I have been flashing DD-WRT to my routers for many years. My current setup is an Archer C9 that connects via cable to an Archer C8, which then wirelessly bridges to an R7000. All of them run DD-WRT. If I had "fun money," I would buy a low-power SFF PC with dual NICs, run OPNsense or OpenWrt, and use the wireless routers strictly as access points. Since I don't have that much to spend, I look for older DD-WRT friendly routers, usually under $30, on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace, and flash them myself.
I see that Ubiquiti and MikroTik make quality routers with proprietary OSes for around $65 new. Protectli and Netgate offer pfSense routers starting at $259.00. The GL.iNet Flint 2 is $169.00, and the OpenWrt One is $89.
According to ResellBot (because eBay now requires a login to see sold listings with prices), the sold "DD-WRT Routers" generally go for under $160. These include the WRT3200ACM, Netgear AC1750, Linksys EA9300, and Linksys R7350.
When I asked an AI how I would go about judging interest, building, raising funds, and manufacturing, it seems doable but expensive (said $125,000 minimum in total made up of $30,000 for regulatory approval, engineering and protoyping $10,000+) and time-consuming just to get to a "golden prototype" for demos.
So if I were a "hacker" and wanted an open-source router, depending on my funds, I would either:
1. Flash DD-WRT to an existing router (used or new).
2. Buy one with it already installed, like the OpenWrt One or a Protectli device.
3. Get an SFF PC and build my own.
I remember when some comments about DropBox said it was a waste because any hacker could make that. I also know DropBox was marketed to the average person and businesses. I don't really see how a hacker friendly router could take off like that unless hackers are choosing the hardware and setting up the networks for average people. And I assume that most people setting up the networks want different qualities like brand name recognition, ease and speed of purchasing equipment (Walmart or BestBuy), and the ability to point a customer or family member to the number of solid reviews and articles saying it a good router to qualify their choices.
So, do you actually want a router that you can buy with DD-WRT pre-installed?
If you start this business, bootstrap -- don't go into debt. If you have 100 units on your shelf, you'll sell them eventually. If you have a large loan, you'll have the bank breathing down your neck -- not worth it for the margins you're after.
At small scale you can economize on shipping by finding a small business that does a lot of receiving and intercepting their cartons and packing material. You can tell if the business's cartons are right for you by glancing at their corrugated cardboard dumpster, but if you ask, they may be happy to give you a load of boxes that they did not already break down.
Sell on eBay/Amazon, but also list your items directly on a website you control where you can bypass their fees. Perhaps the price is the same, but your site can be more profitable. Amazon may de-list you for offering a direct price that's lower than you list for on their site -- but you may be able to bypass this with a coupon code.
If you get good at shipping reflashed OpenWRT routers you will probably not be netting six figures. But by developing the skills of effective marketing and fulfillment, you may find a complementary product that is even more profitable at a similar volume to a similar customer base. The business you build selling routers can make another business idea take off even more quickly.
By default, it runs a custom shell, but Luci is easy enough to switch to.
1. they automatically enrolled me in a 'support' subscription I didn't want and I didn't realize until it renewed once, then I cancelled. it's apparently not easy selling flashed routers.
I don't begrudge them for this, though: I'm guessing they actually do have a lot of users contact support, and this business practice was a rock and a hard place situation: you don't want users to fail to install the device nor to have a bad experience because you can't afford a skilled support team. I'm not sure if they have since changed their policies.
2. I learned that, all along, ASUS has built their routers on a company-maintained downstream flavor of WRT.
So I just bought an ASUS router and haven't looked back. When I first set it up I was able to go into the admin ui and configure it similarly to how I had configured DD-WRT.
FWIW Asus is Taiwanese, so they have a unique national security incentive to sell clean routers; too small a country to have offensive national security like the NSA/China, yet a big target where defense against both of those is important.
Just a thought: make a small business out of setting up people's home networks and small business networks. The cost is negligible, you will learn about unmet demand, and you will be able to reach people who aren't technical in the process. It will cost you some money, in the sense that your service fees would almost certainly be less than your day job. On the other hand, potential customers would be paying you for market research and product development. In some respects, the market research will be more valuable in the sense that you are working with potential customers.
