Home Networking in Japan: Getting started with the OpenWRT One
During the year-end season between Christmas and New Year, I usually spend a good amount of time on personal projects – be it a piece of software, a creative endeavor, or some other tinkering I don’t get around to during the year. This time, I set out to upgrade my home network and make the switch to OpenWRT. Why OpenWRT? Because the way most Japanese ISPs, incl. NTT, deliver internet connectivity via fiber to the home is peculiar. Marketed as IPoE or IPv6 Plus, the underlying protocol is MAP-E (RFC 7597), which tunnels IPv4 through IPv61. Since it does not exactly enjoy wide-spread use in other markets, you will be hard-pressed to find commercial home routers supporting it out-of-the-box. Even other popular open-source projects, such as pfSense or OPNsense, do not currently support it. Fortunately, OpenWRT does and the project introduced their first official hardware, the OpenWRT One, back in November 2024. Although it is certainly possible to install the software on third-party routers (the project Wiki has a long list of supported devices), I needed to buy a new device anyway and wanted to have a relatively hassle-free experience by going with the official one. Moreover, by buying one of these you are directly supporting the OpenWRT development team and thus, ensuring they can continue maintaining and further improving the project. What better way to dip your toes into open-source home networking? ...