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    Alix 2D3 Performance results

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    • E
      Evil_Bert
      last edited by

      Great review.  Thanks very much for doing that and taking the time to post the results. 8)

      I'd love to know the power consumption both at idle and at full capacity.

      There are many alternate universes, but only this one has beer

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      • C
        cmb
        last edited by

        This sounds like exactly what I would expect. You don't want to tunnel in TCP because of precisely what you're seeing, it will retransmit the lost OpenVPN packets, which will cause performance problems where there is loss (exacerbated in cases where you're intentionally putting extreme load on the link, which by its nature generates loss).  If the traffic being tunneled needs to be retransmitted, the TCP within the tunnel needs to handle that. If you're tunneling TCP over TCP, the retransmits are doubled, which quickly leads to poor performance.

        In normal usage, tunneling over TCP doesn't cause significant performance problems unless you're pushing far more load than the connection can handle.

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        • D
          drees
          last edited by

          @darkguard:

          I will probably measure the power this box use to have a better idea on how many watts in take on idle and on average load.  Ill re post later if there is some interest for that.

          If I remember correctly, the Alix 2C3 that I tested pulled about 4w at idle peaked at less than 10w when plugged into a Kill-a-watt. I would expect yours to be similar, but would be interesting to verify. :-)

          Thanks for the performance numbers. I wondered how fast our Alix could go, but we only have it connected to two WAN connections, a T1 and a DSL line (5Mbps/512Kbps) so it looks like we have plenty of room to grow with this little Alix box.

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          • D
            dstroot
            last edited by

            Not sure where to post this information but I'd like it documented somewhere here on the boards - the ALIX platform works great UNTIL you try to use the Traffic Shaper - then they tip over…  just a warning to someone.

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            • C
              cmb
              last edited by

              @dstroot:

              Not sure where to post this information but I'd like it documented somewhere here on the boards - the ALIX platform works great UNTIL you try to use the Traffic Shaper - then they tip over…  just a warning to someone.

              I've never seen that, though I usually don't use the shaper.  Please start a new thread and provide details.

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              • W
                wishy
                last edited by

                Hiya,

                Could i check openvpn was tested using blowfish for bulk crypto? Did you try any other algorithms?

                Also, how big was your firewall rulebase and state table? I assume these would make a fair difference to performance.

                Steve

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                • N
                  netphreak
                  last edited by

                  Sorry to drag up an "old" thread, but instead of creating a new one…

                  Is really Alix too weak to do some traffic shaping? Would I be better off running my old PIII computer? Have been working well with traffic shaping, but draws a little too much electricity for my likings...

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                  • D
                    drees
                    last edited by

                    @netphreak:

                    Is really Alix too weak to do some traffic shaping? Would I be better off running my old PIII computer? Have been working well with traffic shaping, but draws a little too much electricity for my likings…

                    You're not giving us much information here (specs of current firewall, bandwidth, concurrent connections would be useful), but the ALIX is just fine for traffic shaping as long as you don't try to push too much data through it.

                    See the first post in this thread for what "too much" might be.

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                    • N
                      netphreak
                      last edited by

                      I have often about 6-8 concurrent connections (+ visitors on webserver, ~1000 unique visitors a day), on a 20/1 ADSL line. Hardware: PIII@733, 512MB SDRAM, 3 x Intel GB nics.

                      Maybe I should ask my question different: Are the ALIX boards short on CPU power when shaping ~8 concurrent users?

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                      • W
                        wallabybob
                        last edited by

                        @netphreak:

                        I have often about 6-8 concurrent connections (+ visitors on webserver, ~1000 unique visitors a day), on a 20/1 ADSL line. Hardware: PIII@733, 512MB SDRAM, 3 x Intel GB nics.

                        Maybe I should ask my question different: Are the ALIX boards short on CPU power when shaping ~8 concurrent users?

                        The Alix boards have a 433MHz or 500MHz CPU and 128MB or 256MB RAM so you could expect them to be somewhat lower performing than your current system. If you are thinking of replacing your current system with an Alix board then a good place to begin might be to consider whether your current system has rather more than enough RAM and CPU power to handle your current load.

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                        • D
                          drees
                          last edited by

                          The Alix box will be just fine on a 20/1 ASDL line with only 8 users.

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