New Alix board for 2013

nesense

@gidi:

I noticed you are using a wifi card with the apu board. Is it the wle200nx? If so is it working with 2.1?

Yes its a AR9280 set to run in 802.11g mode only and working so far. Seems not as good as the one I used in the Alix box (sensitivity wise) but it's to early to judge.

So in G mode is usable without stability issues, good to know.

It is not usable in G mode here, using the apu1b with pfs 2.1, most of the time it causes a kernel panic and rebooting hangs.(same with G+N and pure N) other times it says it got enabled but does not broadcast signal. Tried multiple times with fresh installs and leaving defaults under wifi with no luck.

Maybe it's an issue with the beta boards only? ???

gidi

So in G mode is usable without stability issues, good to know.

With the usual and lots of

kernel: ath0: stuck beacon; resetting (bmiss count 4)

messages in the log.

All the hw.ath.bstuck, longcal, rx/tx, diversity etc. mod's did'nt improve it (if it's stuck it's stuck) so I gave up on it and blaim the driver (I didnt see this problems during a quick linux run).
The Compex WiFi in the Alix behaved better and logged only very few depending on how crowded the choosen channel where. Android's "WiFi Analyzer" app is your friend here to get a idea of channel usage.

stephenw10

Does it cause problems when you see the stuck beacon errors or just spams the logs?

Steve

gidi

Transfers get very jumpy or stop making progress for some time

stephenw10

Ah ok but it recovers without intervention? My own home box occasionally shoots out some stuck beacons, a lot less with hw.ath.bstuck set to 8, but never gives me any trouble.

Steve

onggie

Hi all just wanting some input. I have never used Pfsense before. I'm building a house and hardwiring the whole house. I will have fiber internet. Really I'm going with Pfsense because I want to learn about it. Looking for something low power and to suite a family.

Will this piece of hardware be fine seems pretty cost effective as opposed from me building a new machine. And I want it is standalone and not deploy another VM.

stephenw10

What sort of fibre internet? What speed?
I don't believe this box will pass 1Gbps. Do we have any throughput tests from the new board yet? (as opposed to the prototype)

Steve

MaxPF

I really want to order one, but I'm undecided if I should wait few weeks for the 4GB version to become available or just go with the 2GB now. I don't think I really need 4GB since I'm ok now with an Alix 2d13, but for just $20 more it may be a good way to start playing with snort or squid.

onggie

@stephenw10:

What sort of fibre internet? What speed?
I don't believe this box will pass 1Gbps. Do we have any throughput tests from the new board yet? (as opposed to the prototype)

Steve

Thanks for the reply, nothing past 1gbps, at the moment can only get 100mbps speeds.

stephenw10

If you read through this thread I think we've seen two figures for throughput, ~350Mbps and ~450Mbps. Different test methods and using the prototype board so those figures are obviously a bit vague.

Steve

olivier

Here is a network performance bench of the APU1c (2Go of RAM) under FreeBSD 11-current.

stephenw10

Comprehensive, thanks.

Steve

MaxPF

Just when I decided to go with the 2GB model instead of waiting for the 4GB, it sold out.

dolomite792

So is this board worth buying yet? Will the recommended wifi card work properly? Or should I say would I have to wrestle with it for hours via command line getting it to work with band aid fixes? (I read that pfsense doesn't work with N mode wifi signal or freebsd I should say) Are there any alternatives for it also? Also does that heat sink that I saw in some other photos come with the motherboard kit and thermal paste when you purchase it? I saw that there is a sata port on the board also, does anyone know where you could plug in a sata power cable on the board and what type of connector you would need to buy say if you wanted to use a large 2.5 inch hard drive?

I am really excited to get started with pfsense for home use (and maybe more) and I would like to use snort and squid squid guard etc. It looks like this board would be a great low/hassle low power solution to achieving this that is unless anyone believes there to be many obstacles with it yet.

MaxPF

@dolomite792:

So is this board worth buying yet? Will the recommended wifi card work properly? Or should I say would I have to wrestle with it for hours via command line getting it to work with band aid fixes? (I read that pfsense doesn't work with N mode wifi signal or freebsd I should say) Are there any alternatives for it also? Also does that heat sink that I saw in some other photos come with the motherboard kit and thermal paste when you purchase it? I saw that there is a sata port on the board also, does anyone know where you could plug in a sata power cable on the board and what type of connector you would need to buy say if you wanted to use a large 2.5 inch hard drive?

I am really excited to get started with pfsense for home use (and maybe more) and I would like to use snort and squid squid guard etc. It looks like this board would be a great low/hassle low power solution to achieving this that is unless anyone believes there to be many obstacles with it yet.

As far as I know the wifi card is currently not supported in 2.1 and 2.1.1, but it should work in 2.2. The heat spreader is included with the board. The website says "1 SATA + power connector" so I assume that one of the headers on the board can be used for that.

tmueko

I just testet the new APU-Board from PC-Engines and I am very disappointed:

Network performance is very poor, below 15MB/sec scp from host to /dev/null

aes-128 is about 2% of Alix as Hardware-Crypto ist missing!

using: "openssl speed -evp aes-128-cbc -mr"

|

| | 16 bytes | 64 bytes | 256 bytes | 1024 bytes | 8192 bytes |
| apu(i386) | 17647920.62 | 19119871.30 | 19119871.30 | 19856786.89 | 19884175.64 |
| apu(amd64) | 31838188.68 | 33707485.47 | 35294343.25 | 36019144.06 | 36141132.37 |
| alix(glxb) | 9330604.35 | 51383196.64 | 228813355.80 | 571595559.02 | 21593993900.75 |
| hifn799(miniPCI) | 29525399.38 | 88806702.25 | 455857889.95 | 1052874486.91 | 20549906447.53 |

So, for <= 100MBit, use Alix; for >= 100Mbit, use other Hardware (Intel-Chipset) and Hardware-Encrytion.

Just my 5 ct. |

forbiddenlake

@MaxPF:

Just when I decided to go with the 2GB model instead of waiting for the 4GB, it sold out.

what country are you in? Check their other distributors. I just ordered an APU1C from mini-box.com (free US shipping!).

stephenw10

@tmueko:

Network performance is very poor, below 15MB/sec scp from host to /dev/null

Why use SCP? That's testing crypto and network in combination. Hardly a fair test unless you're running that specifically.

Steve

watercooled

Add -elapsed to that openssl command to measure elapsed time, rather than CPU time. As the code doesn't run on the CPU with the hardware test, you get massively inaccurate results. Just think about the results for a second - ~20GB/s throughput?

This is more the sort of result you should be getting with -elapsed: http://www.feyrer.de/NetBSD/bx/blosxom.cgi/index.front?-tags=geode

tmueko

I aslo tried to just use the APU as Gbit-Gateway with the ame bad results.

Using the "-elapsed" Option gives complete different results!

APU
type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes
aes-256-cbc 25906.20k 27743.31k 28145.80k 28552.07k 28663.62k
aes-128-cbc 31903.42k 34736.06k 35349.14k 35994.51k 36190.80k

ALIX
aes-128-cbc 439.80k 1711.46k 5388.38k 15939.21k 28228.88k
aes-256-cbc 3880.35k 4004.79k 4381.44k 4132.74k 4014.75k

NA820(hifn)
aes-128-cbc 617.01k 2462.52k 7257.86k 13492.76k 21152.43k
aes-256-cbc 616.61k 2412.38k 7626.04k 15504.02k 23657.20k

I think I'll try to find a bottleneck … maybe a brocken cable...