[HN Gopher] Hardkernel adds 4x 2.5Gbps to H2
___________________________________________________________________
Hardkernel adds 4x 2.5Gbps to H2
Author : cameron_b
Score : 85 points
Date : 2021-01-12 15:58 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.hardkernel.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.hardkernel.com)
| pdimitar wrote:
| Or I don't know, SBC vendors, you can get one AMD R1606G board
| and actually bother to make its 2x 10Gbps on-chip NICs usable? As
| opposed to everyone attaching 2x 1Gbps to it for whatever reasons
| (really tempted to say its laziness but maybe there are
| legitimate reasons, although I don't think so; why would AMD make
| a board on which an on-chip dual NIC is unusable?).
|
| Piling such addons on top of an otherwise single-board computer
| feels quite strange to me. What are the thermal implications of
| such a setup?
|
| Not an expert by any stretch but I am very skeptical.
| rektide wrote:
| I very very very much loath the lag in the market. The SBC
| market is a sham, as far as I'm concerned, with these stupid
| ARM toys they keep pushing. 100%, the real embedded market has
| much better equipment.
|
| I looked around some for R1606G offerings, and there's quite a
| number of boards around $350. Alas, none use the on-chip 10Gbe
| ports. I haven't found anything under $700 that offers 10Gbe.
| Even the $350 is questionable, when by compare one can get a 1L
| sized mini-pc with a 35W desktop chip that will rip it to
| shreads. Those systems will idle under 10w. Mine does.
|
| The R1606G chip you talk about, the R1606G, is 2 Zen cores
| running 2600-3500 Hz & uses 12-25W. That's a bit north of what
| something like this here Celeron kicks out, but it does match a
| lot of Chromebox style computers very closely, which is a
| little smaller than the typical business 1L mini-pc.
|
| There is also a R1305G and R1102G which have lower clocks &
| single-channel in the R1102G's case. They also have dual 10Gbe.
| I'd love to know what price chips like these come at. I suspect
| AMD plays the same game Intel does: even though you are getting
| 1/8th the physical chip size versus a desktop, the fact that it
| has competitive performance in it's price range means AMD/Intel
| are still going to try & charge you the same ~$300 they'd
| charge for a desktop chip.
| Jonnax wrote:
| I've currently a Unifi USG at home with my 1gbps symmetric
| connection.
|
| Generally it's pretty good. However a recent software update has
| completely broken IPv6 prefix delegation.
|
| So I've been thinking of replacing it with a more open router.
|
| I've seen pfsense is popular, but OpenWRT also seems to be quite
| active and Linux based which I'm more familiar with. But also for
| smaller less power hungry machines.
|
| My use case is a router so I don't need cores or ram, but rather
| being able to meet the network throughput for a low power
| consumption.
|
| Is there anything that bits the bill? Preferably something that
| was released recently to ensure software updates will be easy on
| it.
|
| Would the H2 work?
| adrian_b wrote:
| The H2, with a Gemini Lake Refresh CPU, is certainly much
| faster than the APU2 which somebody suggested and also much
| faster than any cheap ARM device that uses old ARM cores like
| Cortex-A72 or Cortex-A73.
|
| I think that H2 is a good choice for a router/firewall, it is
| faster than anything in that price range, it is silent with
| passive cooling and the power consumption in normal use is much
| less than 10 W.
|
| Being a standard PC, any Linux distribution, as well as
| FreeBSD, Windows or any other OS can be installed without
| problems.
|
| I have used in the past a few older ODROID models and I have
| been content with them.
| walterbell wrote:
| PC Engines APU2, https://pcengines.ch/apu2.htm (6W TDP fanless,
| 3 ports)
| Jonnax wrote:
| I've seen it before and it looks really good but the CPU was
| released in 2014
|
| So I'm a bit worried about future software support.
|
| Reading this:
|
| https://teklager.se/en/knowledge-base/apu2-1-gigabit-
| through...
|
| It looks like 1gbps is possible with tweaks. My hope is
| whether there's a more plug and play solution.
| stragies wrote:
| Does the AMD Jaguar GX-412TC SOC really handle full Gigabit
| with non-trivial rules and/or SQM? Also the 6W is the
| minimum, it goes up to 10 under load.
| vegardx wrote:
| I doubt it.
