Flint 2 vs. DD-WRT as AP in LAN designed for web filtering, encrypted DNS, and parental control

Technical Support for Routers
1

Excited to be finally trying OpenWrt, which has not been feasible due to Broadcom support lacking 5 GHz, I'm evaluating whether a Flint 2 can surpass my satisfaction with DD-WRT.

The LAN is designed for web filtering, parental control, and encrypted DNS:

  • Firewalla = router, DHCP, parental control, primary DNS (forward to Pi-hole IP for filtering).
  • Pi-hole = DNS (forward to Flint 2 IP for encryption), web filtering, zero-trust parental control.
  • Flint 2 = AP mode, SmartDNS.

So far so good! The Flint 2 seems more performant. No major disadvantages yet discovered.

But I'm open to suggestions to improve or simplify, provided functionality is maintained.

For instance, to potentially replace Pi-hole, I was hoping to try AdGuard, but in AP mode, it's unavailable (along with which other applications and plug-ins?). So, what about bridging the Flint 2 in router mode on a different subnet? Could the Firewalla still be the only DHCP server? The two subnets must not be isolated; however, related, a third subnet I would like to be isolated.

Note, I'm not a networking guru.

2

If Flint 2 is in an AP mode, many functions will not be used, such as VPN, ADG, parental control, Zerotier, TailScale, etc. dependency routing functions.

I think the Pi-Hole as DNS, Web Filtering, Parental Control is better.

Flint2 just as an AP, focus on the wireless jobs.