[Cerowrt-devel] WNDR alternative for higher capacity

[Cerowrt-devel] WNDR alternative for higher capacity

[Toke Høiland-Jørgensen]

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So I've hit the capacity limit for the WNDR3800 for upstream bandwidth:
http://files.toke.dk/bufferbloat/data/karlstad/rrul-2014-02-08T195914.021795.cerowrt_3_10_26_fresh_boot_no_sqm.png

This is without sqm enabled, even. When I plug in my laptop instead, I
get a smooth 100Mbps in both directions. So I'm now looking for
alternatives to act as router. Any suggestions? I'd prefer dual-band,
dual radios; similar to what the WNDR has. And has to be able to run
OpenWRT, of course; in which case I'll try to get Cerowrt running on it. :)

One possibility is getting something like a zbox:
http://www.zotac.com/products/mini-pcs/zbox/product/zbox/detail/zbox-id91-1.html

Or a shuttle:
http://uk.shuttle.com/products/productsSpec?productId=1718

However those might be a bit overkill. Also I can't seem to find any
info on what wlan card they feature. Does anyone know?

-Toke

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Re: [Cerowrt-devel] WNDR alternative for higher capacity

[Dave Taht]

On Sat, Feb 8, 2014 at 1:22 PM, Toke Høiland-Jørgensen <toke@toke.dk> wrote:
> So I've hit the capacity limit for the WNDR3800 for upstream bandwidth:
> http://files.toke.dk/bufferbloat/data/karlstad/rrul-2014-02-08T195914.021795.cerowrt_3_10_26_fresh_boot_no_sqm.png
>
> This is without sqm enabled, even. When I plug in my laptop instead, I
> get a smooth 100Mbps in both directions. So I'm now looking for
> alternatives to act as router. Any suggestions? I'd prefer dual-band,

What you are seeing mostly is the impact of the firewall rules.
Without firewall rules I can get ~330Mbit.

> dual radios; similar to what the WNDR has. And has to be able to run
> OpenWRT, of course; in which case I'll try to get Cerowrt running on it. :)
>
> One possibility is getting something like a zbox:
> http://www.zotac.com/products/mini-pcs/zbox/product/zbox/detail/zbox-id91-1.html
>
> Or a shuttle:
> http://uk.shuttle.com/products/productsSpec?productId=1718
>
> However those might be a bit overkill. Also I can't seem to find any
> info on what wlan card they feature. Does anyone know?

Probably a lousy one.

> -Toke
>
> _______________________________________________
> Cerowrt-devel mailing list
> Cerowrt-devel@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/cerowrt-devel
>



-- 
Dave Täht

Fixing bufferbloat with cerowrt: http://www.teklibre.com/cerowrt/subscribe.html

Re: [Cerowrt-devel] WNDR alternative for higher capacity

[Toke Høiland-Jørgensen]

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Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com> writes:

> What you are seeing mostly is the impact of the firewall rules.
> Without firewall rules I can get ~330Mbit.

Well I kinda need a firewall...

> Probably a lousy one.

For the zbox all I can find is that it's an intel 802.11ac chipset...

At least for the shuttle box it's a minipci card; so presumably it's
replaceable if it's lousy... What's a good minipci card?

-Toke

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Re: [Cerowrt-devel] WNDR alternative for higher capacity

[Fred Stratton]

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http://www.scan.co.uk/products/killer-1202-mini-pcie-300mbps-80211g-n-24-5-ghz-dual-band-wireless-adaptor

Price has fallen considerably. Killer use Atheros SoC AFAIK.


On 08/02/14 23:22, Toke Høiland-Jørgensen wrote:
> Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> What you are seeing mostly is the impact of the firewall rules.
>> Without firewall rules I can get ~330Mbit.
> Well I kinda need a firewall...
>
>> Probably a lousy one.
> For the zbox all I can find is that it's an intel 802.11ac chipset...
>
> At least for the shuttle box it's a minipci card; so presumably it's
> replaceable if it's lousy... What's a good minipci card?
>
> -Toke
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Cerowrt-devel mailing list
> Cerowrt-devel@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/cerowrt-devel


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Re: [Cerowrt-devel] WNDR alternative for higher capacity

[Bill Merriam]

On Sat, 08 Feb 2014 22:22:30 +0100
"Toke Høiland-Jørgensen" <toke@toke.dk> wrote:

