Banana Pi
-
… Do you really need an HDMI port on your router?
SteveSteve,
It's funny that you've mentioned that! Recently I was prospecting SoC specs for a new project and I was marvelling how far the ARM technology came. This A20 is a real powerhouse… but for video and graphics! Almost 3/4 of the die is for video bitmap, compression/decompression handling. 90% of its microcode is for h264.
Why on earth anyone would want to build a network router around A20 is beyond me. The worst part is that all design optimizations and new low level code is for video/graphics. Not a bit of new code was developed for basic, general purpose computational tasks which in the case of products like routers remain the cornerstone.
So, for all intents and purposes running pfSense on an A20 would be like running it on a Zilog Z80 of the 1970's except for the clock speed. And no, even the 8/16/32 bit aspect would be irrelevant! Algorithmics-wise they are the same generation.
How about porting pfSense on CP/M (ok for good measure let's say MP/M) and putting it back on an Intel 8008 (ok a bit more generous, how about 8085)? Any taker? (Ok, I am taking out my Sinclair ZX-80 and dusting it off ;D )
It's amazing how people do (crazy) things just because hardware is now dirt cheap... :-X
Halea
-
Ha! If you get an IP stack running running on your ZX80 let me know and I'll dust off my ZX81. Pretty sure I have the RAM expansion pack here too so it should be no problem!
Your comments are interesting though, I guess the phone/tablet market is driving a lot of IC development. There are plenty of specific 'network processors' that are presumably far more suitable. Are they more expensive though.
I wouldn't want to discourage anyone from trying to make a thing run some OS it didn't before. I've spent many happy hours failing to get OpenWRT running on various hardware and leant a lot along the way. I had to laugh at that guy who got Doom running on his printer. :)Don't let us put you off TooMeeK. Also apologies for somewhat hijacking your thread.
Steve
-
I would have thought a market exists for a device that can replace a SOHO style router directly but runs pfSense. There have to be loads of admins out there who would like to use such a device for telecommuters.
It would have to have usefully functioning wifi and something to make setting up a VPN very easy (even easier!). You might have to use some new install type though I guess there are plenty of devices that would meet the requirements for Nano these days.
I'm not sure this is it though. Do you really need an HDMI port on your router?Steve
No, you don't need (nor want) an HDMI port on your router. The issue is that most of the cost of having that port (and the audio port, and camera port) have already been paid for (all the gates are already in the SoC). The BPI router makes me grouchy because it has a 10/100 port and a 10/100/1000 port (guess which one is attached to the switch!). Even, then, I've ordered a couple.
We had the Hackathon last week, and have most of pfSense working on the Beaglebone Black. It's not a big stretch to make it work on the BPI router. There are a lot of reasons for my push onto FreeBSD 10 (pfSense 2.2 will be based on FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE), and getting to more platforms is one.
-
@gonzopancho:
… have most of pfSense working on the Beaglebone Black. ...
That's awesome news. I've been running RasPBX on BBB at home for a couple of months now. Prior to that it was an Raspberry Pi for more than a year (maybe two).
I would love to put my hands on a cookbook to run pfSense on BBB. Any attempts I made with a couple of colleagues to run it on BBB miserably failed although at one point we got FreeBSD to work for a while (then we messed something and we couldn't go back on our steps).
So, is there any notes you can share?
Halea -
when it's ready
-
Erm.. well.. long time since first post.
I see You're digging my topic :>Anyway Beaglebone Black runs 100Mbit Ethernet, while BPi is 1Gbit which can be saturated easily,
but there is no GMAC driver for it in FreeBSD head yet.
My dream would be working tagged VLANs over GMAC driver that can handle at least 250Mbit up/down speeds on this small device.. -
I just found this:
5 port banana
http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Newest-arrive-BPI-R1-Opensource-Router-Original-Banana-pi/302756_2045261784.html
-
I have two on my desk. 8) 8)
-
What's your opinion of them? :)
Steve
-
so far? Meh.
-
OK, so Banana Pi's A7 ARM processor isn't ideal for pfSense, but nonetheless, I very much support the idea pfSense being able to run on something smaller than a netbook. Something pocket-portable and battery powered would be perfect for me to ensure I always have pfSense between me and the wild internet, wherever I am. Not being able to function on routers and other small devices like the Raspberry Pi greatly limits the usefulness of pfSense, despite the fact that pfSense is otherwise ideally suited to them. Instead, the best we can get is OpenWRT and DD-WRT, which simply isn't pfSense.
-
@gonzopancho:
we are interested in the ARM devices market. Netgate is about to pick-up the Beaglebone Black.
-
Might be useful, list of ARM boards which support to some degree freebsd.
https://www.freebsd.org/platforms/arm.html
The architecture of the ARM CPU's make it ideal for multi threading programs compared to the Intel/AMD chips when considering the CPU delays caused by the L1/L2 misses but who spots their L2 cache misses except when compiling perhaps?
Considering how ARM is used pervasively for things like routers, set top tv boxes and smart phones which now out number pc's, personally I'd say pfsense would well suited to ARM boards.
-
I'm hoping to see something assembled and tested from Netgate that has 2 ethernet ports. So far, they only have the kits. If we're lucky, maybe someday ARM will move up from Tier 2 to Tier 1 in FreeBSD. Since pfSense is updating to FreeBSD 10.1, maybe we'll get some extra ARM support from that.
-
Maybe
-
The architecture of the ARM CPU's make it ideal for multi threading programs compared to the Intel/AMD chips when considering the CPU delays caused by the L1/L2 misses but who spots their L2 cache misses except when compiling perhaps?
What are you trying to say?
-
Still waiting for the board of my dream to become reality
-
The L1 & L2 cache misses for things like Out of Loop prefetches can add a 15% delay to proceeding according to a paper I read.
-
Okay TooMeeK.
You can start up MII interface as separate compile option at Uboot
CONFIG_CMD_MII
-
Any serious progress with this?
Gonzo, at https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=79007.msg465109#msg465109 you mention not being impressed.
Is this because you have very high standards?
Personally I'm looking for a decent replacement of a 19" 2U micro ATX box running pfsense for my home and small company.
IMHO it could easily run on a BPi hardware, since it has nothing to do all day ;D
