What about hardware? (was: The EFF launches a router project)

The basic mips-based atheros chipset this stuff runs on has been continually updated (4 revisions over the last 6 years) and is in 100s of products currently sold. While I have CeroWrt running on several of these newer platforms, none have been compelling enough to switch to using, although several buffalo and TP-link products come close. I agree with another poster here that it looks like switching to arm is sanest as none of the mips boxes I've tried can drive 802.11ac fast enough.

OpenWrt itself runs on a lot of more current platforms than the wndr3800! - Go ahead, use those! but as CeroWrt has a rather large installed base of wndr3800s I have mostly been trying to make everything stable on that... and once that is stable... getting some of the science done on evaluating new queuing mechanisms... papers written, data sets sorted through, etc, etc.

and then porting over to a newer platform in the fall and starting new work (make-wifi-fast) on x86.

I agree that now that everything else is looking good (in openwrt and cero, anyway), that the stack is basically solid - that it would be best to try to do some sort of open source hardware for the next generation, in collaboration with the many other research oriented projects out there like project bismark, homenet, homewrt, openwireless, commotion wireless, dozens, nay hundreds of others, but it seems difficult even then - even if we could all co-operate on a RFP and buy to get to a large enough and cost-effective enough volume to be worth doing more engineering up front.

... and that requires effort and money up front that we do not have, and while we could perhaps raise enough via kickstarter it has been hard enough to express the advantages of a bufferbloat-free, blob-free, highly secure and flexible router during the project, much less beforehand. Despite the successes of projects like the rasberry pi and parallella, there would need to be some feasible long term gain and penetration into markets that linksys, buffalo, tp-link currently dominate, on razor thin margins...

Generally people only care about their home routers when they don't work. I have certainly watched smaller router-oriented ideas go by on kickstarter with something like jealousy...

I am extremely happy with where openwrt barrier breaker stands today, and I hope that the bigger manufacturers and ISPs decide to switch to it or something derived from it, on their next generations of hardware. Nothing does ipv6 as well as openwrt now does in particular, and beating bufferbloat so thoroughly has been quite satisfying.