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DarkLogix
Texan and Proud
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join:2008-10-23
Baytown, TX

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Re: home rack w/new steel-chassis EdgeRouter Lite

You could in theory make it into an ESXi host with the router being a VM then you could use the rest of the CPU power for other things.
tvjay
join:2005-12-15
Perrysburg, OH

tvjay

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said by DarkLogix:

You could in theory make it into an ESXi host with the router being a VM then you could use the rest of the CPU power for other things.

I just did this in my own home. See »Home wiring center for pictures.

train_wreck
slow this bird down
join:2013-10-04
Antioch, TN

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elec999
join:2005-12-19

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Whats you opnion of the EdgeRouter?

train_wreck
slow this bird down
join:2013-10-04
Antioch, TN
Cisco ASA 5506
Cisco DPC3939

1 edit

1 recommendation

train_wreck

Member

said by elec999:

Whats you opnion of the EdgeRouter?

Well, having used it for a number of months, I will say that it is "quite good" but not "great". When I got it, it was missing a number of semi-critical features (namely IPv6 support), but that has improved with firmware upgrades, and the company seems very active in updating the firmware and as well responding on their forums.

The biggest kicker for me, was the fact that all packet forwarding hardware acceleration MUST be disabled if you want any kind of QoS prioritizing. For me, in a household of 5 different people all of whom have different, but collectively very large, bandwidth/latency requirements, QoS is a must for me. By using it on the ERL, you force all traffic to be processed not by its included offload unit, but by its measly 500MHz MIPS CPU. Combine this with the fact that the uniit does not have any OpenVPN acceleration (meaning OpenVPN ties up that CPU as well), and the device can actually get bogged down somewhat easily. For this reason alone, I'm not using it anymore on my main LAN; I have switched back to using my home-build router PC.

If you don't have QoS needs and/or can live with that limitation, it's quite a fast router; with packet acceleration, you should be able to sustain a full ~940mbps worth of NAT transfer. Keep in mind that with packet acceleration disabled, that throughput drops to around ~250-280mbps, and slower if you're doing any kinds of OpenVPN activity.

Be prepared to know/learn command line syntax in order to configure the device, and be prepared to do most of the configuring of it from scratch (setting NAT masquerade options, iptables conntrack states, etc.) It's not for the faint of heart, though their web GUI is improving by leaps and bounds in the later firmwares. I've found it a useful little learning tool, i will say that.

sk1939
Premium Member
join:2010-10-23
Frederick, MD

sk1939

Premium Member

I despise QoS for the most part, and I personally don't find it necessary (although I do run a segmented network at home).

train_wreck
slow this bird down
join:2013-10-04
Antioch, TN
Cisco ASA 5506
Cisco DPC3939

train_wreck

Member

said by sk1939:

I despise QoS for the most part, and I personally don't find it necessary (although I do run a segmented network at home).

In my experience, the typical consumer routers with their single checkbox that enables some sort of "magical" QoS usually is awful. In my case, I've developed a somewhat complex multi-layered QoS scheme using the heirarchial token bucket, stochastic fairness and priority level features of the Linux kernel to a pretty good advantage. They are tailored to the needs of the general patterns of traffic the LAN generates/receives. I have 2 roomates who are generating a "flood" of traffic 95% of the time, so they can easily kill our upload on our 100/20 connection. Another games online with the PS3, another makes regular skype calls to business associates of his, and I stream lots of music/movies from my parents house and other Comcast locations. QoS helps all of this happen simultaneously, with no one drowning each other out with the traffic. Without it, skype calls were jittery, games were laggy, and latencies in general high. Outgoing TCP ACK prioritization on the router's WAN, in particular, was a BIG help.

sk1939
Premium Member
join:2010-10-23
Frederick, MD
ARRIS SB8200
Ubiquiti UDM-Pro
Juniper SRX320

sk1939

Premium Member

Well that's a given, most consumer routers are awful. As far as shared connections go, back when I had roommates, I simply just configured VLANs for each respective user, and capped maximum download and upload and set speeds. Three roommates, 25/5 connection, equal bandwidth of 8/1.5 each. Nowadays I do more granular control based on applications, plus no more roommates.

DaMaGeINC
The Lan Man
Premium Member
join:2002-06-08
Greenville, SC

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How are your file transfer speeds to the hard drives from the network. Im looking to replace my aging file-servers with network attached storage, but I do alot of bit torrenting with alot of R/W's. Want to know how it would hold up to that kind of punishment!

train_wreck
slow this bird down
join:2013-10-04
Antioch, TN
Cisco ASA 5506
Cisco DPC3939

train_wreck

Member

said by DaMaGeINC:

Want to know how it would hold up to that kind of punishment!

Well, the Alix boxes are all USB2.0 (even though you see a 3.0 hub, the actual ports on the Alix box it's connected to is 2.0). When connected to a USB3 port on another machine, however, all of those WD Elements give me ~100MB/s write, slightly faster read. As well, I have had multiple roomates streaming multiple GB files from a single drive before, and have never noticed any issues.

The drives have no problem maxing out the USB2 bus; I regularly get ~30-40MB/s writes.

DaMaGeINC
The Lan Man
Premium Member
join:2002-06-08
Greenville, SC

1 recommendation

DaMaGeINC

Premium Member

Thanks for the info.

train_wreck
slow this bird down
join:2013-10-04
Antioch, TN
Cisco ASA 5506
Cisco DPC3939

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said by sk1939:

I simply just configured VLANs for each respective user, and capped maximum download and upload and set speeds.

I used to do something similar; however, I personally think this is a somewhat brazen, "dumb" way to solve that problem. A better solution IMHO, is at the router, with the Linux kernel's method of handling QoS; in a basic sense, it allows a single user to use the max bandwidth, but as more people and more traffic start transmitting/receiving, the bandwidth is evenly (or weightedly) subdivided among users. So that way, users can potentially get the full bandwidth, only being slowed down when absolutely necessary. "Smarter", IMO

sk1939
Premium Member
join:2010-10-23
Frederick, MD
ARRIS SB8200
Ubiquiti UDM-Pro
Juniper SRX320

sk1939

Premium Member

This wass all still done at the router, it was just trunked back to the switch. Well yes, given that is the whole purpose of QoS to begin with (priority of traffic). Usually QoS only needs to be implemented when all else fails on a traditional enterprise network (traffic segregation, policy, etc). The problem I have with QoS was that it can almost be too granular and time consuming to setup on most non-consumer devices. I do that daily for work, I frankly don' t want to come home and have to do it as well.

It also depends on the type of device of course. It's much simpler to do it on an Asus router than a Cisco ASA.

»www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td ··· qos.html

»www.asus.com/support/FAQ/113967