[NNagain] upgrading old routers to modern, secure FOSS

[Dave Taht]

On Mon, Oct 23, 2023 at 10:44 AM le berger des photons via Nnagain
<nnagain at lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>
> you've convinced me to go see libre qos.  thanks.

Thank you, but that was not my intent. I was actually trying to course
correct the growing QoE industry and their ISP customers to be
measuring and deploying the right things at the routers themselves,
and keep up to date with events. I had been patiently trying to find
folk with clue on this otherwise excellent WISP talk thread:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/wisptalk/permalink/2234396776891325/

(it is a really great group of network operators, btw) over the week..

And it was really great, as by the end of it we had established that
fq_codel was a key part of everyone´s (ubnt, bequant/cambium, preseem,
LibreQos´s "secret sauce") and I had a chance to communicate that we
had fixed a fairly large bug^H^H^H misfeature in codel in 2018 in CAKE
and did not know who to tell about it. I have a long list of vendors
that have listed fq_codel or CAKE as part of their products now, that
I reached out to some effect over the past few years, getting mikrotik
to backport some stuff in particular to their 5.7 kernel release from
5.15.

Sometimes tho I get back the blithe dismissal and I have to play my
theme song to recover.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGzUTrnqEDA

It bothers me to know that for the next 15 years, that bug will be
still shipping in billions of "new" products, leveraging old kernels,
that people will use. Poor Van Jacobson had identified many problems
with his 90s RED idea, took 16 years to find a fix, and is still
waiting for even one big vendor to make it available in silicon. And
so it goes. I am getting better at just accepting things as they are
and trying just to fix what I can.

Another song... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMj-icLHiw4

>
> On Mon, Oct 23, 2023 at 7:04 PM Dave Taht via Nnagain <nnagain at lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>
>> I loved that this guy and his ISP burned a couple weeks learning how
>> to build openwrt, built something exactly to the need, *had it work
>> the first time* and are in progress to update in place 200+ routers to
>> better router software, that just works, with videoconferencing, IPv6
>> support, and OTA functionality. No need for a truck roll, and while
>> the available bandwidth deep in these mountains in Mexico is meager,
>> it is now enough for most purposes.
>>
>> https://blog.nafiux.com/posts/cnpilot_r190w_openwrt_bufferbloat_fqcodel_cake/
>>
>> I have no idea how many of this model routers were sold or are still
>> deployed (?), but the modest up front cost of this sort of development
>> dwarves that of deployment. Ongoing maintenance is a problem, but at
>> least they are in a position now to rapidly respond to CVEs and other
>> problems when they happen, having "seized control of the methods of
>> computation" again.
>>
>> OpenWrt is known to run on 1700 different models, already, (with easy
>> ports to obscure ones like this box) - going back over a decade in
>> some cases.
>>
>> Another favorite story of mine was the ISP in New Zealand that
>> deployed LibreQos and had all their support calls (from gamers and
>> videoconferencers) cease overnight. The support tech, formerly drowned
>> in angst from the users, set to work automating an reflashing 600 old
>> agw routers they had "retired" on the shelf, and then distributing
>> them to customers as extenders because the wifi finally worked right
>> with the fq_codel stuff now in that release.
>>
>> I feel like I am tooting my own horn here a bit too much, but solving
>> the right problems like MTTR, MTBF, bufferbloat, and taking back
>> control of your software infrastructure while being able to customize
>> it for purpose, and turning what otherwise would be ewaste into
>> something that will last a decade more, is my inner "green", my inner
>> stewart brand.
>>
>> Compare that to so many others being marketed to, to death, that buy
>> the latest (and often inferior) thing, every few months, perpetually
>> fooled by promises that do not pay off in the field, and often, really
>> lousy MTBF. Good embedded software takes many years to develop, say,
>> oh, 7, while the hardware cycle is closer to 2, nowadays, and requires
>> many eyeballs to fully debug and get to lots of 9s of reliability.
>>
>> Back when I was even more radical about good, open, embedded, software
>> than now, I used to say: "Friends don't let friends run factory
>> firmware.". I do wish somehow the long term maintence costs of
>> hardware with a decade plus service lifetime would be adaquately
>> covered. Insurance? by law? a formal setaside from the purchase price?
>> Otherwise we run the risk of turning the world's internet into a giant
>> toxic waste dump that will require Superfund levels of cleanup, one
>> day, and ever more contributions to trillions of dollars of fraud, and
>> persistent actors having first broken down the front door, perpetually
>> on the inside, wreaking more havoc. Somehow preventing that mess, up
>> front, seems cheaper.
>>
>> Take this string of vulns:
>> https://www.google.com/search?q=cisco+router+vulnerability
>>
>> (try that search string with *any* manufacturer - juniper, netgear, tplink,
>>
>> There is a new vuln going around about some very old software in a
>> cisco mx series which is ancient and yet 100k+ are vulnerable -  (I
>> worked on this while at montavista in the early 00s!)  - abandonware,
>> toxic waste...
>>
>> Anyway, in Mexico at least, 200+ routers are going to be a lot better,
>> through the actions of all that contribute to linux, openwrt, and one
>> smart and caring engineer.
>>
>> --
>> Oct 30: https://netdevconf.info/0x17/news/the-maestro-and-the-music-bof.html
>> Dave Täht CSO, LibreQos
>> _______________________________________________
>> Nnagain mailing list
>> Nnagain at lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/nnagain
>
> _______________________________________________
> Nnagain mailing list
> Nnagain at lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/nnagain



-- 
Oct 30: https://netdevconf.info/0x17/news/the-maestro-and-the-music-bof.html
Dave Täht CSO, LibreQos