alt Hacker NewsWow, the timing of this question is eerie. Just last week, I got tired of talking about segmenting my network but never doing it. So I did some research, asked some friends, and settled on the following:
* An Opnsense firewall (purchased from Deciso; ie: "official" hardware)
* An OpenWRT One (ie: "official" hardware) to be used as an access point
* A Microtik switch (SW OS, not Router OS)
My plan is to create multiple SSIDs, have each one on a different vlan, and then control services provided to that vlan. For example, I'll dump all IOT crap onto a vlan that doesn't have internet access.
I'm still not 100% sure it will work (the hardware still hasn't arrived). But finally, to answer your question: "Yes!"
Holy crap, give me official hardware. I installed DD-WRT on my linsys router. It's been so long that I don't remember exact details, but the process was INTIMIDATING. I felt like I had to download a blob from a website that wasn't the official website (ie: I seem to recall different people building DD-WRT for different hardware). I also recall some features not being available on some hardware.
Give me the hardware that is sold by the people that work on the project!
I want some reassurance that I have the "most supported hardware", so I don't have to go through huge feature matrices to see if my hardware supports feature X.
I want headroom to install new packages. I don't want to have so little space that I need to remove one package to install another.
And finally, I want the people writing the software to GET PAID, because I want it to still be around... and being actively developed 10 years from now.
PS:
I initially wanted to get a consumer grade switch, but my network operator friends told me that was a terrible idea... and that I should get a use Cisco switch on Ebay. Cisco is probably great and network operators love it... but holy crap... trying to figure out what switch to buy is an enormous pain in the a$$. I pushed my friends, they relented and said: "Mikrotik is also great". I went to their website. 1000 times better than Cisco's; their switches were cheaper. I didn't have to "call for a quote" or scour Ebay. I haven't turned it on yet, but the buying experience was so much better.
I'm currently running OPNSense on one of those small N95 devices as a Virtual Machine, as my primary router/firewall and DHCP server for my (recently setup) handful of VLANs.
Whilst I have backups of the VM itself, as well as backups of the OPNSense configuration at various different times, one of the things I'd like to have is a cheap, drop-in device that is able to do all those same things. Having a hardware device that runs OpenWRT to do this would, as far as I can tell, be perfect for this, since OpenWRT's configuration can be backed up and applied to another device (I'm sure there are some traps for young players in regards to interface names etc. but I'm also sure they're not insurmountable). So any device that can run OpenWRT that has the hardware capacity to keep up with my setup, is drop-in-able.
An additional benefit of this is that the same / similar configurations can be deployed to various friends and family for both secure networks and relatively quick, easy, and cheap replacement in the event of hardware failure.
... and possibly sellable as a device and / or service. Basically cheap option: OpenWRT on compatible off-the-shelf device, expensive option: OPNSense VM on mini PC.