I say potential customers because selling a kit will reach different people. On the otherhand, it will tell you what has to go into that kit. For example: I doubt that flashing DD-WRT to existing hardware will suffice. There will be some people interested in that (someone else does the research, fear of bricking), but would those people commit to buying and setting up your product? Throw in a setup wizard that makes setting up ad blocking, VPN, or anything else that major vendors don't have much interest in simplifying, and you will likely have more success.
Stay far far away from small businesses unless you want it to be your full time job.
Finding customers will be difficult. I suggest finding a couple and then talking with them to learn what they want first and then understand their willingness to purchase by offering them a device at a cost.
For me - I’m in the market. I flashed my Asus router with Merlin. I’d do the same for my next router. What might lead me to buy my next device from you?
- I like to support independent vendors when I can. (See caveats below) - I would like a built in way to keep the firmware up to date … mine is old. - I would want to understand the commercial equivalent router based on specs to make it easier for me to decide if it will meet my needs. - The rest is provided by DD-wrt.
Happy to be user #1. Contact in profile.
I’ve thought about this as well, you could market it to gamers or content creators who care about latency. Nano pi r6s with openwrt and buffer bloat configured for their connection. Nicer/simpler UX on top maybe.
Firewalla did something similar but imo their UX is nice but actual product isn’t great (lots of issues on gigabit links ime, overpriced).
I don’t care for dd wrt.
I’ll put FreeBSD or openbsd on it. Was curious what the actual hardware chipsets were so I could check compatibility.
Similarly though, there's limited appeal to those who aren't already capable of setting it up themselves.
I'm still slowly pursuing this because I believe in it, whether it's profitable or not.
Edited to add: Part of what I'm setting up: https://lists.uninvitedactivity.com/DNS/, a vague explainer here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49990394
Are there any downsides or issues that come with this setup? Easy ways to disable it for specific sites or temporarily? Especially for non-technical users?
ISPs would have been able to do this kind of thing since forever but, strangely, I don't see it advertised as a potential value-add at all. Had ISP's commonly taken up such a mantle, players like NextDNS probably would be less necessary.
What I have in mind (if my dayjob fires me): open a shop for wealthy nerds, and sell all kind of pre-flashed devices, known to work well with open source firmware: power plugs, routers, thermostats,... The clientele would be very niche, but I think it might be enough for a small specialized shop.
Granted, not exactly what you wished for, but pretty close.
The time to do this is <5 minutes. One such router I personally know of is GL.iNet GL-MT6000: https://openwrt.org/toh/gl.inet/gl-mt6000
The OpenWRT version is relatively old, and unfortunately the latest firmware requires reconfiguring family permissions, but I’ve otherwise been happy with the device. I use it for all kind of strange things (ad-hoc extending my home network for getting my solar inverter back online, tethering to my phone, etc.), but primarily use it to make it easy to get my family’s devices online while traveling (6 iPads, 3 phones, and a laptop).
Unfortunately I had to use might there and not Will. I do not know for sure if this is a good business. I would like to say I would recognize such a business if it was near me, but I don't know. I can do this myself. I don't know if you can make enough value that it's worth me paying. If it takes you three hours to flash a router, I can do that myself. And even if it takes me six hours, Three hours of your time at a reasonable wage is more than I could afford.
Dropbox is an odd comparison because it’s not the hacker solution at all. The market for Dropbox is indeed normal folks who do not want to tinker. They want it to just work. (I buy Ubiquiti because I want it to just work.)
Comparing to Raspberry Pi, the analogous question would be “is there a market for Raspberry Pi with Pi OS already flashed onto a memory card”? And the answer is not much. Someone preflashing a stock image doesn’t provide much if any value.
Someone starting a new router company better have more of a value proposition than just “I’ll preinstall DD-WRT for you”.
For people who do buy them, there's a number of good products out there already. Why would I trust a new product from a single person, which might drop out of support after 6 months?
Carrier hardware is also just a lot better now than it used to be tbh. I don't know what comcast is doing but both ISPs in my area (mediacom and tmobile fiber) are shipping Eeros. idk about the privacy aspects on that but they are good hardware otherwise.