> So I've hit the capacity limit for the WNDR3800 for upstream
> bandwidth:
> http://files.toke.dk/bufferbloat/data/karlstad/rrul-2014-02-08T195914.021795.cerowrt_3_10_26_fresh_boot_no_sqm.png
> 
> This is without sqm enabled, even. When I plug in my laptop instead, I
> get a smooth 100Mbps in both directions. So I'm now looking for
> alternatives to act as router. Any suggestions? I'd prefer dual-band,
> dual radios; similar to what the WNDR has. And has to be able to run
> OpenWRT, of course; in which case I'll try to get Cerowrt running on
> it. :)
> 
> One possibility is getting something like a zbox:
> http://www.zotac.com/products/mini-pcs/zbox/product/zbox/detail/zbox-id91-1.html
> 
> Or a shuttle:
> http://uk.shuttle.com/products/productsSpec?productId=1718
> 
> However those might be a bit overkill. Also I can't seem to find any
> info on what wlan card they feature. Does anyone know?
> 
> -Toke

The announced but not yet available Linksys WRT1900AC might meet your
needs.  The press release says they are providing advance copies of the
hardware to the openwrt developers and linksys expects openwrt to ready
when the hardware is released in "Spring 2014".

http://www.linksys.com/en-us/press/releases/2014-01-06_Linksys_wrt_revolutionizes_wireless_networking

It seems cerowrt developers need early hardware also.

Bill

Re: [Cerowrt-devel] WNDR alternative for higher capacity

[Toke Høiland-Jørgensen]

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Bill Merriam <lists@billmerriam.com> writes:

> The announced but not yet available Linksys WRT1900AC might meet your
> needs. The press release says they are providing advance copies of the
> hardware to the openwrt developers and linksys expects openwrt to
> ready when the hardware is released in "Spring 2014".

I think it might, and I considered that; but got stuck on the "announced
but not yet available" part...

> It seems cerowrt developers need early hardware also.

Well, maybe I'll try to convince someone at linksys that this is the
case; any ideas about who I should email?

-Toke

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Re: [Cerowrt-devel] WNDR alternative for higher capacity

[Dave Taht]

Rich Brown had contacted linksys. I don't know the current status.

So far we're not impressed with their follow through, or their
announcement, or their hardware. They seemed to think that merely
announcing they'd work with openwrt precluded things like, actually
contacting the openwrt devs to talk about their plans. This is the
rough equivalent of someone announcing a product that Apple would
support, without Apple;s actual endorsement.

Certainly linksys was a powerful brand and many folk have warm
feelings about their breakthrough new products in the early 00s, but
the company was a gutted shell long before it was sold off.

Over the past year...

I have had plenty of "early hardware" from various vendors to
evaluate, all rejected thus far, primarily due to the binary blob
problem. Some had pretty good kernel support, but rejected (like the
mirabox) for heat and ancient kernel issues as well, and a couple got
rejected because they couldn't push even half a gigabit.

It's a rather long list of unacceptable hardware at this point. I can
try to sort through what I can and cannot publish and get it out here
at some  point.

Currently on the top of the "not so-horrible-I'm going-to-barf list"
is the latest arm based atheros CPU chipset and mildly below that is
the mindspeed stuff. Mindspeed got bought recently and that's taken it
out of the running until they get their internal processes sorted out
or sold again.

The atheros chipset is still hotly smoking off the fab... I've held a
dev board in my hands but they took it away from me real fast. :)

The octeon was a contender for a while but with the death of mips it's
time to leave that arch. The armada 370s are not bad, the imx6 stuff
is not bad (there's been some good changes on the imx6 I should look
at it again)

That's just for cpu.

In all cases from all vendors the 802.11ac radio code is in binary
blobs, and barely works in the first place. The ath10k work is
proceeding in public at least, but they are still battling with
blowing up on the PCIe bus and other
severely low level problems. Ath10k support HAS landed in openwrt....

At the moment what I think I'm trying to do is divide the problem in half,
find a decent X86 based box with mini-pcie support, and solve the
gigE problem that way, and the wifi problem separately.

The cost goes way up... The closest I've found so far to what I wanted
was the latest nuc with sata support. Still want two hardwired
ethernet ports which it doesn't have....



