[HN Gopher] Static Web Hosting on the Intel N150: FreeBSD, Smart...
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Static Web Hosting on the Intel N150: FreeBSD, SmartOS, NetBSD,
OpenBSD and Linu
Author : t-3
Score : 92 points
Date : 2025-11-19 17:22 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (it-notes.dragas.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (it-notes.dragas.net)
| artimaeis wrote:
| I love how capable these tiny N150 machines are. I've got one
| running Debian for my home media and backup solution and it's
| never stuttered. I'd be curious about exactly what machine
| they're testing with. I've got the Beelink ME mini running that
| media server. And I use a Beelink EQ14 as a kind of jump box to
| remote into my work desktop.
| transpute wrote:
| Would you mind sharing the Linux hardware platform security
| report ("fwupdmgr security") for those Beelink boxes, e.g. what
| is enabled/disabled by the OEM? N150 SoC supports Intel TXT,
| which was previously limited to $800+ vPro devices, but it
| requires BIOS support from OEMs like Beelink. Depending on HSI
| status, OSS coreboot might be feasible on some N150 boxes.
|
| https://fwupd.github.io/libfwupdplugin/hsi.html
| draga79 wrote:
| It's a Minisforum UN150P
| transpute wrote:
| HSI report on that box would be useful.
| craftkiller wrote:
| I'm not the author but my parents have pretty much decided they
| will never use a game console newer than the nintendo wii, but
| so far two of their wiis have died. Since no one is making wiis
| anymore, I decided to future-proof their gaming by setting them
| up with a mele quieter 4c [0], with the official wii bluetooth
| module attached over USB for perfect wiimote compatibility,
| running the dolphin emulator. Not every game runs perfectly,
| but every game they want to play runs perfectly AND it is
| smaller, silent, and consumes less power than the real wii.
|
| [0] My experience with that mini computer: I bought two. The
| first one was great, but the 2nd one had coil whine so I had to
| return it. Aside from the whine, I love the box. If I could
| guarantee I wouldn't get whine I'd buy another today.
| toast0 wrote:
| I'd love to see benchmarks that hit CPU or NIC limits; the HTTPS
| test hit CPU limits on many of the configurations, but inquiring
| minds want to know how much can you crank out with FreeBSD.
| Anyway, overload behavior is sometimes very interesting (probably
| less so for static https). May well need more load generation
| nodes though; load generation is often harder than handling load.
|
| OTOH, maybe this is a bad test on purpose? the blogger doesn't
| like running these tests, so do a bad one and hope someone else
| is baited into running a better test?
| craftkiller wrote:
| I don't see any mention of enabling kTLS (TLS in the kernel). I'd
| suggest re-running the benchmark with kTLS enabled:
| https://www.f5.com/company/blog/nginx/improving-nginx-perfor...
|
| Also it doesn't look like they enabled sendfile() in the nginx
| conf:
| https://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_core_module.html#sen...
|
| The combination of sendfile and kTLS should avoid round-trips to
| userland while sending files.
| jms703 wrote:
| True, but the other OS's don't suppor that. If the goal is out
| of the box testing, kTLS would not be representative of that.
| draga79 wrote:
| Exactly. That's why I didn't enable it
| whartung wrote:
| But that said, it would be interesting to see the different
| systems after a tuning pass. Both as an example of
| capability, but also as an mechanic to discuss tuning
| options available to the users.
|
| Mind, the whole "its slow get new hardware" comes from the
| fact that getting another 10% by tuning "won't fix the
| problem". By the time folks feel the sluggish performance,
| you're probably not looking for another 10 points. The 10
| points matter at scale to lower overall hardware costs. 10%
| less hardware with a 1000 servers is a different problem
| with 10% less hardware with just one.
|
| But, still, a tuning blog would be interesting, at least to
| me.
| camkego wrote:
| Just my two cents, as an end-user choosing a OS to use on an
| N150 to do static web hosting, I would sure like to know if
| those features make a meaningful difference.
|
| But I also understand, that looking at that might have beyond
| the scope of the article.
| ehutch79 wrote:
| That makes no sense. Why would you not be testing with
| optimized hosting.
|
| If one of the OSs has features that improve performance, why
| would you not include that in the comparison?
| toast0 wrote:
| IMHO, it might be worthwhile for NGINX to default to
| sendfile+kTLS enabled where appropriate. Maybe the potential
| for negative experience is too high.
|
| I know sendfile originally had some sharp edges, but I'm not
| sure how sharp it still is? You would need to use sendfile
| only for plain http or https with kTLS, and maybe that's too
| complex? Apache lists some issues [1] with sendfile and
| defaults to off as well; but I don't know how many sites are
| still serving 2GB+ files on Itanium. :P AFAIK, lighttpd added
| SSL_sendfile support on by default 3 years ago, and you can
| turn it off if you want.
