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an undulating space
Personal blog · an.undulating.space/postsystemshardware
an undulating space is a personal blog at an.undulating.space about systems and hardware. Since 2018, 7 different Hacker News readers have linked it 7 times, most often “OpenBSD 6.3 on EdgeRouter Lite simple upgrade method”. The last post was in 2018, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for hands-on router posts, mainly benchmarks of WireGuard and IPSec throughput and OpenWrt on EdgeRouter hardware. Commenters cite them as evidence in discussions.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Blog Description
Most-linked posts?
- /post/181227-er_alternate_firmware_vpn_benchmarks/3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-11-01
- /post/180927-er_alternate_firmware_benchmarks/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-02-02
- OpenBSD 6.3 on EdgeRouter Lite simple upgrade method2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-09-04
What Hacker News says?
According to https://an.undulating.space/post/181227-er_alternate_firmwar... Wireguard is just as fast as hardware accelerated IPSec on both the Edgerouter X and Lite. With Openwrt on the Edgerouter Lite Wireguard is ~2x faster than hardware accelerated IPSec on EdgeOS.
Comment linking /post/181227-er_alternate_firmware_vpn_benchmarks/
on “Setting up a home VPN server with WireGuard”Submitted OpenBSD 6.3 on EdgeRouter Lite simple upgrade method as a story · 3 points
HN discussionA simple websearch yields following: https://www.wireguard.com/performance/ https://an.undulating.space/post/181227-er_alternate_firmwar... ...and more. Put some minimum effort in yourself, man!
Comment linking /post/181227-er_alternate_firmware_vpn_benchmarks/
on “WireGuard is in net-next”I didn't know that, wow. I found some resources on this [1] [2] [3] but it seems like everything is working? Have you tried WireGuard on OpenBSD/octeon? [1] https://www.openbsd.org/octeon.html [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10079210 [3] https://an.undulating.space/post/180411-erl-openbsd-upgrade/
Comment linking /post/180411-erl-openbsd-upgrade/
on “MikroTik routers are forwarding owners’ traffic to unknown attackers”EdgeRouter gets pretty close running OpenWrt. And hits your mark if you keep the stock firmware. No wifi though. https://an.undulating.space/post/180927-er_alternate_firmwar... Maybe the Turris Omnia if you need WiFi and aren't worried about cost: https://omnia.turris.cz/en/ The NetGear R7800 would be somewhere between the two in cost, and reportedly does GB for wired, somewhat less over WiFi. Pretty easy to find us…
Comment linking /post/180927-er_alternate_firmware_benchmarks/
on “Openwrt 18.06.2 released”There’s a benchmark done with the EdgeRouter that shows that Wireguard’s throughput exceeds that of hardware accelerated AES + IPSec: https://an.undulating.space/post/181227-er_alternate_firmwar... Of course, benchmarks from random strangers are not gospel, and the results aren’t particularly damning. But even then, you’re assuming that you have the luxury of running on a chip that comes with a hardware crypto engin…
Comment linking /post/181227-er_alternate_firmware_vpn_benchmarks/
on “WireGuard support in Mikrotik RouterOS v7.1beta2”I appreciate that BSD has a very powerful network stack, but for this kind of cheaper devices Linux often delivers much faster routing. The APU4 with OpenWRT 935 Mbit/s with NAT and firewall[1]. The EdgeRouter Lite runs at 230 Mbit/s without and 657 Mbit/s with software acceleration[2]. What makes people still decide to use BSD for this category? Stability? Features? Security? [1] https://openwrt.org/toh/pcengines/a…
Comment linking /post/180927-er_alternate_firmware_benchmarks/
on “OpenBSD 6.9 Router Benchmarks”