Last month, I wrote about the WL-AC1000 AP controller, a hardware-based solution to monitor fleets of routers, and wondered why the company (Wallys) did not provide a software solution instead. It was pointed out to me that software AP controller solutions for OpenWrt routers do exist, but they looked not mature. After a quick search, I found OpenWISP described as an “open-source solution for efficient IT network deployment, monitoring & management” designed for OpenWrt Linux routers.
OpenWISP allows organizations with several routers to manage them in a centralized location, get alerts when issues occur, upgrade the firmware of multiple routers with a few clicks, create users with permissions to access specific routers, and so on.
OpenWISP Features:
- Configuration Templates – Manage device settings by defining reusable configuration templates that apply updates system-wide with a single change.
- Automatic Provisioning – Connect and configure new devices with zero-touch auto registration for rapid deployments with minimal manual effort.
- Automatic VPN Tunnels – Automatically provision secure VPN tunnels with all required configurations, keys, and certificates
- Network Monitoring – Monitor network performance with insights into latency, reachability, hardware usage, traffic patterns, and Wi-Fi clients for proactive management.
- Alerts & Notifications – Receive notifications through configurable alerts
- Multi-tenancy – Isolate tenants within separate organizations, ensuring each has access only to their own data and configurations, while super administrators maintain full oversight.
- Firmware Upgrades – Manage firmware upgrades with options for individual or batch updates, keeping your devices current with the latest features and security patches.
- Network Topology – Visualize and manage your network’s layout with comprehensive topology maps, offering clear insights into device connections and network structure.
- WiFi & Roaming – Optimize network performance with seamless WiFi roaming and intelligent access point management, ensuring consistent connectivity and broad coverage.
- Hotspots & Public WiFi – Deploy hotspots and public WiFi with captive portal integration for registration, authentication, social login, mobile phone number verification, and paid subscriptions.
- Mesh networks – Enhance network reliability with mesh networks
- RADIUS & EAP – Adopt RADIUS to handle authentication, authorization, and accounting, ensuring secure and efficient access control across your network.
- IPAM – The IPAM module automatically provisions subnets and IP addresses based on allocation rules set by network administrators.
OpenWISP requires extra packages installed on your OpenWrt firmware. The developers provide OpenWrt-based OpenWISP images for ath79 hardware, and for other models, they provide instructions to manually install packages with opkg. The web UI can be installed on Debian 11/12 or Ubuntu 20.04/22.04/24.04 LTS through Ansible or Docker. You’ll find everything to get started on the documentation website which looks rather thorough. The source code can be found on GitHub.
But to have a quick feel of the interface, you don’t need to go through the full installation process since there’s a demo website. Upon logging in, we access a dashboard with monitoring status, configuration status, geographic positioning (if available/set), device models, traffic statistics, and much more. That’s the first screenshot in this post.
The Devices section has the list of routers and their status, MAC address, IP address, etc… You can import, export, add or delete routers as needed.
You can also monitor all WiFi sessions and devices connected to routers, create users and organizations, define configuration templates, configure advanced features like RADIUS and IPAM, update the routers’ firmware, and more.
OpenWISP is free and open-source and the company provides both community and commercial support for the router management solution. Check out the website for further details.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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