I gave up and just use the Xfinity cable modem/router/access point now. Covers my entire house and even outside deck/patio/driveway. Yes they are probably snooping on my traffic and potentially proxying their "xfinitywifi" through my cable, but I use Firefox DNS over HTTPS so they can't see that, and VPN for work.
Off the top of my head. A mobile app for setting up and remotely monitoring and controlling my home network. Pihole/pivpn built in with wireguard and a good UX for creating tunnels. Host isolation. A local llm that I can ask questions and get fixed (why can't I print to the printer from my laptop on ssid1. Fix it). Kid friendly things for parents. Easy kid schedules and device groups to limit screen time and reports on what sites they visited.
Ubiquitis amplifi app had a decent mobile app with some of these things.
Go after the product not the technology.
- ad-blocking
- kid network vs grown-up network vs guest network
- blocking sites (on kid network), with easy way to temporarily disable or disable on a schedule
- safe and regular updates from openwrt, that I can trust will work even if your company goes bust (ie. your layer on top needs to play well with upstream)
(but I'm in Europe so might not be your customer)
Ubiquiti mesh stuff works very well and is an overall polished experience. Supposedly their APs are at least distantly descended from OpenWRT but they are not open source. Their platform is pretty open in terms of integrating with other stuff and not locking you in, at least.
So I buy GL.iNet routers, which come with OpenWrt pre-installed.
I also like Flint 3's skin on top of openwrt/luci, it's just easier and more convenient.
I find ASUS hardware high quality in general. And using an open-source project like ASUS Merlin means the pain-points and limitations that I would face with stock firmware have been resolved to (at least to satisfactory extent) when I need reach for the hacker type configurations.
Meanwhile, home routers with meshing and security and built-in cloud management planes with easy apps are already cheap.
What would your pitch be when mom & dad would probably just stumble on Amazon Eero or Netgear Orbi? Someone already brought fire back to the home market, you can't differentiate if you're just putting up a site and a device, unless you hit some absurd low-$ cost in an already low-margin industry.
You'd be better off looking for a niche or industry where the edges are sharp, the tooling is bad or inconsistent, and there's no clear winner.
> I would buy a low-power SFF PC with dual NICs, run OPNsense or OpenWrt, and use the wireless routers strictly as access points.
If you can fish an old PC with a few GB of RAM made since 2006 or so out of the trash, you're halfway there. Get a cheap 32GB SSD and a second PCIe NIC off of Amazon, and go for it. You can run OpenWRT on x86.
It's a difficult market though:
- Vast majority people use router provided by ISP. - Some unhappy with ISP hardware quality buy whatever they find online (in my country usually TP-Link devices) - Enthusiasts flash OpenWrt on cheap devices, home servers or buy MikroTik devices (or similar). - Non enthusiasts, but caring about quality and support still have some good (but more expensive) devices to pick from like Fritz!Box in Europe
People wanting pre-flashed OpenWrt will be fraction of a fraction of overall market, so you'd need to charge a lot, which puts you in direct competition with options above.
- Flint 2: very happy with this. I can do any kind of OpenWRT setting I want
- Flint 3: super unhappy!! changing VLAN settings breaks the entire router.
Why? Flint 3 uses a chip with encrypted vendor blob (Qualcomm) and Gl.inet just hacked the drivers in a way is not compatible with OpenWRT.
But maybe I should let an agent reverse engineer the driver and add correct support myself?
Edit: i haven't checked the status in a while, but seems like last months support for this device changed a lot.
Another way of looking at this, find an industry or community that have particular needs in a router and sell to them
No, I'd rather flash it myself and use OpenWrt instead of DD-WRT.
Would be legit to be able to have an Llm do a source audit before installing …. Not perfect but damn sure better than nothing
1) Privacy/ ad-protection native (as you say)
2) High security and performance (fully tuned DD-WRT). Even solving bufferbloat for end users would be amazing - the world is barely catching up on that.
3) Good software add-ons that aren't proprietary junk. Asset management/upgrade, sign-in/landing pages, monitoring and trafffic shaping that holds up, etc.
