Good discussion so far! I didn't expect that much response in this short time :)
And I noticed that the page has been updated in the meantime. Cool! I like fast response :)
stangri wrote:I can suggest some categories instead of the current separation by chipset/CPU:
1. Portable/Travel Router
2. Wireless Router
3. Wired Router
I believe in each category you can easily set the minimal criteria:
1. Flash/RAM (set the requirement per price tier).
2. WiFi support (802.11ac vs 802.11n, WiFi bandwidth).
3. CPU (yeah, that's tricky I know, but that's why the gurus can make the call).
4. Global/regional availability.
5. Ease of unlock/flashing OpenWrt.
6. Additional points for additional features (like the modes slider on travel routers, USB3 vs USB2, etc).
If there're 4-5 routers in each category falling into different price tiers, that'd be great.
Filtering the currently available ToH data is easy for
- Devicetype
- RAM
- Flash
- CPU
- Availability
- Wifi
In fact, we already have a datatables which provide this (more or less):
https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_available_864
https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_ … ilable_864 (more detailed)
The filters of these datatables can easily be set to show only AR9x / QCA9x + MT720, or whatever we think is recommended. Tell me what you want, I'll create the datatables accordingly (or create them yourselves if you want, but the filtering can sometimes be tricky).
AR934X are preferred due to their performance (MIPS 74Kc) -> Is this a valid / useful criteria for automatically created recommendations?
Filtering is currently not possible for above #5 + #6, and also price.
Price is very problematic, because it is even more fluctuating than availability. It's nearly impossible to keep this up to date in our ToH as selection criteria.
hnyman wrote:The ability to recover from failed flash / problematic firmware via a built-in recovery procedure.
We currently do not have this characteristic in the ToH, but sounds good.
I love my DIR-505's for their Emergency Flashing mode: Hold reset while plugging it in, flash firmware, be happy :)
My concern would be unwanted/malicious edits of the page, so I suggest you pick a few volunteers and lock the edits to yourself and them. And you can get expert/user opinions here in the forums. Maybe a special/pinned thread in general discussion will do?
Ideally, all these special efforts (editing only for selected people) would not be necessary.
Ideally, the generation of the "Recommended Hardware" tables would be completely automatic, without any manual editing. -> Define filter criteria only once, and the updating of the datatables happens automatically when the dataentries are updated.
Prerequisite for this: Datafields must be present in the dataentries that allow that filtering.
As written above, filtering for #5 + #6 + ability to recover from failed flash is currently not possible: The datafields do not exist yet. Emphasis on yet.
How could we implement these in the dataentries?
Characteristic: Ease of unlock/flashing OpenWrt
Fieldname: ?
Valid values: ?
Note: "Ease" of $something is highly depending on the one doing that $action. Can we change this characteristic to something more objective?
Characteristic: ability to recover from failed flash
Characteristic: built-in recovery procedure
Fieldname: OEM recovery mode
Valid values: Yes, No, <more values?>
Characteristic: FW flashing method
Fieldname: Flashmethods
Valid values: Serial, TFTP, OEM WebUI, <more values?>
Borromini wrote:While you raise valid questions, a cursory reading of that page does offer explanations as to why the hardware in question is recommended, no?
Not clear enough and too long for my taste.
Imagine you want to add or remove a device, and prior to that, quickly check if yes or no.
A bullet list or table listing the criteria would certainly speed up this checking process by making the criteria transparent to everyone, and besides of that, enable automatical creation of lists according to those criteria. As a co-admin of this wiki I can tell you: Everything that's automatical and does not require manual maintenance is GOOD. ;-)