OpenWrt Community Approves Development of Advanced Router Project OpenWrt Two

In March 2025, the OpenWrt community approved the initiation of a project for an open router named OpenWrt Two. This model will represent a more advanced and feature-rich version compared to Project One.

OpenWrt Two will encompass all the functionalities of One but with the following enhancements:

— MediaTek MT7988 SoC (as opposed to the MT7981B in One);
— 10G SFP port;
— Copper 5G port;
— Four 2.5G copper ports (whereas One has two Ethernet ports: 2.5 GbE + 1 GbE);
— 1-2 copper 1G ports;
— Tri-band Wi-Fi 7 (compared to Wi-Fi 6 in One, which includes 2×2 2.4 GHz + 3×3/2×2 + DFS 5 GHz).

GL.iNet will manufacture Two, and we are exploring distribution options across the U.S. and EU.

The anticipated price for Two is around $250, with a portion of the proceeds again being donated to the project. The device is expected to be available by late 2025.

At the end of the previous year, the official release version of the OpenWrt One router, developed by the OpenWrt and Banana Pi communities, became available for public sale (board only, device in a case).

The OpenWrt community is working on designing the device with open schematics and software components). This is a venture aimed at experimenters, network enthusiasts, and fans of electronics and open-source software.

The underlying architecture of OpenWrt One is similar to that of the Banana Pi R4 boards, which come with open firmware (excluding the wireless chip firmware), support U-Boot, and are integrated into the Linux kernel. The router operates on the MediaTek MT7981B SoC (Filogic 820) featuring a dual-core Cortex-A53 CPU running at 1.3 GHz, along with a MediaTek MT7976C wireless chip (Wi-Fi 6, 2×2 2.4 GHz + 3×3/2×2 + DFS 5 GHz). It is equipped with 1 GB of DDR4 RAM, 256 MB of SPI NAND Flash, and 16 MB of SPI NOR Flash.

The OpenWrt One router includes two Ethernet ports (2.5 GbE + 1 GbE), a USB 2.0 Type-A host, a USB-C (Holtek HT42B534-2 UART with a USB converter, console support, and CDC-ACM), a 10-pin JTAG port, and a mikroBUS expansion slot. For adding extra storage, a M.2 NVMe SSD slot (PCIe gen 2 x1) is available. The device supports PoE 802.3at/af. The board at the core of the router measures 148×100.5 mm and is fully compatible with enclosures designed for the Banana Pi BPI-R4.

The original branded casing for the device features a minimalist design, housing not only power, Ethernet, and USB ports but also just two buttons (reset and custom) and a mechanical switch for choosing the boot mode (recovery or normal). Four LEDs are used to indicate the device’s status.

To simplify experimentation, several levels of protection against bricking the device have been integrated, such as booting from a separate Flash in recovery mode, straightforward console access, and an external hardware watchdog monitor based on the EM Microelectronic EM6324 chip connected via GPIO.

For increased reliability, OpenWrt One uses two Flash storage types simultaneously: NAND for the U-Boot bootloader and Linux image, and a write-protected NOR Flash containing an additional bootloader and recovery image. A dedicated hardware switch allows selection between NOR or NAND booting. By default, the device utilizes OpenWrt-based firmware, although users can leverage the M.2 NVMe slot to load other Linux distributions, such as Debian and Alpine. The NVMe slot can also be utilized for network storage solutions.