Bunlding FOSS to solve these problems well, even on some else's hardware, does seem like work, and work can be charged for.
Back in the day I probably modded over 100 consoles for people, Xbox, Wii, DS, Switch, PS3.... I can't say that even once the person cared about hearing what XBMC was and all the things it could theoretically do. They just cared about being able to play/watch things with the press of the button without having to know any of the tech aspects.
Anyone I knew that could mod consoles just did it themselves.
Also I want it to auto-detect spyware/adware and isolate/neutralize it, even to the point of spoofing harmless responses.
Like I would love it if it were possible to proxy all traffic and load certs to do ssl interception if that were possible on household devices.
Or at minimum just let me safely connect locally to “smart” devices without them sending data out.
Basically just tron let loose on my home network fighting for the user.
https://teklager.se/en/
Not affiliated, just a happy customer. If you're thinking of getting in a similar business and are not a competitor in Sweden, drop them a line. When I spoke to them they were very friendly.
also it better be open hardware.
sign me up take my money. jae@gnomail.io
https://www.gl-inet.com/en-de/products/gl-be14000
so.. yes? I haven't gotten around to flashing stock openwrt on it - but I probably will at some point - seems to be supported now?
https://forum.gl-inet.com/t/flint-4-openwrt-vanilla/71383/10
I think it would be difficult to compete with existing offerings - even though they are quite few.
For routers, the only realistic way that can happen is by getting some big vendor to adopt ddwrt or openwrt to offload (some of) the job of writing the firmware. And even then, most people use their ISP provided router. A niche vendor supplying preflashed routers isn't going to make a dent.
I think there's a market there for a fully open platform, but it's probably not very easy to pull off given how secretive the chip vendors seem to be.
There's a Hong Kong company called GL-iNet which makes routers whose OEM firmware is just OpenWRT plus their own web interface, but they actually also have the stock one from upstream pre-installed as well.
I've bought routers from them for years. I usually make sure that they're fully supported in a stable upstream release of OpenWRT, then replace the firmware with vanilla, which is no fuss. Then they continue to get firmware upgrades for many years.
DD-WRT I think of as a messy thing for backporting as many features as possible to routers that are locked to old kernels because they rely on super proprietary radio firmware blobs.
Take a look at GL-iNet, the WRT routers from Linksys, and the OpnWRT One or whatever it was, and try to figure out where you might fit in that landscape. Maybe you can support some features they don't, maybe you can take a radical upstream-first approach to appeal to free software enthusiasts, or maybe you can market to Americans who want manufacturer based in their own country. But those are antecedents who may also be your competitors, so it's with seeing what they're doing.
I wouldn't buy any of their stuff if not for OpenWRT— that's the killer feature for me. But I'm quite happy with quality and features from GL-iNet as well. I recommend them to everyone.
I bought a router with no OS pre-installed
I chose Coreboot to be pre-installed as a convenience
I prefer to boot from USB stick or the network; there's no secondary storage, only max amount of RAM, no Wifi
The computer is sold as a "router". But for me any computer that runs a kernel I have enabled to forward packets is a "router" and any "router" is a computer I can use for any purpose (within the limits of the hardware)
No, not really. I build my own routers using commodity hardware and Debian. If I had to go back to consumer hardware, I would get a GL.Inet or other off-the-shelf router that supports OpenWrt and flash it.
It's currently serving as a wireless bridge client for a network of 10 IP cameras.
Out of the two of them DD-WRT is more "hacky" and duct-taped together, while OpenWrt is more "pure". This can mean that DD-WRT feels more feature complete at times.
pfsense can sell for a relatively high price, I think, because they market themselves more towards businesses and big corporations.
they are not prohibitively expensive and have a version of openwrt installed
if anything, you are sure to be able to install openwrt on them yourself
if you get good at openwrt you can install it on other parts of your home network like the zyxel gs1900 series switches for up to 48 ports
the reason not to install off-the-shelf consumer routers is privacy, security and enshittification
If there wasn't, I was going to use this as a project to explore vibecoding...