|
| But if you're comparing with products from Ubiquiti
| (especially the Unifi line) you're probably going to see
| similar performance anyway. I switched to a APU2 as my home
| router two years ago, and I've been very happy with it.
| Doesn't seem to break a sweat handling a gigabit connection
| in a typical home setting, running VyOS. I'd probably think
| about something more powerful in an office or data center.
| jbronn wrote:
| I've been using APU2 systems for several years. It can
| handle gigabit if you're using Linux and your ISP doesn't
| use PPPoE. On PPPoE it tops out around 500mbps for download
| and 800mbps for upload.
| traspler wrote:
| I've ran pfSense on older ALIX and the APU boards. On the APU
| I sadly got nowhere close to my symmetric gigabit speeds. I'm
| not that knowledgeable on network stacks but from what I
| heard it's probably BSDs network stack that doesn't cut it on
| that hardware.
|
| I've read that MikroTik's RouterOS delivers significantly
| more performance on an APU Board but I've not tried that yet
| (but plan to).
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Another popular low-cost option is to run pfSense on an old
| thin client. The ideal hardware is something like the HP T610+
| or T620+, which even have a PCIe slot for you to add a
| secondary ethernet interface if you don't want to get a VLAN
| switch and have to do a router-on-a-stick configuration. The
| form factor is nice because it's quiet, a lot smaller than a
| full PC, it's set up for wall/VESA mounting, and you don't need
| to muck about with buying specialty cases as you do for MiniITX
| motherboards or other SBCs.
|
| Anyway, predictably these things are being constantly cycled
| out and can typically be had on ebay for $100-200.
| vegardx wrote:
| Which is about as much as more specialized, but brand new
| hardware, like the PCEngines APU2.
| puzzlingcaptcha wrote:
| $150 (roughly the cost of APU2+case+power brick+16GB SSD)
| for a t620 would be daylight robbery. I got the non-plus
| variant on the secondary market for $30 delivered and it
| works very well, uses roughly the same CPU as APU2 as well
| (4-core AMD Jaguar derivative, AES-NI & AVX extensions).
| Power usage is 6W idle (headless), 12W full-load. UEFI is
| basic but functional, I can boot Linux straight from the
| EFI boot entry.
|
| t620 Plus has a PCIe riser so would be better suited for a
| network gateway.
|
| The Wyse equivalents from that era would be Zx0Q/Dx0Q
| series although I don't think they had a PCIe version.
|
| Another interesting option is something like Fujitsu Futro
| S9010/S940 (4-core Goldmont, you get SHA ISA extensions
| which is nice), has a PCIe riser as well, but there are
| fewer of these on the secondary market.
|
| I recommend this charmingly old-fashioned site for
| reference on old thin clients
| https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/
| Jonnax wrote:
| It uses a CPU from 2014 however:
|
| https://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Puma/AMD-G-
| Series%20GX-412TC....
| vegardx wrote:
| Yes, but it also super compact, draws very little power
| and it has multiple network interfaces. It's also
| fanless, which makes it ideal for long running set-up-
| and-forget scenarios that home routers typically are.
| alrs wrote:
| The HP T620+ is fanless, draws very little power, and has
| a PCIe slot so you can run multiple network interfaces. 4
| cores, 25W TDP. model name : AMD
| GX-420CA SOC with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics
| zokier wrote:
| So T620+ and APU2 have otherwise same CPU (quad Jaguar
| cores) but T620+ runs it at 2GHz/25W and APU2 at 1GHz/6W
| puzzlingcaptcha wrote:
| GX-420CA also has a GPU which GX-412TC lacks. In headless
| operation the difference would not be that much. For
| reference, I have a t620 with GX-415GA (TDP 15W) which
| draws 12W at the wall in a CPU load scenario.
|
| https://www.amd.com/en/system/files?file=2017-06/g-series
| -so...
| Jonnax wrote:
| This might be a silly question, but would they be able to do
| 1gbps routing?
