I'm also quite partial to repurposing older NAS boxes ex trademe and running openwrt on them. Typically NASes have a bit more ram and flash and faster cpus which is handy. Plus you can always pop in new drives too and that is your home storage. All the better if it has a few nics. Then you can use the tplink as just the AP and keep it for the wifi. A picked up a iconnect for $20 or so and that has been running my home networking and 2 openvpn tunnels internationally without pushing more than 10%cpu for barely noticeable power consumption. On 30/01/2015 3:37 PM, "Joel Wirāmu Pauling" wrote:

I have moved to using ArcherC7's (tplink) as my preferred buy choice. They have both Ath10k and Ath9k Radios and sport 128mb of ram and 64mb flash and a Mip's CPU on the very well supported ar7xxx chipset (used in the WNDR3800 and TPLink) ath10k support is definately the best of the semi open 802.11ac chips at the moment, but is still a work in progress. Ath9k is IMHO the best 802.11n implementation out there.

I am running head openwrt branches on these( chaos calmer) with few issues.

DFS support was an issue and IIRK didn't make it into the last stable Openwrt (Attitude Adjustment) but DFS frequency sense support patches are in Head now and working.

C7's can be had for 70$ Canadian, so ~100$ NZD mark.

-Joel

On 29 January 2015 at 17:30, Jed Laundry wrote:

...

Hey,

I've just created a list, and will add to it over the next few days if people find it interesting.

Of course, some are better than others - Ubiquiti actively provide forum support for OpenWRT and make installing it as simple as pushing a firmware upgrade via the WebUI, vs others who make busting out a JTAG a requirement.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JbDOrVP9c4u-gtRV06DKjWqdy4tWm9lJNpLu...

Thanks, Jed.

On 30 January 2015 at 12:47, Dave Taht wrote:

...

at the end of my talk someone asked me what routers I would recomend to try this stuff on here, and I sort of dodged the question.

If you can come up with a list of routers available here (meet me later?), I can tell you what I know about each chipset. (I have evaluated dozens of these over the last year...)

In general ath9k based gear is currently best (entirely open wifi driver), with nearly every manufacturer shipping stuff based on that. I see there is a lot of ubnt here, and most of their older products are well supported by openwrt.

There is some good work beginning on the latest round of chipsets, but by and large the firmware for 802.11ac is closed....

And so on. I should also point out that there are plenty of other OSes available, and that I'm opposed to a monoculture of any hardware/software combination.

See: https://gettys.wordpress.com/2014/10/06/bufferbloat-and-other-challenges/

for more details.

-- Dave Täht

thttp://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/bloat/wiki/Upcoming_Talks _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

_______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

_______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

a couple more notes: Stuff that claims a 1GigE port or ports is usually talking about bridging not routing rates. e.g. the switch is capable of 1GigE, but the processor is usually too lame to forward at much more than 300mbit without NAT or traffic shaping, and much less (< 100mbit) with anything resembling a real set of firewall rules, nat or traffic shaping. Several of the latest generation "home routers" can forward at 1GigE by extensive use of offloads and hardware NAT but you end up stuck on proprietary extensions to ancient kernels. The edge router is one example of this breed. I am still trying to find a non-x86 product that can do the right things in the 300Mbit range with nat and firewall rules. On the x86 front the rangeley based atoms are benchmarking out pretty good: example: http://www.lannerinc.com/products/x86-network-appliances/desktop/fw-7551 In the intel world there is almost always a need for a fan, which is a non-starter for me. I like stuff that is rated to or proven for up to 60C, given how these machines get wedged into tight spaces so often. One of the reasons why we (cerowrt project) went with the wndr3800 is that it was a first generation "gold plated" design, and had been tested to 120,000 feet. On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 4:04 PM, Dave Taht wrote:

OK, just some comments so far:

1) I do like the idea of also taking the NZ fiber <-> ethernet converter open source. I think that will kill a lot of problems and make it way easier to deploy ipv6 and traffic shapers and analytics more sanely.

2) The only DSL device I know of with a decent debloated driver is an earlier model of: http://www.traverse.com.au/geos21-dual-adsl2-x86-router-appliance - written by dave woodhouse. I know of one other that has been debloated - the revolution v6 product from free.fr has a custom-written DSL driver for example - but have not been tracking these issues closely. I'd certainly hope that more/better DSL drivers existed now....

3) I found the Archer C7 v2 underpowered to drive 802.11ac at full rates. That said, it does work well with openwrt. I have been exploring the net gear nighthawk X4 and the linksys 1900 as something with more oomph for ac and faster rate shaping than 60mbits, but they are still very new ports.

I think from a home wifi standpoint you need to consider 2-3 different boxes - a low end 2/5ghz capable box, a midrange box, and an 802.11ac capable box. It also sounds like from traffic on this list that there is a need for cell modem fallback?

A search of alibaba was kind of productive.

http://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product_en&CatId=&SearchText=openwrt+router+mifi+3g+router

On Fri, Jan 30, 2015 at 2:30 PM, Jed Laundry wrote:

...

Hey,

I've just created a list, and will add to it over the next few days if people find it interesting.

Of course, some are better than others - Ubiquiti actively provide forum support for OpenWRT and make installing it as simple as pushing a firmware upgrade via the WebUI, vs others who make busting out a JTAG a requirement.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JbDOrVP9c4u-gtRV06DKjWqdy4tWm9lJNpLu...

Thanks, Jed.

