<p>router7 is a pure-Go implementation of a small home internet router. It comes with all the services required to make a <ahref="https://www.init7.net/en/internet/fiber7/">fiber7 internet connection</a> work (DHCPv4, DHCPv6, DNS, etc.).</p>
<p>Note that this project should be considered a (working!) tech demo. Feature requests will likely not be implemented, and see <ahref="https://github.com/rtr7/router7/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md">CONTRIBUTING.md</a> for details about which contributions are welcome.</p>
<p>Before starting router7, I was using the <ahref="https://omnia.turris.cz/en/">Turris Omnia</a> router running OpenWrt. That worked fine up until May 2018, when an automated update pulled in a new version of <ahref="https://git.openwrt.org/?p=project/odhcp6c.git;a=shortlog">odhcp6c</a>, OpenWrt’s DHCPv6 client. That version is incompatible with fiber7’s DHCP server setup (I think there are shortcomings on both sides).</p>
<p>It was not only quicker to develop my own router than to wait for either side to resolve the issue, but it was also a lot of fun and allowed me to really tailor my router to my needs, experimenting with a bunch of interesting ideas I had.</p>
<h2id="project-goals">Project goals</h2>
<ul>
<li>Maximize internet connectivity: retain the most recent DHCP configuration across reboots and even after its expiration (chances are the DHCP server will be back before the configuration stops working).</li>
<li>Unit/integration tests use fiber7 packet capture files to minimize the chance of software changes breaking my connectivity.</li>
<li>Safe and quick updates
<ul>
<li>Auto-rollback of updates which result in loss of connectivity: the diagnostics daemon assesses connectivity state, the update tool reads it and rolls back faulty updates.</li>
<li>Thanks to kexec, updates translate into merely 13s of internet connectivity loss.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Easy debugging
<ul>
<li>Configuration-related network packets (e.g. DHCP, IPv6 neighbor/router advertisements) are stored in a ring buffer which can be streamed into <ahref="https://www.wireshark.org/">Wireshark</a>, allowing for live and retro-active debugging.</li>
<li>The diagnostics daemon performs common diagnostic steps (ping, traceroute, …) for you.</li>
<li>All state in the system is stored as human-readable JSON within the <code>/perm</code> partition and can be modified.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<h2id="hardware">Hardware</h2>
<p>The reference hardware platform is the <ahref="https://pcengines.ch/apu2c4.htm">PC Engines™ apu2c4</a> system board. It features a 1 GHz quad core amd64 CPU, 4 GB of RAM, 3 Ethernet ports and a DB9 serial port. It conveniently supports PXE boot, the schematics and bootloader sources are available. I recommend the <ahref="https://pcengines.ch/msata16g.htm">msata16g</a> SSD module for reliable persistent storage and the <ahref="https://pcengines.ch/usbcom1a.htm">usbcom1a</a> serial adapter if you don’t have one already.</p>
<p>Other hardware might work, too, but is not tested.</p>