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I think the general consensus is that it's fine if you're
| just doing routing/firewall:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/PFSENSE/comments/8ytqqn/hp_t620_pl
| u...
|
| The CPU is more of a limiter if you're trying to run a VPN
| or something.
| koolk3ychain wrote:
| To be frank current versions of PfSense have been nothing but
| disappointing since the recent parent acquisition of PfSense. I
| got frustrated enough with errant problems that I just bought a
| proper enterprise grade router. Never looked back.
| antongribok wrote:
| What did you buy?
| koolk3ychain wrote:
| Since I run a lot of 10G fiber and use _proper_ 10G
| switches (none of this Ubiquiti garbage) layer 3 routing
| from the router itself was an absolute must. I decided on
| the PaloAlto Networks PA-220
| https://www.paloguard.com/Firewall-PA-220.asp .
|
| Yes, I know - it's expensive. However, their support is
| fantastic and my employer agreed to pay for a portion of
| the licensing since I mostly require this for WFH. Zero
| issues, passive cooling, top notch security and this thing
| just freaking purrs.
| mayli wrote:
| AFAIK, this PA-220 has nothing to do with 10G and cannot
| even do line speed routing at 1Gbps. It's an advanced
| firewall, not a high speed router.
| caeril wrote:
| Why are Ubiquiti switches "garbage"?
| Skunkleton wrote:
| I'm not sure. We had a 16 port 10G ubiquiti switch in our
| lab that did as it said on the tin with no issues. IIRC
| we paid ~$700 for it.
| sliken wrote:
| Been very happy with mine. Nice management interface, can
| backup the config to a text file, easy to upgrade, etc.
| pdimitar wrote:
| This is likely off-topic but I am looking hard at having
| home 10Gbps network and I struggle to find noise-less
| switches that allow copper 10Gbps links. I am okay with
| buying one fanless Mikrotik 10Gbps switch with SFP cages
| and buy adapters but I am open to other ideas.
|
| Can you recommend quiet 10Gbps switches that support
| copper links?
| koolk3ychain wrote:
| Copper links in the form of ethernet 10g base t or copper
| links as direct attach sfp+ cables? 10g base t ethernet
| uses quite a bit more power, so those switches are
| usually always loud. Also, 10g base t tranceivers when
| used long term can actually damage sfp+ switches and cost
| wise they make absolutely zero sense.
|
| To be frank, in the long run if you plan to make any
| changes to your setup, buying transceivers from FS.com
| and fiber cables (even armored fiber) for that matter is
| about the same price as copper direct attach cables. Also
| much easier to cable manage and they can be used with
| cable lengths from 0.2m to 400m in most cases.
|
| I currently use a Cisco Nexus 3064 -
| https://www.ebay.com/p/219487215
|
| It's kind of loud but I keep my hardware in a closet and
| to be honest, enterprise hardware like this makes heat
| and needs fans for a good reason haha.
|
| If you're looking for a more consumer entry and don't
| care about L3 routing Ubiquiti actually makes one hell of
| a damn good sfp+ "switch" for the money ->
| https://www.ui.com/unifi-switching/unifi-switch-16-xg/
| and again - cannot recommend FS.com enough for their
| service and quality products. Even if it was a little
| weird that their sales rep immediately added me on
| LinkedIn?
| pdimitar wrote:
| Much appreciate the answer, thank you.
|
| Sadly I don't have enough free space currently so I have
| to bet on fanless tech (but I do enjoy it).
|
| I meant normal Cat6 Ethernet 10Gbase-T cables, yep. If
| not, I can indeed buy a fanless Mikrotik switch with SFP+
| cages and just buy 8-10 adapters from SFP+ to 10Gbase-T,
| I suppose.
|
| Bookmarking your link, definitely will look into that
| switch when I have the proper closet space for server
| tech.
| koolk3ychain wrote:
| No worries! Keep in mind that sfp+ transceivers are
| "branded" - in that you have to buy the right sfp+
| transceiver to match the brand of switch or interface
| you're using. For instance, intel NIC's generally require
| intel "marked" transceivers etc. They last a damn long
| time though. Those small MikroTik switches are also
| awesome!
| StillBored wrote:
| Is that true of the ubiquity? I didn't think they
| required branded SFPs, they don't on some of their other
| hardware.
|
| Similarly for mikrotik.
|
| I usually find that companies with "licensable" features
| on their hardware are the ones locking their SFPs to
| their switches/etc in an effort to enforce what is
| basically a port license (aka buy our $80 SFPs instead of
| the generic ones we are rebranding so we can make $ on
| your port usage vs just adding a $$$/port license fee).
| pdimitar wrote:
| I haven't started redoing my home network in 10Gbps yet
| but after scanning forums for a few weeks (back in the
| summer), I've seen many people say that Mikrotik switches
| work without any issue with several non-Mikrotik DACs
| (not sure I'm remembering the abbreviation well but it's
| a small device that converts from SFP+ to 10Gbase-T
| Ethernet cable).
