OpenWrt is a Linux-based OS designed by network professionals and others who care about the performance of their network. With OpenWrt, you can personalize your network settings. According to OpenWrt official site, using OpenWrt has many outstanding benefits, including,
- Performance & stability: OpenWrt incorporates many algorithms from recent research that perform far better than vendor-supplied firmware.
- Security: OpenWrt is an open source software. Many developers from all over the world review the code before it's released.
- Extensibility: While vendor firmware for a router ships with a fixed set of capabilities, OpenWrt provides more than 27000 packages ready to be browsed and installed in an app store-like environment to get the most out of your hardware.
- Community support: The vibrant and passionate community of developers, volunteers, and other long-time OpenWrt users are always available to help solve an issue.
- Research platform: Many teams who are doing cutting-edge research into networking topics use OpenWrt as a stable platform for their work.
- Configuration: Because OpenWrt is a true Linux-based system, you have full control over all functions of your router/device.
GL.iNet's firmware is built based on OpenWrt and we allow users to explore more advanced OpenWrt features on the LuCi interface. We focus on enhancing OpenWrt performance across all our router models. We regularly upgrade the firmware ourselves and collaborate directly with key OpenWrt developers. Our aim is to expand the reach of the OpenWrt community, enabling more users to experience its benefits.
User @DBTechYT can give you a brief introduction on how OpenWrt works on our popular AX travel router Beryl (GL-MT3000) via his video:
OpenWrt also supports package management, which allows you to quickly and easily install or remove various software packages. We called them "plug-ins" on our web interface, and you can easily install and uninstall them on GL.iNet routers. Users with technical background can join the OpenWrt community and browser their tutorials.
However, without technical knowledges, you can still enjoy a lot of awesome features pre-installed in most of our routers, such as OpenVPN client and server, WireGuard client and server, Adguard Home, etc.