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I wouldn't depend on Buffalo or DD-WRT. DD-WRT is tolerant of closed-source drivers, which leads to long-term maintenance problems. I prefer to look for OpenWRT support. Actual support, not that fake press-release support that Belkin-Linksys did with the WRT1900AC and its lame Marvell chipset. Actually, since the WZR-600DHP is discontinued, I wouldn't recommend any of Buffalo's products right now. I don't really recommend ASUS, either.

The WZR-600DHP is good because it's built around the Atheros AR7161. Atheros donated the driver and wireless firmware to the open-source community. The WZR-600DHP2 is a completely different device built around the Broadcom BCM4708. You can't get 40MHz channels or even the Ethernet driver to work on those things without closed-source drivers. Almost everything from ASUS is powered by Broadcom.

I'm cautiously optimistic about current-generation Qualcomm Atheros devices. The QCA9880-AR1A is no good, but the QCA9880-BR4A seems decently supported in OpenWRT. But I can't be sure until I have a device to play with.

I wouldn't depend on Buffalo or DD-WRT. DD-WRT is tolerant of closed-source drivers, which leads to long-term maintenance problems. I prefer to look for OpenWRT support. Actual support, not that fake press-release support that Belkin-Linksys did with the WRT1900AC and its lame Marvell chipset. Actually, since the WZR-600DHP is discontinued, I wouldn't recommend any of Buffalo's products right now. I don't really recommend ASUS, either.

The WZR-600DHP is good because it's built around the Atheros AR7161. Atheros donated the driver and wireless firmware to the open-source community. The WZR-600DHP2 is a completely different device built around the Broadcom BCM4708. You can't get 40MHz channels or even the Ethernet driver to work on those things without closed-source drivers. Almost everything from ASUS is powered by Broadcom.

I'm cautiously optimistic about current-generation Qualcomm Atheros devices. The QCA9880-AR1A is no good, but the QCA9880-BR4A seems decently supported in OpenWRT. But I can't be sure until I have a device to play with.

You should care more about the firmware and driver source availability than about the manufacturer. It's because, no matter how strong and how fast your router is today, tomorrow your router is slow and obsolete. When (not if) problems are discovered with your device, the availability of updates depends on the ability to recompile the firmware.

I like my Buffalo WZR-600DHP. It came with DD-WRT, but more importantly, it was built on the Atheros AR7161, like the Netgear WNDR3800, Ubiquiti RouterStation, Mikrotik RB-450G, and several others, so I prefer to put OpenWRT on it. Sadly, this chip is several years old now, and doesn't support 802.11ac, and Broadcom offers cheaper N600-N750 chipsets, so there aren't a lot of AR7161 routers. Also, some of the early AR7161 routers are a little flaky, like the Netgear WNDR3700v1. My uncle had one where the 2.4GHz radio died.

Usually, I'm opposed to Cavium, Broadcom, and Marvell, and suspicious until proven otherwise of Qualcomm Atheros, MediaTek, and Realtek. Sadly, that means I can't recommend any 802.11ac routers. The most likely to work might be the ones with the Qualcomm Atheros QCA9558 and QCA9880-BR4A combination, like the Engenius ESR1750 and the TP-Link Archer C7 v2 (not v1). Since I don't have personal experience, and the documentation is so sparse, I can't recommend those without reservation. If I had to buy an 802.11ac router right now, I would buy one of those.

You should care more about the firmware and driver source availability than about the manufacturer. It's because, no matter how strong and how fast your router is today, tomorrow your router is slow and obsolete. When (not if) problems are discovered with your device, the availability of updates depends on the ability to recompile the firmware.

I like my Buffalo WZR-600DHP. It came with DD-WRT, but more importantly, it was built on the Atheros AR7161, like the Netgear WNDR3800, Ubiquiti RouterStation, Mikrotik RB-450G, and several others, so I prefer to put OpenWRT on it. Sadly, this chip is several years old now, and doesn't support 802.11ac, and Broadcom offers cheaper N600-N750 chipsets, so there aren't a lot of AR7161 routers. Also, some of the early AR7161 routers are a little flaky, like the Netgear WNDR3700v1. My uncle had one where the 2.4GHz radio died.