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| There are devices out there to rebrand a transceiver.
| Probably not worth it for home use, but my employer has
| one of these, so maybe ask around if you could get
| wrongly branded ones for cheap.
| sliken wrote:
| If running linux there's a parameter you can pass the
| Intel NIC module to allow non-Intel transceivers.
| liotier wrote:
| > To be frank current versions of PfSense have been nothing
| but disappointing since the recent parent acquisition of
| PfSense
|
| Part of why I'm grateful for the unstoppable OPNsense
| https://opnsense.org
| koolk3ychain wrote:
| I tried OPNsense as well, but I'm getting to a point in
| life where I'm okay spending money to not become my own
| devops guy when I don't have to. Running a Saas company as
| a side gig will do that to you ;)
| Narishma wrote:
| Lack of contrast makes the page nearly unreadable.
| q3k wrote:
| Too bad it's not a single SFP+ 10G cage, that would be actually
| useful then. :/
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| For typical routing purposes, 10G is overkill.
|
| The number of people with faster than 1G internet is extremely
| small.
|
| Business customers who have >1G commercial connections are not
| in the market for using ODROID boards for their routing needs.
|
| 2.5G is perfect for hobbyist use because it is significantly
| cheaper than anything 10G at the moment, while being faster
| than common 1G.
|
| If you need 10G switching, get a 10G switch.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Most of the time 10G routing isn't for WAN but instead for
| the LAN.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| I think everyone is missing the point of this cheap
| hobbyist board.
|
| The PCIe slot on the H2 is PCIe 2.0 x4, which doesn't have
| enough bandwidth to saturate more than one 10G port.
|
| This is why hobby hardware and the enthusiast market is so
| difficult: You can make a great product at a cheap price
| point and people will still complain that it doesn't
| satisfy their high-end niche edge case.
| Plutoberth wrote:
| This board has four 2.5G ports, not four 10G ports, so
| the 16G bandwidth for four PCie 2.0 lanes is more than
| enough.
| mlyle wrote:
| Right... the parent is saying that 4x10G is pointless
| compared to 4x2.5G, because PCIe 4 lanes will top out at
| forwarding around 7gbps of traffic.
|
| You can't do line rate on all ports either (limited by
| PCIe alone, let alone CPU for smaller packets), but you
| can certainly fill an individual port, which I suspect is
| the goal.
| q3k wrote:
| > because PCIe 4 lanes will top out at forwarding around
| 7gbps of traffic [...] limited by PCIe alone
|
| Are you sure about that? With 5GT/s (or 500MB/s) per
| lane, and with 4 lanes, that should be plenty, no? Intel
| adapters like the x520-DA2 are specced at 2x 10G, and use
| PCIe 2.0 x8.
|
| FWIW, I was also able to iperf3 around 3.7Gbps on a
| X520-DA2 connected to an RPi4's single-lane PCIe 2.0.
| adrian_b wrote:
| The so-called 5 Gb/s PCIe 2.0 lanes are in fact 4 Gb/s
| lanes.
|
| Ethernet speeds are given in data bits per second, while
| USB 3.0, PCIe 1.0 and PCIe 2.0 add in their speed values
| the extra bits used for encoding.
|
| On the other hand, 10 Gb/s USB and 8 Gb/s PCIe 3.0 have
| really those speeds. Complicated :-(
|
| One PCIe 2.0 lane is more than enough for 2.5 Gb/s
| Ethernet, but not enough for 5 Gb/s Ethernet or 10 Gb/s
| Ethernet.
| mlyle wrote:
| > FWIW, I was also able to iperf3 around 3.7Gbps on a
| X520-DA2 connected to an RPi4's single-lane PCIe 2.0.
|
| Yah, I said forwarding-- so each packet goes over the
| PCIe link twice.
|
| So, to use your test-- 3.7 x 4 / 2 = 7.4gbps. I said
| around 7. 7.4gbps would be a bit more than I'd expect,
| but I'd not be shocked.
