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    J1900 performance

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    • V
      VAMike @stephenw10
      last edited by

      @stephenw10 said in J1900 performance:

      Yup that.

      Everything else aside if you are buying something new buy something actually current. The only reason to get a J1900 would be if it was very cheap. šŸ˜‰

      Unfortunately, the J1900 solutions still tend to be compellingly cheaper than alternatives, presumably because the CPU supply is apparently bottomless. Goldmont solutions run rings around them, but 3 years after release the availability is still low and the pricing consequently high. The lack of availability also impacts the available configurations (e.g., finding solutions with multiple NICs instead of multiple HDMI ports & wifi can be challenging, especially at a given price).

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      • V
        viragomann @JKnott
        last edited by viragomann

        @JKnott
        The Qotom is also availabel with a more powerful i5 mobile CPU at aprox the same price. The mobile CPUs have an effective power management, so that it will take rarely more power than the J1900 if it isn't really needed.
        So why want you buy such an old CPU today.

        I purchased a Qotom with an i5-4200U about three years ago and it does its job as my home router since that time well. The average power consumption is at circa 7 W, though its TPD is 15 W.

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        • bingo600B
          bingo600
          last edited by

          @JKnott

          I have 2 x Qotom i5-5250U (4-port) at home , 8G Ram + 64G M2.
          They do 1Gb wo. problems (iPerf tested)

          But i switched to Qotom i3-7130U (6-port) at work , primarily due to the higher clock frequency. At work they're doing multiple OVPN tunnels, and OVPN is single threaded, where higher CLK means more throughput.

          My Q's came with windows preinstalled , and i booted one up for fun (worked). The rest was immediately installed w. pfSense from USB stick.

          I'd stay away from the J1900

          /Bingo

          If you find my answer useful - Please give the post a šŸ‘ - "thumbs up"

          pfSense+ 23.05.1 (ZFS)

          QOTOM-Q355G4 Quad Lan.
          CPUĀ  : Core i5 5250U, Ram : 8GB Kingston DDR3LV 1600
          LANĀ  : 4 x Intel 211, DiskĀ  : 240G SAMSUNG MZ7L3240HCHQ SSD

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          • V
            VAMike @viragomann
            last edited by VAMike

            @viragomann i5-4200U is itself 7 years old, based on a 9 year old architecture. They tend to be at least 30-40% more expensive than the J1900 solutions, and at that point I don't see it as really compelling over a much newer part for just a little bit more. (Haswell has AES-NI, but it's a much older and less efficient/slower implementation, lacks sha extensions, etc.) So if I'm not making the J1900 value play, I'd rather have (e.g.) a C3558 or i3-7100U than an i5-4200U for just a little bit more. YMMV.

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            • V
              viragomann @VAMike
              last edited by

              @VAMike
              The i5-4200U is that one I purchased 3 years ago. It won't be available anymore today, but you may get a newer i5.
              An i3-7100U may be a good choice as well.

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              • V
                VAMike @viragomann
                last edited by

                @viragomann yes, there are a lot of newer and higher performing devices than J1900. The point was that the J1900 hangs around because for much of the world they are the cheapest option by a margin large enough to be significant if someone's on a budget. (For US customers an APU2 is cheaper, but internationally might cost 2x the J1900.) If the J1900 is fast enough for what you're trying to do, it can be hard to justify spending more whether or not you get more. Personally, my home firewall spends most of its life sitting around mostly idle, and if I got a faster one it would just be more idle. (For the record, it isn't a J1900, and I'm not speculating in J1900 futures. :) )

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                • bingo600B
                  bingo600
                  last edited by

                  @VAMike
                  What about the missing AES-NI instructions on the J1900 (and future proofing)
                  I know it's not a pre-req for 2.5 anymore, but ...

                  I would rather pay a little more for a i3-7100U , than getting a unit that migbt be obsolete in 2 years.

                  But as you say , if there is a really tight budget .. The J1900 wound prob. do for a year or two.

