Sept 2021 - Latest advice on gbit routers for pppoe?

In reply to a post by MHC:

For data, metrics and inights then the Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro will give you a lot of what you are after. Will handle fullGbit without issue

Edited by Derpy (Tue 21-Sep-21 16:45:40)

In reply to a post by Derpy:

In reply to a post by MHC:

For data, metrics and inights then the Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro will give you a lot of what you are after. Will handle fullGbit without issue

This box and the non pro specifically dont handle PPPOA/E packets at full speed which applies to a huge amount of the UK fibre network unless you are on sky/virgin really. They dont have hardware acceleration for the packets and thus are pegged by the single core limitation to encode them so people are seeing much slower speeds than full GB speeds when using them. There is a HUGE thread on unify about the issues and lack of fix.

They are very nice looking boxes but there are quite a few firmware issues and the PPPOA issue is huge for most people on an openreach based fibre connection. I really hope they get it fixed or release new hardware with hardware offloading.

The older boxes like edgerouters etc have hardware offloading for PPPOA/E so they *should* be full speed.

Some people are trying to do 1:1 NAT with an hardware accelerated box infront of the UDM to try and get around the issue.

In reply to a post by MHC:

For data, metrics and inights then the Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro will give you a lot of what you are after. Will handle fullGbit without issue

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

In reply to a post by MHC:

For data, metrics and inights then the Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro will give you a lot of what you are after. Will handle fullGbit without issue

My Qotom running pfsense with an Intel i7 processor cost less those. My network connection uses DHCP not PPPoE so I don't know what difference that makes.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

x86 boxes are a neat way of doing this too.

If you have a VLAN-capable switch, and are happy to run a "router on a stick" into a single port, then you can get away with something extremely low power like one of the low-end Intel NUCs. Even a rPi 4 would do (but I'm not sure what user-friendly routing firmware to suggest running on that).

Low-power PCs with dual NICs are available, but a bit harder to find.

BTW, pfSense has recently gone commercial: the "community edition" that you can download is not longer the same as the software supplied on their boxes, and will diverge more over time. Maybe time to look at OPNsense.

In reply to a post by arthurdent1234:

This is interesting

So the RB4011 can easily do Gbit over pppoe IF fast track is enabled - this presumably implies a lot of the extended software driven features are off or very constrained down to bare bones ?

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[admin@gw2] > /system resource monitor
          cpu-used: 24%  cpu-used-per-cpu: 0%,97%,0%,0%
       free-memory: 980656KiB

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[admin@gw2] > /system resource monitor
          cpu-used: 38%  cpu-used-per-cpu: 12%,53%,67%,20%
       free-memory: 980712KiB

In reply to a post by Maverick567:

Apparently, according to UI in the past few days they are hopeful of a firmware update to “improve” the situation, they have carefully stopped short of saying that they will fix it. I have heard rumours that the latest UDMP SE may have sorted the issue.

Edited by Derpy (Wed 22-Sep-21 00:07:15)

Edited by arthurdent1234 (Wed 22-Sep-21 13:08:24)

In reply to a post by E300:

My advice would be to get some kit and run pfSense on it, you can then upgrade for faster speeds in the future without a learning curve for a new UI and OS, and in many cases transfer over your configuration with a few clicks.

You can either go for an official pfSense box or get something like an i7 Kettop network appliance or similar. I'm running an i7 7500 box at 5 watts idle power consumption, no fans so quiet, got pfBlocker on there handling IP filtering and various firewall rules, and it routes 1Gb PPPoE without breaking a sweat. Numerous help articles available for pfSense and very little it can't do. Also packet capture for debug purposes is built in.

Edited by E300 (Wed 22-Sep-21 15:29:18)

In reply to a post by candlerb:

This Amazon page for the Qotom made me smile.

It's sold by the "Hot Mini PC Store" - not something you necessarily want to hear for a passively cooled device

Edited by Chrysalis (Fri 24-Sep-21 02:36:40)

In reply to a post by E300:

A good point. Hopefully I would think now in 2021 this isn't a problem on new equipment, yes some of the cheaper boxes might be using the affected stepping (some form of Atom C2000) to keep costs low, but it is only an issue if the LPC bus is used. Typically the problem was the bus was used to read the BIOS ROM at boot up, so once it stopped working that was it. However they can just as easily switch to using SPI for reading the BIOS ROM for any newer designs. Even kit from 2016, not all kit was affected as some didn't use the LPC bus at all.

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

The LPC, USB and SD Card buses circuitry degradation issues also apply to other Bay Trail processors such as Intel Celeron J1900 and N2800/N2900 series.[21] and also to Pentium N3500, J2850, J2900 series and Celeron J1800 and J1750 series as those are based on the same affected silicon. I believe the E3800 Atoms are also effected.