| q3k wrote:
| But PCIe is full duplex! With PCIe 2.0 x4 there's 4 lanes
| in each direction [1], so when 'forwarding' over a single
| 10G link you can expect to send and receive
| simultaneously at the speed I mentioned earlier.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#Pinout
| mlyle wrote:
| Yah, I guess dividing by 2 isn't fair. But transmitting
| does impact receiving and vice-versa: when you're reading
| DMA descriptors, you need to wait/hold for posted
| completions, etc. It's not fully uncontended between send
| and receive, but more uncontended than a naive division
| by 2 would imply.
| adrian_b wrote:
| You are right that 4 PCIe 2.0 lanes have an aggregate
| speed of 16 Gb/s (even if in marketing speak they would
| be wrongly called as 20 Gb/s), which is not enough even
| for two 10 Gb/s ports, but only for one.
|
| However, that is not due to being a cheap hobbyist board,
| but due to Intel, who have not provided their Atom line
| of CPUs with more lanes or with faster lanes.
|
| Only the Elkhart Lake and Jasper Lake CPUs, which have
| been just launched by Intel as a replacement for the
| Gemini Lake Refresh CPUs used in ODROID H2, are the first
| Intel CPUs of the Atom series that have PCIe 3.0.
| q3k wrote:
| I don't want to build a switch/router on this.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The parent board has a generic PCIe slot. You can add
| whatever card you'd like with appropriate adapters,
| including a 10G SFP+ card.
| q3k wrote:
| If by 'generic PCIe slot' you mean an NVMe slot that I
| have to buy janky adapters for, and figure out mechanical
| mounting for, then yeah. But I'm not sure I'd like to
| depend on that.
|
| And then I might as well do that with an Intel NUC, or
| just go for a normal mini-ITX motherboard.
| mciancia wrote:
| > 2.5G is perfect for hobbyist use because it is
| significantly cheaper than anything 10G at the moment
|
| No, not really, it's the other way around. SFP+ based 10g
| networking equipment is much cheaper and and with much higher
| availability. And if needed, you can always adapt it to
| 1/2.5/5.10g networking using sfp+->rj45 transceivers. Only
| disadvantage was that you had to run fiber. Maybe it will
| change this year, bot for now 10g was a way to go
| sitkack wrote:
| Would you explain why and how many you would buy? I am sure
| hardkernel is reading this.
| _verandaguy wrote:
| Not OP, but chiming in: I do many workflows with very large
| photo and video files. Having an affordable, widely-available
| single-board-like or single-board-compatible product with a
| 10Gb SFP+ cage would have a measurable impact on how quickly
| I can seek assets from my home NAS.
|
| Right now the cheapest options are to get a 10Gb PCIe card
| from Newegg or similar, which'll run you about $200 where I
| am, and that's _just_ a PCIe extension card.
| adrian_b wrote:
| No, there are cheaper options.
|
| A 10 Gb/s Ethernet NIC from ASUS, with the Aquantia
| controller, is $93 at Amazon.
|
| I use a few of those, bought in 2019, and they work fine.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-XG-C100C-Network-Adapter-
| Single/...
| q3k wrote:
| > Right now the cheapest options are to get a 10Gb PCIe
| card from Newegg or similar, which'll run you about $200
| where I am, and that's just a PCIe extension card.
|
| If you want to go _very_ cheap and dirty you can get some
| FlexibleLOM/PCIe adapters [1] and some HP FlexibleLOM NICs
| [2]. This results in a 2x 10G NIC for around ~$15,
| including the adapter.
|
| [1] - https://github.com/TobleMiner/HPE-FlexibleLOM-adapter
|
| [2] - https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-10GB-530FLR-649869-001-64
| 7579-00...
| mayli wrote:
| Only if you can DIY the adapter, I find it's a little bit
| hard to get pre-made ones. And I am not that confident to
| solder those tiny pins.
| _verandaguy wrote:
| I'm not necessarily going for rock-bottom prices; I
| wouldn't necessarily trust a $15 2x10G NIC to have good
| consistency/stability or thermal management, among other
| concerns.
|
| That said I think there's a market for boards between
| that $15 mark and the $200 I'd have to pay for something
| considerably higher-end.
| stragies wrote:
| Their original price was probably 500+$. They were for HP
| server boards originally. Perhaps they recently EOL-ed an
| entire series.
| q3k wrote:
| $345 list price [1], but yes :)
|
| [1] - https://www.cdw.com/product/hp-reman-
| enet-10gbe-530flr-sfp/3...