On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 10:51 AM, Toke Høiland-Jørgensen <toke@toke.dk> wrote:
> Bill Merriam <lists@billmerriam.com> writes:
>
>> The announced but not yet available Linksys WRT1900AC might meet your
>> needs. The press release says they are providing advance copies of the
>> hardware to the openwrt developers and linksys expects openwrt to
>> ready when the hardware is released in "Spring 2014".
>
> I think it might, and I considered that; but got stuck on the "announced
> but not yet available" part...
>
>> It seems cerowrt developers need early hardware also.
>
> Well, maybe I'll try to convince someone at linksys that this is the
> case; any ideas about who I should email?
>
> -Toke
>
> _______________________________________________
> Cerowrt-devel mailing list
> Cerowrt-devel@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/cerowrt-devel
>



-- 
Dave Täht

Fixing bufferbloat with cerowrt: http://www.teklibre.com/cerowrt/subscribe.html

Re: [Cerowrt-devel] WNDR alternative for higher capacity

[Toke Høiland-Jørgensen]

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Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com> writes:

> At the moment what I think I'm trying to do is divide the problem in
> half, find a decent X86 based box with mini-pcie support, and solve
> the gigE problem that way, and the wifi problem separately.

Right, I was getting that impression.

> The cost goes way up... The closest I've found so far to what I wanted
> was the latest nuc with sata support. Still want two hardwired
> ethernet ports which it doesn't have....

Actually, the Shuttle DS47 barebone seems to fit the bill on that score:
http://global.shuttle.com/products/productsDetail?productId=1718

It's a celeron sandy bridge chip on the NM70 express chipset. Two
minipcie slots, one half size and one full size. It comes with a wlan
card in the half-size port, but can't find anywhere where it says which
one. Also it has a slot for a 2.5" drive (so you don't have to use the
big minipcie for msata), and dual Realtek 8111G Gbit ethernet. Even has
two external serial ports. The only thing missing is external antennae,
I think.

Also not *that* pricey (compared to other x86 boxes). I can get it for
~$290 retail here in Sweden (without disk and RAM)... Was going to go
for that unless someone comes up with a better idea :)

-Toke

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Re: [Cerowrt-devel] WNDR alternative for higher capacity

[Fred Stratton]

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http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shuttle-Ultra-DS47-Barebone-System/dp/B00DK06L6O

Clicking on the pictures reveals a Realtek half-height wireless card.


On 09/02/14 19:18, Toke Høiland-Jørgensen wrote:
> Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> At the moment what I think I'm trying to do is divide the problem in
>> half, find a decent X86 based box with mini-pcie support, and solve
>> the gigE problem that way, and the wifi problem separately.
> Right, I was getting that impression.
>
>> The cost goes way up... The closest I've found so far to what I wanted
>> was the latest nuc with sata support. Still want two hardwired
>> ethernet ports which it doesn't have....
> Actually, the Shuttle DS47 barebone seems to fit the bill on that score:
> http://global.shuttle.com/products/productsDetail?productId=1718
>
> It's a celeron sandy bridge chip on the NM70 express chipset. Two
> minipcie slots, one half size and one full size. It comes with a wlan
> card in the half-size port, but can't find anywhere where it says which
> one. Also it has a slot for a 2.5" drive (so you don't have to use the
> big minipcie for msata), and dual Realtek 8111G Gbit ethernet. Even has
> two external serial ports. The only thing missing is external antennae,
> I think.
>
> Also not *that* pricey (compared to other x86 boxes). I can get it for
> ~$290 retail here in Sweden (without disk and RAM)... Was going to go
> for that unless someone comes up with a better idea :)
>
> -Toke
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Cerowrt-devel mailing list
> Cerowrt-devel@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/cerowrt-devel


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Re: [Cerowrt-devel] WNDR alternative for higher capacity

[Fred Stratton]

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Before you spend money, perhaps I should point out that Shuttle hardware 
has a reputation for poor reliability.


