So two clicks to turn on wifi that I can do from anywhere in my house is easier than digging my router out of my closet to write down and type in the serial number? This was supposed to be an idea that makes OpenWRT "usable immediately with little effort". This is not that.
> How would you communicate with the router without an ethernet connection to it?
Using the Ethernet port is exactly what I'm suggesting. This is far simpler than using the serial number as the wifi password, and more secure than a universal password.
Furthermore, there are legal liabilities involved with the wifi spectrum. Different countries reserve different bands in the spectrum and have different limits on transmission power. OpenWRT would have to provide different builds for different countries, maintain and validate this list and risk making costly legal mistakes here, or if there's some lowest common denominator, then risk giving OpenWRT getting a reputation for bad wifi.
No, best to let the user take in the liability of configuring their own router. The improvements in usability are marginal and the potential costs to OpenWRT are considerable.
> And yes, a lot of the time when people are setting up a router they have the router at hand.
While I have no doubt that this is true for home-grade firewall/NAT/wifi combo boxes in general, with very few exceptions OpenWRT is not a thing you get out of the box nor a thing "normal people" install.
The Venn diagram of "people who have chosen to install an alternate firmware on their home network appliance" and "people who don't have an ethernet capable device around at basically all times" can't have a lot of overlap.
It may not be as hard as you think. Doing a little homework, flashing the router with the OpenWRT firmware, and getting a basic config up and running should take most folks an afternoon. If you already understand concepts like CIDR addressing, DNS, DHCP, and NAT then it's an hour tops.
OpenWRT is not a pain to use -- it's not all that different than the web GUI that ships with most routers.
Coincidentally, this very router's OpenWRT isn't as fast as the manufacturer's firmware because it doesn't have proper drivers for the hardware NAT, so it has to do it in software.
I addressed that - OpenWRT is a 3rd party firmware you need to reflash on your router (if you're lucky). It also doesn't install on an equipment I need.
I've never seen this features out of the box on SOHO equipment like ASUS routers, TP-Links, FritzBoxes, Apple routers and other equipment that actually ends up in peoples homes. And again, we're YEARS after the standard and there still doesn't seem to be feature parity between the two stadards on even basic home equipment.
Again, it's a download and a 'flash' in a GUI. Probably couldn't be simpler. As for reliability, my house has two of the same routers - one runs openwrt, the other runs the factory default (unfortunately it's not mine, so I can't just change it at will). Can you guess which is unreliable? It's the factory default.
This is not to mention the security implications of having a non-open source router. Never trust a third party like that. Some even try to get you to use an app.
You could also make the OpenWRT router connect trough your phone’s hotspot feature temporarily, while you set up your primary connection. Three clicks in the GUI is all that’s needed to join a wireless network for WAN connectivity.
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