The biggest reason I did that is that I wanted four ports, not two, and I could not find a mini-ITX motherboard or any other commodity form factor with four ports built-in. Once you have to add an expansion card, you need a case quite a bit larger than what you're used to for a home network appliance.
That's an underfilled niche, small form factor single boards with more than two high-speed NICs, but presumably it's underfilled for a reason, which is there aren't many individual consumers, as opposed to third-party packagers like Deciso who sell appliances to enterprises, who want these. The other consideration is server-grade mini-ITX boards that have even two onboard NICs have a whole lot of other features not needed in a networking appliance that end up consuming more power than is ideal. If you could offer such boards, with or without a case, with or without a pre-installed operating system, I'd definitely be interested, but I'm one guy. Don't build a business on scratching the itch of notoriously stingy homelab enthusiasts. We're the kind of people who will gladly pay $400 a week on groceries and then scoff at a $10 a year software subscription as something unconscionable.
They leave a bunch of data sharing options built in and on by default with no warning, acknowledgement, etc and I suspect it's why asus lets the project continue to run
Buy https://www.gl-inet.com/en-us/products/gl-mt3600be and move on with your life.
Alternately, what's the problem you're trying to solve? Who are your potential customers? Why do existing options in the market not address their needs?
* 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.
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.
Those who look at you blankly when you mention open-source router firmware aren’t likely going to become customers.
I'm not sure how approachable tools like Claude Code have made this for people though. If I was just getting started, I would probably just have the tool do it for me.
And the person which knows what DD-WRT is knows where and how to get it for a good (for them) price.
So you target audience is already has their needs fulfilled and you don't add any additional value worth the increased price.
compared with RouterOS where the Linux bits are almost completely hidden behind the proprietary config engine (and the proprietary cli and webuis that power that config engine). for the most part with routeros, you'd be hard pressed to know that you're even on a unix let alone linux.
At one point, and I don't remember exactly when, I just started using OpenWRT instead. It wasn't always the case, but it presents a very usable GUI straight away these days and it has a ton of flexibility for getting creative later.
At home I run it on a Pi4 that I bought for the purpose. It keeps up with my 500/20Mbps DOCSIS internet very well indeed. I've used it with a USB NIC to get dedicated ports, and also with VLANs and a managed switch instead. I just download and flash the card, plug stuff in, and configure it. No real issues -- for years, now. (Wireless is provided by Mikrotik access points.)
When something faster happens in my neighborhood (which may be very soon; I had a very brief chat with a dude whose fiber splicing trailer was parked across the street just yesterday), I'll probably want to move to something more capable.
That could be in the form of faster Pi, or an old PC running OPNsense -- or even stick with OpenWRT. No big deal.
If I really wanted a tidier package for light-weight travel or something, then I guess I'd pick something appropriate from glinet and put an official OpenWRT image on it.
For heavier-travel, I've got a kit with a Pi4, a managed PoE switch, and a backup Mikrotik box (that can be a switch or a router; it runs OpenWRT as well and the normal config is that it just provides more switch ports), and all this stuff is mounted onto a 1U rack shelf that is in-turn inside of a road case. It's meant to be physically durable and to include enough gear that if any part of it dies then I can replace that functionality Right Now without spending time finding parts in the middle of nowhere.
So, no: I would not buy one that was prefabulated. It wouldn't scratch my itch.
---
For everyone else? Honestly, the regular folks I know who ask me questions about networking aren't into that stuff at all or they wouldn't be asking. They don't care about ultimate speeds, or latency under load, or any of those things. They don't care about running Internet services from their network, or services on their local network, and probably don't even have a printer to abuse if something goes awry. They're also not interested in exploring the bowels of their home to install cabling for PoE access points.
They just want decent-enough wifi coverage that they don't have to think about it, and then: They want to succeed at not thinking about it.
So for those folks, I've come to recommend proprietary multi-node mesh systems. It doesn't really matter to me which one it is, or how terrible some aspect or other is: They all tend to check the right boxes, they update themselves, and then: Nobody thinks about them.
also
> 4. used terminal PC, they go for cheap. Just add ethernet usb card for second link
also
> 5. plenty of small form factor multiple ethernet boards you can get on ARM and even x86, tho gonna be more expensive than a dedicated router
Are you serious? It's going to ruin the performance or efficiency.