| q3k wrote:
| It would make for a good enough edge/home cluster node. Buy 5
| of these, each with two SATA SSDs/HDDs, SFP+ uplink to cheap
| 10G switch [1], run k8s/k3s, might even be able to squeeze in
| Ceph.
|
| 2.5G switches are expensive and rare. If you want to make use
| of multiple links to an L2 ToR, you have to set up LACP which
| is annoying. You could do ECMP for L3 LB instead, but that
| requires an even more expensive switch.
|
| [1] - https://mikrotik.com/product/crs317_1g_16s_rm
|
| EDIT: as for commitment, I'm literally looking to solve the
| problem of 'I want a low power k8s cluster, and I'm okay with
| a switch SPOF' for bgp.wtf's FMT location. If I could buy 5-6
| of these, with 10G uplink, especially ready to rack, I'd
| probably order them today.
| arghwhat wrote:
| 10GBASE-T is not very popular and rather expensive, while
| NBASE-T (2.5/5G) is gaining traction for high speed
| consumer stuff.
|
| SFP+ is cheaper and better, but not exactly common in
| consumer networks where I imagine most low-cost ARM boards
| end up.
| q3k wrote:
| This is not an ARM board, though. I mean it's no
| powerhouse, but definitely good enough for cattle in
| production if you're budget constrained.
| arghwhat wrote:
| Yeah, but they offer what provides most utility for their
| intended target audience first and foremost, and SFP+
| would be inconvenient there (especially as copper
| pluggables ain't free).
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| 10G SFP+ would be more useful IMO too. It's becoming more and
| more common on switch hardware. Seems to me that anyone
| remotely interested in 4x2.5Gbps will be using VLANs on a
| decent switch, so they might as well trunk them on a single
| 10G SFP+ to make things simpler.
| zamadatix wrote:
| I think this targets the case where the device itself is
| the switch/router/main-device/what-have-you not cases the
| device is hanging off a larger, faster, hardware switch. I
| see room for both use paradigms though, a 10G adapter would
| be nifty in addition.
| scottlamb wrote:
| > Too bad it's not a single SFP+ 10G cage, that would be
| actually useful then. :/
|
| You can plug an M.2 to PCIe adapter and a used eBay 10GbE PCIe
| cards into the ODROID-H2+. A quick search showed several folks
| talking about this. eg:
| https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?t=39174 . It'd be nicer
| to have a straight M.2 to SFP+ but oh well.
| noncoml wrote:
| Harkernel has impressive hardware but last time I used it I
| needed to use their own Linux kernel fork.
| pizza234 wrote:
| Which board were you using?
|
| The sell both ARM and x86.
|
| The H2(+) is an x86, and is well-supported by the standard
| Linux.
|
| ARM boards may require kernel forks, instead, so I suspect you
| had a board with this architecture.
| noncoml wrote:
| Yeah, ARM. Sorry, didn't realize H2 was x86.
| rektide wrote:
| This is becoming a super sweet routing platform! $120 board + $50
| add-on card is a little on the pricey side, but ok. I wondered
| how they did it, but ahh, it's an x86 celeron chip, so of course
| there's PCIe. I really hope we start seeing more System-on-Chip
| from ARM &c with PCIe soon. RPi3's ethernet is powered by a
| single lane, which is more than most competitors do! Time to
| raise the stakes a little all!!
|
| But all this.. it just makes me so so so so sad how little wifi
| gear is available to DIY with. If you want to DIY wifi you
| basically have to rely on OpenWRT, which is all hacked routers.
| Support for modern chipsets has been woefully scary bad. We're
| seeing some hopes, some code drops of some semi-modern Qualcomm
| chipsets, but as has been the case for most of the decade,
| Broadcom is totally 100% no-go useless, has no support, no
| drivers, I don't even know if we have a way to any of these
| boards any more.
|
| But relying on prepackaged consumer equipment- it's un-ideal. I'd
| way rather be able to, like this add-on, build something myself.
| The cryptocurrency craze has shown that, in fact, PCIe works
| fairly well over a decent length of USB cable, and Thunderbolt
| mirrors that idea at 10x the price
| point/sophistication/complexity. The idea of having a m.2 card
| with some wifi hardware on it should not be that out there.
