi-Fi 7 (2.4GHz, 5GHz-1, 5GHz-2, 6GHz)

Ethernet Ports

1×10G WAN/LAN, 2×10G LAN, 4×2.5G LAN

The ASUS ROG Rapture GT-BE98 Pro is a monstrous quad-band Wi-Fi 7 gaming router built for extreme throughput, heavy multi-device loads, and multi-gig networks. It delivers advanced features like Multi-Link Operation, 320MHz channels, AiProtection Pro security, and VPN Fusion for OpenVPN and WireGuard — though notably, it does not support the Xray VPN protocol.

My cheap $40 Linksys running OpenWRT can (I bought it used). Right now, I have Xray set up using the Passwall plugin. Installing it is as simple as any Linux package. Once installed, a new tab shows up in the GUI and I can tweak it however I want. I’ve even created custom firewall rules so one Wi-Fi interface uses the VPN while another completely bypasses it. Speaking of interfaces…

Create as many Wi-Fi networks as you want

Not really as many as you want but plenty

With the stock firmware, my router gave me two Wi-Fi networks: one 5GHz and one 2.4GHz. My router has two antennas, so two SSIDs was fair enough.

OpenWRT doesn’t care. With OpenWRT, I can create far more wireless interfaces than the default software ever exposes. Why would anyone want six SSIDs? I have no explanation, and I don’t want to explore the psychology behind it. But the point is: you can.

Right now, I’m running four SSIDs — two per band, one set routed through the VPN and one not. It works perfectly. There is a performance overhead, and that’s probably why manufacturers stop at two. Each SSID adds a bit of load, and although your router becomes a beautifully capable Linux machine with OpenWRT, the CPU is still tiny. Is running a dozen SSIDs wise? Probably not. But you can. And that’s the point.

It won’t transcode 4K, but it’ll stream your library just fine

This one isn’t brand-new in theory, but it’s incredibly convenient in practice. No NAS. No dedicated media server. No custom scripts. No port-forward nightmares. If your router has a USB port and runs OpenWRT, you can spin up a media server right there.

I tried it with Samba and had it running quickly. I plugged the external drive into the router, pointed Kodi to the network share, and I could immediately watch everything. Frankly, I moved away from Kodi when I discovered Jellyfin. Jellyfin works so well that despite OpenWRT supporting Samba and much more, I abandoned the router-based media setup. The only downside is that if my computer goes to sleep, the media server goes down with it.

The real issue with using your router as a media server is raw power. Your router becomes the bottleneck. Mine is not exactly a powerhouse, so it struggled. Yours might do better — but even then, your Windows machine is almost certainly faster.

Wi-Fi Bands

Tri-Band (2.4 GHz + 5 GHz + 5 GHz)

Ethernet Ports

4 × Gigabit LAN + 1 × Gigabit WAN

The Linksys EA8300 Max-Stream AC2200 is a tri-band Wi-Fi 5 router designed to deliver fast, stable wireless performance across multiple devices. Powered by a quad-core Qualcomm processor with 256 MB of RAM, it offers combined speeds of up to 2.2 Gbps across one 2.4 GHz and two 5 GHz bands. But what matters the most is that you can flash OpenWRT on this bad boy.

Set up multi-WAN load balancing

Not really bonding, but convincing enough

This is another cost-saving gem from OpenWRT. Instead of buying a separate 4G/5G modem, I can turn my router into one using a dusty old Android phone. My router has a USB port. I plug in the phone, enable USB tethering, and suddenly I have 5G injected straight into my home network. Well… not so suddenly. You do need driver packages first. Install them with:

opkg install kmod-usb-net-rndis kmod-usb-net-ipheth usb-modeswitch kmod-usb-net-cdc-ether

This gives OpenWRT the ability to treat your phone as a network interface. If all you want is USB tethering, you’re done. But if you want to combine your home internet and mobile data in practice, you can go further. To go further, you install mwan3 (Multi-WAN Manager 3). It lets you load balance across multiple interfaces however you want. You could merge the two networks by setting equal weights, or set all sorts of rules for different devices. For example, you can route your smart TV through 5G while keeping your gaming PC on your wired connection for better latency.

Host a website on your router

It’s Linux, after all

Yes, your router can host a website. And this one is a perfect example of something even expensive commercial routers simply won’t let you do. In my screenshot above, I’m running a small webpage directly on my router. It’s just static HTML under 70 lines, but you get the point.

OpenWRT already runs uHTTPd for the LuCI interface, so hosting your own site requires minimal setup. You create a second instance, assign it a different port (mine is on :81), upload your files, and that’s it. If I wanted to expose it to the internet and make my router a public web server, I technically could. I obviously won’t — but I could.

So? Did I win you over to the OpenWRT side? I’m not a networking guru by any stretch; I’m a beginner. But I enjoy tinkering with the hardware I have, and OpenWRT lets me do exactly that — and actually get something useful out of it.