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by bronco21016 2426 days ago
I’m running an APU2C4 for my router, no wireless. It has pfSense running with OpenVPN and a DNS sinkhole for ads. My wireless is through an UAP AC Pro.

The APU works fine but after upgrading to a gigabit connection I’m a bit disappointed. It won’t saturate the connection on a single thread. (Yes over Ethernet) Maybe 400 Mbps max. Apparently it has something to do with pfSense not multithreading connections and the single cores of the CPU not being fast enough on their own. I can run 1 Gbps over multiple connections though so I suppose it mostly fulfills it’s purpose. I also want a WireGuard server but I might end up just deploying that in a VM. pfSense doesn’t currently have that option.

When I learned of these limitations I gave some consideration to the the Ubiquiti USG but found it isn’t exactly super beefy either and requires turning features off to get 1 Gbps. I’m debating building something similar to the ArsTechnica guide [0].

Overall, I’ve been satisfied with my setup and in particular the UAPs. I’ve deployed multiple UAPs and Edgerouter X’s at friends and family’s houses and have had essentially 0 support requests. The stuff just works and performs. I just had a party last night and even with 20+ clients, streaming music and YouTube TV for football, I had zero complaints or hiccups. All on a single UAP. I haven’t used any recent consumer gear but I know e consumer gear I used to buy would have definitely been choking on that kind of load.

I’m pretty disappointed to see this turn in events with UBNT. I’ve kinda seen it coming for awhile now since they’ve been moving towards these cloud services but I was really hoping they would resist the lures of Surveillance Capitalism.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/04/the-ars-guide-to-bui...
2 comments
piotrkubisa 2424 days ago
Based on information I've found in article [0] pfSense had problems with reaching 1 Gbps but it seems disabling hardware offloading significantly increases throughput [1] (940 Mbps).

[0]: https://teklager.se/en/knowledge-base/apu2c0-ipfire-throughp...

[1]: https://teklager.se/en/knowledge-base/apu2-1-gigabit-through...

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oil25 2425 days ago
I also experienced the gigabit performance issue (Debian 9 and 10, APU4C4); estimate a bandwidth cap of about 400 Mbps, too. I don't actually have a need to exceed that speed on my home network, so I'm still happy. But also curious if anyone has built a beefier, more capable open source hardware router that also isn't a power hog.
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piotrkubisa 2424 days ago
There are also TLSense routers[0], which include configurations with Intels i5 [1] or i7. They also claim 7-15W power usage, AES-NI support, microphone/headphones jacks, HDMI, RS-232 and room enough for 16GB of RAM, which is quite unusual in routers.

[0]: https://teklager.se/en/products/routers/

[1]: https://teklager.se/en/products/routers/tlsense-i5-4lan

Edit: I noticed those thanks to link on PCEngines site, which is quite also amazing, knowing a fact TekLager and PCEngines are direct competitors.

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