                  /Bingo

                  If you find my answer useful - Please give the post a šŸ‘ - "thumbs up"

                  pfSense+ 23.05.1 (ZFS)

                  QOTOM-Q355G4 Quad Lan.
                  CPUĀ  : Core i5 5250U, Ram : 8GB Kingston DDR3LV 1600
                  LANĀ  : 4 x Intel 211, DiskĀ  : 240G SAMSUNG MZ7L3240HCHQ SSD

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                  • V
                    VAMike @bingo600
                    last edited by

                    @bingo600 If you are doing straight firewalling, no vpn, then crypto performance is meaningless. If you're doing something that does require crypto performance, than that would obviously be a factor.

                    In general, "future proofing" in this industry is a waste of money. If you can buy something that lasts 2 years (and realistically, there's probably no reason a J1900 firewall couldn't last 5 years, or 10 years unless you suddenly get a major bandwidth boost--home firewall just isn't a hard problem) it'll almost certainly be cheaper to buy something better later when you need it than it is to buy that same level of performance now. And there's a really good chance that whatever drives you to need to upgrade a few years down the line is something you couldn't/didn't anticipate now, so you'd have to buy another one even if you had overspec'd today. This is even more true for highly integrated devices than for larger builds, because incremental upgrades tend to be really hard. For example, if your big future ISP upgrade requires a 2.5 or 5gbps interface and your SBC router only has 1gbps interfaces, it doesn't matter if the CPU powerful enough to do 10gbps--you're going to end up needing a new device. Or maybe the hot thing will be some kind of 6G internet that you can only really take advantage of if you plug an adapter in via USB 3.8gen57 or thunderbolt and you're stuck with old school USB 3.0. (High speed external adapters tend to not be a focus area for current-gen mini-pc routers...)

                    In the end, if getting an i3-7100U works for you, great, get that. My pushback is against the notion that anyone who doesn't must be stupid.

                    S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • bingo600B
                      bingo600
                      last edited by

                      @VAMike said in J1900 performance:

                      If you are doing straight firewalling, no vpn, then crypto performance is meaningless. If you're doing something that does require crypto performance, than that would obviously be a factor.

                      I'm a bit confused here.
                      While your statement above is correct, i was under the impression that the early announcement of 2.5 with the AES-NI requirement.
                      Would have prevented you from upgrading to 2.5.

                      IMHO that would have meant that we're not talking about crypto performance anymore. But about being able to use (upgrade to) the latest pfSense software.

                      /Bingo

                      If you find my answer useful - Please give the post a šŸ‘ - "thumbs up"

                      pfSense+ 23.05.1 (ZFS)

                      QOTOM-Q355G4 Quad Lan.
                      CPUĀ  : Core i5 5250U, Ram : 8GB Kingston DDR3LV 1600
                      LANĀ  : 4 x Intel 211, DiskĀ  : 240G SAMSUNG MZ7L3240HCHQ SSD

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                      • 4
                        4o4rh @bingo600
                        last edited by 4o4rh

                        @bingo600 there was a later announcement that AES-NI would not be required. I bought an E3845 because of that, and gave it away as the newer J1900 h/w run much cooler and didn't make any difference for me and small family. JKnott did say he was the only user, so hard to imagine how he will stress the box more than my small home/office environment.

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                        • JKnottJ
                          JKnott
                          last edited by

                          I just got my 500/20 Mb modem set up. I get 559.79 down and 21.63 up. Did my message appear faster? šŸ˜‰

                          PfSense running on Qotom mini PC
                          i5 CPU, 4 GB memory, 32 GB SSD & 4 Intel Gb Ethernet ports.
                          UniFi AC-Lite access point

                          I haven't lost my mind. It's around here...somewhere...

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                          • A
                            akuma1x @JKnott
                            last edited by

                            @JKnott said in J1900 performance:

                            I get 559.79 down and 21.63 up on a 500/20 Mb service.

                            Hey... that's cheating!

                            :)

                            JKnottJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • S
                              soder @VAMike
                              last edited by

                              @VAMike
                              it'll almost certainly be cheaper to buy something better later when you need it than it is to buy that same level of performance now

                              Seeing the trends during this past 6 months of COVID madness, where even the el-cheepo worlds most crappy 360p webcams got a 10x price hike in the March timeframe, I would say for sure there is no such electronics that hasnt faced a significant price increase due to high demand. So its a naive thing to say prices will go down in the future. I would say the opposite: anything that you can buy today at a reasonable price, will only be more expensive next year, because of vendor greediness.