On 09/02/14 19:38, Fred Stratton wrote:
> http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shuttle-Ultra-DS47-Barebone-System/dp/B00DK06L6O
>
> Clicking on the pictures reveals a Realtek half-height wireless card.
>
>
> On 09/02/14 19:18, Toke Høiland-Jørgensen wrote:
>> Dave Taht<dave.taht@gmail.com>  writes:
>>
>>> At the moment what I think I'm trying to do is divide the problem in
>>> half, find a decent X86 based box with mini-pcie support, and solve
>>> the gigE problem that way, and the wifi problem separately.
>> Right, I was getting that impression.
>>
>>> The cost goes way up... The closest I've found so far to what I wanted
>>> was the latest nuc with sata support. Still want two hardwired
>>> ethernet ports which it doesn't have....
>> Actually, the Shuttle DS47 barebone seems to fit the bill on that score:
>> http://global.shuttle.com/products/productsDetail?productId=1718
>>
>> It's a celeron sandy bridge chip on the NM70 express chipset. Two
>> minipcie slots, one half size and one full size. It comes with a wlan
>> card in the half-size port, but can't find anywhere where it says which
>> one. Also it has a slot for a 2.5" drive (so you don't have to use the
>> big minipcie for msata), and dual Realtek 8111G Gbit ethernet. Even has
>> two external serial ports. The only thing missing is external antennae,
>> I think.
>>
>> Also not *that* pricey (compared to other x86 boxes). I can get it for
>> ~$290 retail here in Sweden (without disk and RAM)... Was going to go
>> for that unless someone comes up with a better idea :)
>>
>> -Toke
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Cerowrt-devel mailing list
>> Cerowrt-devel@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/cerowrt-devel
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Cerowrt-devel mailing list
> Cerowrt-devel@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/cerowrt-devel


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Re: [Cerowrt-devel] WNDR alternative for higher capacity

[Dave Taht]

The problem I ran into on the NUC's was that all the 802.11ac cards
are presently full-length, and the msata lines had only been run to
the full
length slot rather than the half length ones.

So I'd planned on a tiny msata card and the big fat ath10k card...

http://snapon.lab.bufferbloat.net/~d/blog/nuc.html

It seems likely that msata is configured the same way on this box.

It bothers me to have to use a msata card at all, to do what we want
only needs 16MB of flash, not 16GB of flash. The onboard bios flash
on these x86 boxes is probably getting close to 16MB already...

I don't know if the realtek ethernet chips got working BQL support yet.





On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 11:38 AM, Fred Stratton <fredstratton@imap.cc> wrote:
> http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shuttle-Ultra-DS47-Barebone-System/dp/B00DK06L6O
>
> Clicking on the pictures reveals a Realtek half-height wireless card.
>
>
>
> On 09/02/14 19:18, Toke Høiland-Jørgensen wrote:
>
> Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com> writes:
>
> At the moment what I think I'm trying to do is divide the problem in
> half, find a decent X86 based box with mini-pcie support, and solve
> the gigE problem that way, and the wifi problem separately.
>
> Right, I was getting that impression.
>
> The cost goes way up... The closest I've found so far to what I wanted
> was the latest nuc with sata support. Still want two hardwired
> ethernet ports which it doesn't have....
>
> Actually, the Shuttle DS47 barebone seems to fit the bill on that score:
> http://global.shuttle.com/products/productsDetail?productId=1718
>
> It's a celeron sandy bridge chip on the NM70 express chipset. Two
> minipcie slots, one half size and one full size. It comes with a wlan
> card in the half-size port, but can't find anywhere where it says which
> one. Also it has a slot for a 2.5" drive (so you don't have to use the
> big minipcie for msata), and dual Realtek 8111G Gbit ethernet. Even has
> two external serial ports. The only thing missing is external antennae,
> I think.
>
> Also not *that* pricey (compared to other x86 boxes). I can get it for
> ~$290 retail here in Sweden (without disk and RAM)... Was going to go
> for that unless someone comes up with a better idea :)
>
> -Toke
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Cerowrt-devel mailing list
> Cerowrt-devel@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/cerowrt-devel
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Cerowrt-devel mailing list
> Cerowrt-devel@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/cerowrt-devel
>



-- 
Dave Täht

Fixing bufferbloat with cerowrt: http://www.teklibre.com/cerowrt/subscribe.html

Re: [Cerowrt-devel] WNDR alternative for higher capacity

[Toke Høiland-Jørgensen]

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Fred Stratton <fredstratton@imap.cc> writes:

> http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shuttle-Ultra-DS47-Barebone-System/dp/B00DK06L6O
>
> Clicking on the pictures reveals a Realtek half-height wireless card.

Yeah, as far as I can tell that says RTL8188CE on there; Google is not
very helpful on that front, though.

> Before you spend money, perhaps I should point out that Shuttle
> hardware has a reputation for poor reliability.

Noted, thanks.

> The problem I ran into on the NUC's was that all the 802.11ac cards
> are presently full-length, and the msata lines had only been run to
> the full length slot rather than the half length ones.

