FriendlyElec Nanopi R5S Mini Router OpenWRT with Three Gbps Ethernet Ports LPDDR4X 4GB RAM Based in RK3568 Soc for IOT NAS Smart Home Gateway Support Linux Ubuntu (with CNC Metal Case)

Pros: everything included - case and decently fast eMMC storage. Raspberry Pi, take note. Very stable. Arch Linux ARM aarch64 userland runs nicely on it with a little custom mkinitcpio post script to install the kernel, initramfs and device tree overlay (dtbo) to the appropriate partitions.Cons: no support in mainline Linux yet, so you have to use their kernel. Serial console is a little "interesting" to get going.I've tried countless small ARM and MIPS computers for use as a router. Every single one had stability issues, abysmal performance, or driver bugs. Not the R5S. Within a few days of getting this and starting to play with it, I knew it was going to meet my reliability and performance needs.I have 2 of them on remote sites on router duty. One is only about 30min away on a rental property. The other is 500mi away at my parents' house. My parents know nothing about tech. So when the UniFi Security Gateway I had previously sent them kicked the can, I knew that the replacement needed to be apocalypse-grade. I needed something that I could set up, drop in the mail with one page of instructions, and be 100% certain that it would come online when they plugged it in.The R5S boots up in under 30 seconds, every time, without any fuss or flakiness. I got it to run Arch Linux, so I never have to deal with a major OS version upgrade. It has enough CPU, RAM and I/O bandwidth to run things like promtail, puppet and the Prometheus node exporter so I can use the same config management and monitoring stack as the rest of my network. And it moves packets at line speed.Literally couldn't ask for more out of a micro router. Nice work NanoPi!

This router came preinstalled with a custom version of OpenWRT named FreindlyWRT. As of 12/2023, the vanilla version of OpenWRT is not available, however I found and installed a Vanilla build of OpenWRT from a github page from someone named Anaelorinski. I'd prefer a device supported by OpenWRT directly, but Attended System Upgrade that compiles custom upgrades automatically has a limit on firmware size, so if you have something large like Docker installed on here, it wouldn't work anyway.I use this device as a router behind a T-Mobile Wireless Home Internet modem. Some of the more advanced features like VPN and DynDNS are difficult to work around because of the T-Mobile service so I don't use them. I also have separate OpenWRT AP devices down the chain. I was looking for wireless stability by having a separate routing system from the wireless. This device fit the build.This router is pretty much overkill unless you plan on using Docker. And even then, some of the docker packages are hit and miss. I installed an Ad blocker on docker, but preferred the simplicity of the Luci based AdBlock, so that didn't last. I now have HomeAssistant installed, but haven't figured out why it needs 24GB in the /opt/docker/vfs/ folder... Kind of ridiculous, but it works and this router has the space to spare. I also have Mosquitto installed, but use the Luci version. HomeAssistant works, but again because of the brick wall that is TMobile Home Internet, I can't use the features that utilze port forwarding.I tried an NVME, but must have got the wrong one, this router didnt detect it. I think it requires a Gen3 ssd, so maybe I'll try again later.Overall, I like this router, it's way more capable than I'm used to. I would still prefer native OpenWRT.org support, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time.

It's basically a reskinned OpenWRT for this hardware. It does the job as a little configurable router. Has docker support if you choose.I wished it came with a power supply. Also could use a bit more "getting started" instructions. Even though I can manage around Linux just fine, I would have preferred the starting process to be smoother.

I don't write many reviews but I decided to write this one since I had such high hopes for the NanoPi R5S. I'm a network engineer and for a project I'm working on, I needed a cheap + low power device with at least 2 x 2.5GBASE-T ports and enough horsepower to layer 2 bridge at roughly line rate between the ports while also performing a very low volume packet capture on the bridge tying the ports together. I'll spare you guys the full accounting of my testing except to say that at first I could only pass a maximum of 3 Gbps over the bridge, even though the router's CPU was showing around 50% idle across all four cores. My R5S arrived with a slightly older version of FriendlyWRT so I thought maybe upgrading to the latest available version would help unlock a little more performance. Unfortunately, just the opposite happened. After the upgrade, the most traffic I could push over the bridge was about 2 Gbps and CPU utilization shot up to 100% on two cores. Talk about disappointing! Mind you, this was about as easy of a test as you can get - I was pushing 1500 byte packets and there was no routing, filtering, QoS, or NAT involved, just simply forwarding layer 2 frames from one port to the other.So why three stars when it fell well short of my expectations? Why not one or two stars? For starters, on paper the R5S is a fantastic value for the price. The CPU is reasonably performant, its RAM size and bandwidth are adequate for my needs, and the 2 x 2.5GBASE-T are on a PCIe 3.0 x1 bus (according to the schematics) so there should have been plenty of capacity there as well. The metal case is nice, the internals are laid out well, and overall it seems like a lot of effort was put into making these units. The fact that performance actually became worse after upgrading FriendlyWRT to the latest version is super discouraging but hopefully that will improve as time goes on.In closing, I don't recommend this device for anyone who needs to push line rate traffic through its ports but if your bandwidth needs are simpler, this is a decent little box. It would probably do great as a router + firewall combo for someone who has light QoS needs and maybe a 1 Gbps Internet connection or lower.