|
| Yet there's near to no marketplace for good wifi gear. Compex is
| one of the few/only companies making anything what-so-ever, and
| it's quite expensive.
|
| I've been meaning to try to run a Debian install on my Netgear
| X4S (R7800) router for a long time now. It'll mean, likely,
| trying to compile an OpenWRT & borrowing it's kernel & probably
| some modules. And kind of slap-dash throwing them in-to a Debian
| distro, and either uboot or perhaps having to kexec from OpenWRT
| into Debian. I'd really like to have a less exotic system to
| build wifi with. For now, my increasingly aged router continues
| to be one of the best options available for wifi that gives me
| any power or control. It's scary having such radically
| increasingly consumerized options dominate. It's scary to me how
| many techs around me in the world are happy to just buy more
| expensive fancy gear, go get Ubiquiti, rather than invest
| themselves in such a core critical foundational social
| technology. I want very much there to be some kind of call to
| action, some way to rally, but hardware keeps getting further &
| further away. This is the actual story of Big Tech that scares
| me, because it restricts what is possible. What big social
| networks do? Just go do something else online. But wifi? That is
| the last & most important mile of connectivity, to us & those
| around us. I know it doesn't entirely make sense, but it's
| something I think geeks ought to feel is important & ought to
| invest themselves, not just their money in. I'm tired of being
| well served by enterprise gear in the home, but not serving
| ourselves.
| adrian_b wrote:
| If you want to also have a WiFi access point, besides an
| Ethernet switch/router, there are 2 choices.
|
| You can use an Intel NUC or similar, which has the perfectly
| supported and high-speed Intel WiFi, together with several USB
| to Ethernet adapters, to have both a WiFi AP and multiple
| Ethernet ports. That is what I am currently using.
|
| Or, for a cheaper device, you can use Odroid H2 or something
| similar, with an USB WiFi dongle, taking care to select a model
| that has WiFi drivers for whatever operating system you use.
| rektide wrote:
| i should try a more modern intel wifi chip, yes, but in my
| experience these _client_ wifi chips make really limited
| access points, with not good range, and most noticably have
| critical/severe/cripplingly bad performance with multiple
| clients.
|
| many usb chipsets straight up refuse to allow more than a
| handful of clients. i think my Alfa wireless usb kit with
| realtek chipsets refuse more than 7 connections. other kit
| just has multi-second jitter creep in every now and then, in
| a relatively un-hostile wifi environment.
|
| it absolutely 100% _should_ be possible & easy & work well to
| do either of these options. perhaps with current gen modern
| chipsets things are better. here, alas, things fail again,
| because it seems many modern wifi chipsets don't have
| available linux drivers at all, much less competent ap mode
| drivers. "good silicon with bad drivers is just expensive
| sand"
|
| go to a reliable respected wifi vendor like rokland[1] and
| look around: how many of these devices are <2 years old? <3
| years old? many of the best sellers are 5+ years old. good
| wifi is becoming frighteningly scarce.
|
| this is very common advice you've presented, but i've found
| it to be woefully critically unacceptable. just incredibly
| bad wifi. we are doing a mis-service to people telling them
| these are ok options. i've tried real hard to make these
| work, across years, bought dozens of devices, & it's been
| unbelievably unsatisfactory. i would strongly recommend
| against taking @adrian_b's listed options, in emphatic terms.
| do not do this to yourself.
|
| but please, make this a future we can do. as i begged for,
| please, we need some folks like Compex putting modern product
| on the market unbundled. we need some drivers. for modern
| wifi. that we can use. please. please.
|
| [1] https://store.rokland.com/
| cpascal wrote:
| Interesting. This combined with the H2+ could make a nice
| wireguard VPN gateway for a home network.
|
| The H2+ is a quad-core 2.3 GHz intel board. Anyone know if that
| would be enough juice to handle a gigabit wireguard link?
| trillic wrote:
| Absolutely. My Linksys router with a 4 year old ARM Chip can
| handle about 800 mb/s.
|
| https://routerchart.com/linksys/linksys-wrt3200acm-wrt3200ac...
| noncoml wrote:
| Hardkernel folks: Amazing product. Please consider having a
| warehouses in every continent. Or some resellers. $50+ for
| shipping on a $120 product is a bit too steep.
| walterbell wrote:
| Any chance of an AMD-based x86 device from hardkernel?
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