Well I can live without 802.11ac for the time being. However, the
Shuttle data sheet has this paragraph:

> DS47 features two Mini PCI Expess expansion slots which can easily
> accessed by removing the appropriate bay cover. One slot supports half
> size cards and is already occupied with a WLAN card. The other slot also
> supports full size cards and can be used either for a Mini PCIe card or
> for a mSATA (Mini Serial ATA) card, which is a Solid State Drive (SSD)
> in a compact Mini PCIe card form factor.

Which I take to mean that if you use the 2.5" bay for storage, you can
use the full-size minipcie for other purposes.
 
> It bothers me to have to use a msata card at all, to do what we want
> only needs 16MB of flash, not 16GB of flash. The onboard bios flash on
> these x86 boxes is probably getting close to 16MB already...

Well I was going to run it as a file server as well; probably not
running openwrt, even (though not sure about that just yet).

> I don't know if the realtek ethernet chips got working BQL support
> yet.

Seeing as I'm going to need htb anyways, I can also live with that...

-Toke

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Re: [Cerowrt-devel] WNDR alternative for higher capacity

[Dave Taht]

I should probably mention that at the tippity top of my list is:

http://www.adapteva.com/

That (with a second ethernet port and pcie slot) has enormous
potential, to move packet processing into either hardware (fat FPGA),
or the totally open co-processor, and offers the potential to get some
software defined radio stuff done.

That plan unfortunately doesn't meet a few short-term goals... is
unfunded... and will take a long time to produce results.

Middle term is to get our stuff pushed up to mainline and let the
market figure out what to put it on.

I'd like to find a decent based box for some future work. I hate
seeing a base price of 400 bucks or so on a x86 based one, though I
guess to get over 10x the network performance, 4x the base cost is not
too much to bear.


On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 11:56 AM, Toke Høiland-Jørgensen <toke@toke.dk> wrote:
> Fred Stratton <fredstratton@imap.cc> writes:
>
>> http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shuttle-Ultra-DS47-Barebone-System/dp/B00DK06L6O
>>
>> Clicking on the pictures reveals a Realtek half-height wireless card.
>
> Yeah, as far as I can tell that says RTL8188CE on there; Google is not
> very helpful on that front, though.
>
>> Before you spend money, perhaps I should point out that Shuttle
>> hardware has a reputation for poor reliability.
>
> Noted, thanks.
>
>> The problem I ran into on the NUC's was that all the 802.11ac cards
>> are presently full-length, and the msata lines had only been run to
>> the full length slot rather than the half length ones.
>
> Well I can live without 802.11ac for the time being. However, the
> Shuttle data sheet has this paragraph:
>
>> DS47 features two Mini PCI Expess expansion slots which can easily
>> accessed by removing the appropriate bay cover. One slot supports half
>> size cards and is already occupied with a WLAN card. The other slot also
>> supports full size cards and can be used either for a Mini PCIe card or
>> for a mSATA (Mini Serial ATA) card, which is a Solid State Drive (SSD)
>> in a compact Mini PCIe card form factor.
>
> Which I take to mean that if you use the 2.5" bay for storage, you can
> use the full-size minipcie for other purposes.
>
>> It bothers me to have to use a msata card at all, to do what we want
>> only needs 16MB of flash, not 16GB of flash. The onboard bios flash on
>> these x86 boxes is probably getting close to 16MB already...
>
> Well I was going to run it as a file server as well; probably not
> running openwrt, even (though not sure about that just yet).
>
>> I don't know if the realtek ethernet chips got working BQL support
>> yet.
>
> Seeing as I'm going to need htb anyways, I can also live with that...
>
> -Toke
>
> _______________________________________________
> Cerowrt-devel mailing list
> Cerowrt-devel@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/cerowrt-devel
>



-- 
Dave Täht

Fixing bufferbloat with cerowrt: http://www.teklibre.com/cerowrt/subscribe.html

Re: [Cerowrt-devel] WNDR alternative for higher capacity

[Rich Brown]

On Feb 9, 2014, at 2:06 PM, Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com> wrote:

> Rich Brown had contacted linksys. I don't know the current status.

I pinged them in mid-January, and got back a "We're really busy right now, but will get back to you soon..." 
response. I will follow-up this week.

> Dave Täht also wrote:
> So far we're not impressed with their follow through, or their
> announcement, or their hardware. They seemed to think that merely
> announcing they'd work with openwrt precluded things like, actually
> contacting the openwrt devs to talk about their plans. This is the
> rough equivalent of someone announcing a product that Apple would
> support, without Apple;s actual endorsement.

I will include this in my communication to see if they care about this perception.

Best,

Rich