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                              • V
                                VAMike @soder
                                last edited by

                                @soder said in J1900 performance:

                                @VAMike
                                it'll almost certainly be cheaper to buy something better later when you need it than it is to buy that same level of performance now

                                Seeing the trends during this past 6 months of COVID madness, where even the el-cheepo worlds most crappy 360p webcams got a 10x price hike in the March timeframe, I would say for sure there is no such electronics that hasnt faced a significant price increase due to high demand. So its a naive thing to say prices will go down in the future. I would say the opposite: anything that you can buy today at a reasonable price, will only be more expensive next year, because of vendor greediness.

                                Well, it's fairly easy to see that the costs for various fw/router products haven't increased by 10x, so the rest of your point is simply unfounded.

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                                • S
                                  soder @VAMike
                                  last edited by

                                  @VAMike webcams prices did, so your conclusion against the generic continuous price increase I said in the 2nd part is not applicable. Not arguing, but routers wont be cheaper next year.

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                                  • V
                                    VAMike @soder
                                    last edited by

                                    @soder said in J1900 performance:

                                    @VAMike webcams prices did, so your conclusion against the generic continuous price increase I said in the 2nd part is not applicable. Not arguing, but routers wont be cheaper next year.

                                    Well, if you weren't just bits on the internet I'd take your bet. You keep arguing based on a temporary supply/demand driven price spike which is basically a strawman argument and I'm arguing based on specing/buying computer hardware for decades. Also you're kind of glossing over a key point: price points will tend to be somewhat stable, but price for a given level of performance drops as capabilities are improved on new products. And with that I'm done the back and forth.

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                                    • JKnottJ
                                      JKnott @akuma1x
                                      last edited by

                                      @akuma1x said in J1900 performance:

                                      @JKnott said in J1900 performance:

                                      I get 559.79 down and 21.63 up on a 500/20 Mb service.

                                      Hey... that's cheating!

                                      :)

                                      Here's what I get today.

                                      My ISP has generally provided better than advertised performance. Also, I got this as part of a bundle to upgrade to IPTV and in the process my bill will decrease by about $60-70 per month.

                                      PfSense running on Qotom mini PC
                                      i5 CPU, 4 GB memory, 32 GB SSD & 4 Intel Gb Ethernet ports.
                                      UniFi AC-Lite access point

                                      I haven't lost my mind. It's around here...somewhere...

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                                      • B
                                        bradsm87
                                        last edited by stephenw10

                                        The Qotom Q515G6 with the Celeron 3865U is well worth the extra cost IMO. It's a much newer generation, supports AES-NI, has much better IPC, uses less power in practice and generates less heat.

                                        JKnottJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • JKnottJ
                                          JKnott @bradsm87
                                          last edited by

                                          @bradsm87 said in J1900 performance:

                                          The Qotom Q515G6 with the Celeron 3865U is well worth the extra cost IMO. It's a much newer generation, supports AES-NI, has much better IPC, uses less power in practice and generates less heat.

                                          According to this, it does not support AES-NI.

                                          PfSense running on Qotom mini PC
                                          i5 CPU, 4 GB memory, 32 GB SSD & 4 Intel Gb Ethernet ports.
                                          UniFi AC-Lite access point

                                          I haven't lost my mind. It's around here...somewhere...

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                                          • bingo600B
                                            bingo600
                                            last edited by

                                            Intel says that it do

                                            https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/96507/intel-celeron-processor-3865u-2m-cache-1-80-ghz.html

                                            Weird .... That Qotom says it doesn't.

                                            If you find my answer useful - Please give the post a šŸ‘ - "thumbs up"

                                            pfSense+ 23.05.1 (ZFS)

                                            QOTOM-Q355G4 Quad Lan.
                                            CPUĀ  : Core i5 5250U, Ram : 8GB Kingston DDR3LV 1600
                                            LANĀ  : 4 x Intel 211, DiskĀ  : 240G SAMSUNG MZ7L3240HCHQ SSD

                                            JKnottJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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