This is not a new idea.
Several companies/single owner LLC's do this for a massively inflated price.
I understand why the inflated price, support and warranties, etc.
IT is not that hard for people who are technically inclined.
People who are not into it don't understand why.
If placement/marketing was for SMB that wanted to maximize dd-wrt usage and get a support contract in place I can see that
but outside of that, and a marketing youtube channel and being proactive on reddit, Idk how much can it scale and what point will you not get a cease and desist from vendors because I'm sure they have something nasty in their terms of service, which I think you may need to click through to enable the flash.
You've identified your market competiton price points, and all have deeper pockets than you, but do not offer free, open source software.
WRT3200ACM and the other previous model is a fab of mine to grab, it's been a year but I've collected 10+ and deploeyd them in strategic places for personal use,
You wouldn't need regulatory approval IMO. prototyping, what type? You'd follow the release schedule, get the best flavors/models and support those.
Overtime maybe you'd contribute back to the project, especially during hardware revisions. But it is very different from buying used hardware from ebay and flashing it to resell vs buying new and selling it as a value add on.
1. Yes, proper hacker route.
2. Proper route to an extent, it legitmiazes support, warranty and security.
3. Expensive, time consuming but, doable but not likely.
Yeah, the dropbox comment is infamous, but that was about launching a new SAAS that has infinite potential scale and solved a problem no one really wanted to fix at the time outside of one drive (which sucked at the time, was called skydrive afaik) and usb sticks which are...great but USB3 was new, usb2 was there and people were arguing back and forth why usb3 wasn't working or such
so:
to answer your question you need to really figure out a basic marketing question of 3 P's.
Product Price Placement.
Product is DD-WRT. Price: It's free. Placement: People that know what it is but don't have free time to install it?
No, not quite right, right? Let's try again:
Product: DD-WRT routers preconfigured for enterprise support and SMB. Price: Retail price of router + $100 per sold, with 1 yr warranty, additional warranty and stuff available at x and y? Placement: People that know what it is about but don't have free time ot install it or want to offshore this for a price.
Slightly better, but still:
So do I want it? I welcome anything FOSS in general w/ GNU/Linux and its a much needed stepping stone to continue having a decentralized internet:
but if it was so easy, people would've done it already, and they do.
It also reminds me of fontana which is how I netted a free WRT54G for offering what exactly, I don't know, but boy did I flash DD-wrt on that badboy and link it to my neighbors WiFi for free roadrunner internet to get my anime fansubs. So while as much as I'd like for the idea to flourish/am surprised wardriving and torrenting anime was a vector for getting me into tech I don't see it much out of a hobby business
and that is 100% OK
If you throw $5-10k a year at it, I think you can corner the niche, use AI automaiton for marketing campaigns, target tech conventions/festivals (like VCF) and youtube to build a audience it can scale.
but 125k? wow, no way - you ccan really do this for much less.
back to the scope of a opensource router: same as above, but if you really want, you need to find a manufacturer that already has a pre built configuration that at minimum supports the newest radio and minimum gigabit ethernet. GLI has theirs at $169, and hardware is a miminmal markup business, you can really find something similar to that and do a proper hardware cycle with a manufacturer and somewhat a contract but thats 50K including FCC licensing (if you know what to do, and you do the licensing yoruself, as well as Electrek/uL to cover CSPC. But hey, in todays world, everyone (well for past 30 years too) just makes it up and folds thier llc when caught.
For more business minded ideas, heres one about MSO/s and GLP1 from a Ycombinator 3x foudner and I comment with the same dissent:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49543849
So tl;dr why not pitch it for ycombinator winter, I think it's still open for submissions.
Add AI (why not, right?) and you can have a walking talking configuratuion wizard guide you to addung ublock,adblock, pihole, etc instead of the broken ecosystem we have today within dd-wrt because while I clearly can spot the pain points and issues, I lack the ability to turn them into viable selling points for investors to give me money and I should fix that someday :(