|
| I think there's also some complexity with kTLS on
| implementations of kTLS that limit protocol version and
| cipher choices, if it's on by choice it makes sense to refuse
| to operate with cipher selection and kTLS cipher availability
| that conflict, but if kTLS is on by default, you probably
| need to use traditional TLS for connections where the client
| selects a cipher that's not eligible for kTLS. Maybe that's
| extra code that nobody wants to write; maybe the
| inconsistency of performance depending on client cipher
| choice is unacceptable. But it seems like a worthwhile thing
| to me (but I didn't make a PR, did I?)
|
| [1] https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/core.html#enablesen
| dfi...
| matthewhartmans wrote:
| Love this! I have been running a N150 with Debian 13 as my daily
| driver and super impressed! For ~$150 it packs a punch!
| transpute wrote:
| Could you recommend make/model? Quality seems variable at those
| price points.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The Topton/CWWK boxes are consistently decent. Best choice if
| you want fanless.
| sedawkgrep wrote:
| For mini pcs, Beelink probably has the best support. I've
| owned a few and had one replaced under warranty.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| I didn't see a size of the test page as I went through (Did I
| miss it?) and I think in this case it potentially matters. A 2.5
| gbps link can do ~280 MB/s, which at 63k requests is just 4.55KB
| a request. That could easily be a single page and saturating the
| connection link, explaining the clustering at that value.
| fabioyy wrote:
| The numbers seems to be too much near 65535 to be a coincidence.
|
| are you making the request from a single IP address source? are
| you aware of the limit of using the same source IP address for
| the same destination IP address ( and port )? ( each connection
| can have only a unique source address and source port to the
| destination, maxing out in source 65535 ports ) for the same
| destination
| Neil44 wrote:
| I wonder if that's why the cpu is idle for part of the time,
| it's waiting for sockets to become free.
| toast0 wrote:
| I would expect http persistent connections (keep-alive) at
| these rates. It's very hard to get 64 k connections/second from
| a single IP to a single server ip:port without heavily tuning
| the client, which they don't mention doing. They're only
| testing for 10 seconds, but still, you'd need to clear all the
| closed connections out of TIME_WAIT pretty darn quick in order
| to re-use each port 10 times.
| klipklop wrote:
| Love these N150 systems. I wonder if the RAM/SSD/misc shortages
| are going to make these humble $140 boxes like $300+ soon.
| transpute wrote:
| Some N150 systems have integrated LPDDR5 from Chinese memory
| suppliers, who have been increasing production capacity, unlike
| Korean memory suppliers who have decreased production and
| increased prices in the face of higher demand. More NAND
| supplier competition needed.
| klipklop wrote:
| That is good news, but I have seem some sellers already jump
| their price +$100 on Amazon. Perhaps just price gouging to
| take advantage. I might pick up another if I can get it for
| ~$140.
| Neil44 wrote:
| Imagine what a big piece of iron could do, it makes me think of
| the stories recently of people who came out of cloud and run
| everything of one or few bare metal hosts.
| spankibalt wrote:
| Sucks that that there's no ECC-RAM model. A phone-sized x86 slab,
| as opposed to those impractical mini-PC/Mini-Mac boxes, that one
| could carry around and connect to a powerbank of similar size,
| and/or various types of screens (including a smartphone itself),
| would make for a great ultramobile setup.
| zokier wrote:
| If you want relatively small low-power box with ECC, checkout
| Asustor AS6804T. It is nominally a NAS but really you can use
| it for anything you want, it is just an x86-64 server with some
| disk bays. You also get nice 2x10GbE, which is rare with these
| minipcs
| LTL_FTC wrote:
| If it had a a few more cores, something like this would make
| for a great node in a distributed system like k8s or ceph for
| a homelab. At the asking price, however, one could also cross
| shop an HP micro server gen11.
| transpute wrote:
| Bring back the Intel Compute Stick?
| https://liliputing.com/this-cheap-intel-n150-mini-pc-is-smal...
|
| Arm RK3399 SoC is blob free and some (Pinephone Pro, N4S,
| Chrome tablet) devices are small enough for sidecar usage.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Is there a guide somewhere to what low power CPUs exist in these
| new mini PC things? I feel like I'm increasingly out of touch.
| baq wrote:
| the N100 family has been the raspberry pi host killer for me,
| migrated to one from an rpi4, couldn't be happier.
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(page generated 2025-11-19 23:00 UTC)