Usually, I'm opposed to Cavium, Broadcom, and Marvell, and suspicious until proven otherwise of Qualcomm Atheros, MediaTek, and Realtek. Sadly, that means I can't recommend any 802.11ac routers. The most likely to work might be the ones with the Qualcomm Atheros QCA9558 and QCA9880-BR4A combination, like the Engenius ESR1750 and the TP-Link Archer C7 v2 (not v1). Since I don't have personal experience, and the documentation is so sparse, I can't recommend those without reservation. If I had to buy an 802.11ac router right now, I would buy one of those.

OpenWRT is so fucking easy to install and configure (easier than some consumer out-of-the-box experiences, even) that there really is no excuse if you expect a secure local network ... there is no actual technical knowledge required, just basic keyboard/mouse skills, and reading comprehension.

I think you're *wildly* overestimating the skill and confidence of the average home network user and the quality of open source project web sites. Let me walk you through the hidden minefield in your instructions. I'll use a Linksys WRT150N for reference.

The real Step 1 is "realize that I'm supposed to install OpenWrt, and understand what that means". Most users have little to no idea of how the router actually works, so the idea of upgrading the firmware is not an obvious one.

But let's say someone tells them to do it. They go to the OpenWrt web site. The second sentence under "What is OpenWrt?" is "Instead of trying to create a single, static firmware, OpenWrt provides a fully writable filesystem with package management.". Many users will be too terrified to proceed beyond this point. But let's say they make it to the Table of Hardware, and skip past the text about developer snapshots and hardware VLANs and the note from 2009 saying that the page might not be up to date. (That's not realistic -- many users expect to read sequentially.) Instead of a column that says "yes, this router is supported", there's a column named "Status" that gives the first OpenWrt version that supports the router. Next to that there's a column named "Version" that is undefined. I'm assuming it's the router version, but many users could get confused. But the important column is the "Target" column, which lists the specific OpenWrt platform that users should (but probably won't) remember for later. There are two targets for the WRT150N and no indication of which to choose. One of them no longer exists in the current version.

Clicking on the model number in the table gives me an unorganized series of notes from various users. One of them, "An account of flashing OpenWrt to a WRT150N", sounds sort of like installation instructions, but is too brief and technical to be of any use. It does have a working download link, but it's to a version that's five years old. The one after that suggests that one target option (the nonexistent one) is better than the other. None of this is in clear newbie-friendly language and it's all after pages of Linux log dumps. If they land on this page, most users will probably click the back button as fast as they can.

Alternately, we could do it your way:

Step 1, find out what runs on your router (at wikidevi or similar)

That's somewhat better, but they still have to read through a dense, abbreviation-heavy table of technical specs. (That's after they figure out they need to search for their router's model number and not "Linksys".) At least there's a simple indication that OpenWrt supports the router. But how would they know to go to WikiDevi? I hadn't even heard of it before today. And most importantly, how would they figure out which target to use, or even that targets exist?

step 2, download the firmware image

Now we're in for some fun! There's a download link at the top of the OpenWrt site. Clicking on it gives me a directory listing. None of the directory names look like they contain software to download, even to me. On the right side of the OpenWrt main page there's another download link for the latest release. This gives another directory listing. (Apparently the correct directory is /attitude_adjustment/12.09.) Now there's a list of subdirectories that look (to me) like p

As linked in TFA: Have a link to a list of devices (Not necessarily complete).

Okay, I searched around and found out a little more. Google's TV box is the GFHD100, built by Humax: http://www.wikidevi.com/wiki/Google_Fiber_TV_Box_(GFHD100) It, and its software is apparently derived from Sage TV, which they acquired a while ago: http://www.geektonic.com/2012/07/google-fiber-tvis-its-htpc-dna-sagetv.html This doesn't answer the 'Active vs GPON' question. Anyone in Kansas with Google Fiber that can answer any questions? Does this box connect directly to the fiber going outside of the house? If so, then a teardown would reveal the chip interfacing to the fiber, which might answer the question.