On 30 January 2015 at 12:47, Dave Taht wrote:

...

at the end of my talk someone asked me what routers I would recomend to try this stuff on here, and I sort of dodged the question.

If you can come up with a list of routers available here (meet me later?), I can tell you what I know about each chipset. (I have evaluated dozens of these over the last year...)

In general ath9k based gear is currently best (entirely open wifi driver), with nearly every manufacturer shipping stuff based on that. I see there is a lot of ubnt here, and most of their older products are well supported by openwrt.

There is some good work beginning on the latest round of chipsets, but by and large the firmware for 802.11ac is closed....

And so on. I should also point out that there are plenty of other OSes available, and that I'm opposed to a monoculture of any hardware/software combination.

See: https://gettys.wordpress.com/2014/10/06/bufferbloat-and-other-challenges/

for more details.

-- Dave Täht

thttp://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/bloat/wiki/Upcoming_Talks _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

-- Dave Täht

thttp://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/bloat/wiki/Upcoming_Talks

-- Dave Täht thttp://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/bloat/wiki/Upcoming_Talks

On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 4:31 PM, Dave Taht wrote:

a couple more notes:

Stuff that claims a 1GigE port or ports is usually talking about bridging not routing rates. e.g. the switch is capable of 1GigE, but the processor is usually too lame to forward at much more than 300mbit without NAT or traffic shaping, and much less (< 100mbit) with anything resembling a real set of firewall rules, nat or traffic shaping.

Several of the latest generation "home routers" can forward at 1GigE by extensive use of offloads and hardware NAT but you end up stuck on proprietary extensions to ancient kernels. The edge router is one example of this breed.

I am still trying to find a non-x86 product that can do the right things in the 300Mbit range with nat and firewall rules.

On the x86 front the rangeley based atoms are benchmarking out pretty good: example: http://www.lannerinc.com/products/x86-network-appliances/desktop/fw-7551

In the intel world there is almost always a need for a fan, which is a non-starter for me. I like stuff that is rated to or proven for up to 60C, given how these machines get wedged into tight spaces so often. One of the reasons why we (cerowrt project) went with the wndr3800 is that it was a first generation "gold plated" design, and had been tested to 120,000 feet.

http://snapon.lab.bufferbloat.net/~d/spacerouter.JPG The pic is so clear because there is no air. Ton of ath9k based gear inside. If you can test your gear to 120k feet, it is something of a confidence builder. But do look for the temp rating. There is a lot of gear only rated to 40C out there, and that simply isn't enough.

On Tue, Feb 3, 2015 at 4:04 PM, Dave Taht wrote:

...

OK, just some comments so far:

1) I do like the idea of also taking the NZ fiber <-> ethernet converter open source. I think that will kill a lot of problems and make it way easier to deploy ipv6 and traffic shapers and analytics more sanely.

2) The only DSL device I know of with a decent debloated driver is an earlier model of: http://www.traverse.com.au/geos21-dual-adsl2-x86-router-appliance - written by dave woodhouse. I know of one other that has been debloated - the revolution v6 product from free.fr has a custom-written DSL driver for example - but have not been tracking these issues closely. I'd certainly hope that more/better DSL drivers existed now....

3) I found the Archer C7 v2 underpowered to drive 802.11ac at full rates. That said, it does work well with openwrt. I have been exploring the net gear nighthawk X4 and the linksys 1900 as something with more oomph for ac and faster rate shaping than 60mbits, but they are still very new ports.

I think from a home wifi standpoint you need to consider 2-3 different boxes - a low end 2/5ghz capable box, a midrange box, and an 802.11ac capable box. It also sounds like from traffic on this list that there is a need for cell modem fallback?

A search of alibaba was kind of productive.

http://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product_en&CatId=&SearchText=openwrt+router+mifi+3g+router

On Fri, Jan 30, 2015 at 2:30 PM, Jed Laundry wrote:

...

Hey,

I've just created a list, and will add to it over the next few days if people find it interesting.

Of course, some are better than others - Ubiquiti actively provide forum support for OpenWRT and make installing it as simple as pushing a firmware upgrade via the WebUI, vs others who make busting out a JTAG a requirement.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JbDOrVP9c4u-gtRV06DKjWqdy4tWm9lJNpLu...

Thanks, Jed.

On 30 January 2015 at 12:47, Dave Taht wrote:

...

at the end of my talk someone asked me what routers I would recomend to try this stuff on here, and I sort of dodged the question.

If you can come up with a list of routers available here (meet me later?), I can tell you what I know about each chipset. (I have evaluated dozens of these over the last year...)

In general ath9k based gear is currently best (entirely open wifi driver), with nearly every manufacturer shipping stuff based on that. I see there is a lot of ubnt here, and most of their older products are well supported by openwrt.

There is some good work beginning on the latest round of chipsets, but by and large the firmware for 802.11ac is closed....

And so on. I should also point out that there are plenty of other OSes available, and that I'm opposed to a monoculture of any hardware/software combination.

See:

https://gettys.wordpress.com/2014/10/06/bufferbloat-and-other-challenges/

for more details.

-- Dave Täht

thttp://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/bloat/wiki/Upcoming_Talks _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

-- Dave Täht

thttp://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/bloat/wiki/Upcoming_Talks

-- Dave Täht

thttp://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/bloat/wiki/Upcoming_Talks

-- Dave Täht thttp://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/bloat/wiki/Upcoming_Talks