Adding OpenWrt support for Xiaomi AX3600 (Part 1)

Not sure if this is the scenario of interest, but you made me curious about GRO:

AX3600 -(1Gbit)- QSW-2104 -(10Gbit-fiber)- QSW-2104 -(1Gbit)- AX3600

  • One way iperf3 throughput: ~940 Mbit without GRO, cpu0 ~95%
  • One way iperf3 throughput: ~940 Mbit with GRO, cpu0 ~50%
  • Duplex iperf3 throughput ~ 600 Mbit each without GRO, cpu0 ~95%
  • Duplex iperf3 throughput ~ 840 Mbit each with GRO, cpu0 ~80%

GRO is my new friend :slight_smile:

Thanks for testing, its a simple change but really improves the performance.
I have ordered a 10G AQC107 NIC so I am able to actually see the limit as 1G is not enough.

I am eying some more cache-related improvements that wont be as drastic, but will provide couple of % improvement.
Basically, driver is shit, checksum and TSO would really help furhter.

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how many people have a 10G NIC? at least from a consumer perspective ... just saying ...imho we found the limits for ax3600 move on and get the PR submitted

2.5 should be the next standard for ethernet traffic... consider that ath11k can handle near 3gbps of traffic... so having 1gbps port is just stupid... especially for wan connection

(in fact better router based on ipq807x have 2.5 or 10gbps port for the wan part)

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so right ! absolutely ...and at least 1GB of RAM with the ath11k ... also I don't think this device will support many clients bearing in mind the memory footprint

this device is a good return of investment - https://forum.openwrt.org/t/dynalink-dl-wrx36-askey-rt5010w-ipq8074-openwrt-support/ .. i am now using the ax3600 just for low load stuff... and for performance/bandwitdh related this devices

$99 https://www.amazon.com/Dynalink-DL-WRX36-8-Stream-Wireless-3-6Gbps/dp/B096K9SVCT

I am wondering why I get low iperf speeds via wifi to my ethernet connected server.

wifi <--ax300--> ethernet connected server:
523 Mbits/sec

wifi <-> ax3000:
833 Mbits/sec

ax3000 <-> ethernet connected server:
863 Mbits/sec

is this normal?

It's for other HW (qnap 301w, ax9000, ...) that needs to test/improve.
If routers with 2.5Gbit or 10Gbit ports are limited to much lower speed by their cpu load, then there is no point in spending the extra money.

AX3600 will also benefit from any improvement that lowers cpu load.

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i don't think 2.5/10Gbit routers are limited apart from the HW and the ISP..agree the focus should be to move forward to other devices and test. My point on this device is the HW (cpu + nic) and more importantly the memory 512mb with Ath11k s not a viable device with a lot of tweaks that are required. imho ! excellent work from everyone to get us here in particular @robimarko and of course @Ansuel

Seeing ax3600 4x A53@1.4Ghz cpu load in some test cases, I think 4x A53@2.2Ghz will not do 2.5 or 10Gbits in some test cases (without HW offload). But it's only an opinion, will wait to read the benchs, I wish to be wrong.

It's clear a 10Gbit card will connect at 1Gbit AX3600 and will do nothing there. Robi took 10Gbit $ hit to support/improve/test the other HW for the community.

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@sqrwv me and robi reviewed the current code and we already said it's a miracle the driver gives the current performance... we won't reach 10gbps without offload but for sure the device is currently limited by a bad driver

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2.5G is probably not achievable currently, 10G for sure as its all done in SW currently.
Even GRO is not fully utilized as there is no checksum offloading.

@sqrwv 10G NIC-s arent that outrageously priced anymore, AQC107C one cost me 130EUR with shipping.

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As prices go lower, there will be a transition for faster ethernet in home users. I'll wait a bit more for lower prices :slight_smile:

Its already happening, now most motherboards have started to move to 2.5 and 5G, high end ones 10G.
Its slowly happening

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what is the use case here? internal home/business networks ?... I though openwrt was about people/consumers connecting to their ISP. How many people in the world would go over 10Gbps ..2.5gps ... even 1gps? over 1Gps most likely in the near future ...I am lucky if i get my isp to upgrade their router to 2.5gpbs this year

OpenWrt is about freedom, use it however you want.
Why would it be based around uplinks?

I have 2.5 and 10G IPQ807x gear, how am I supposed to test them without a 10G NIC?

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who is going to use your gear? eg the market you are targetting?

I dont get your point at all, I am not selling any gear nor am I an ISP so I dont have a target market

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I can give you an example. I am going to buy a NAS server (or build my own, whatever) with a 10gig port. I am going to use it for video editing and Adobe Premiere. It would be nice to have better speeds than than 1gig throught the router (at least within the LAN, even better from WAN), especially if I have it in RAID and I severely limit its capabilities. That's why I asked at least about the port aggregation some time ago.

Yes, there are some very expensive 2.5, 5, 10gig switches, but multi-gig routers are really rare and really expensive at the moment. I hope Wifi 7 will come quickly and bring wider use of 10gig ethernet as well.

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@rmandrad
IMHO, the 1Gbit ethernet LAN speed is now the computer bottleneck.

In past the bottleneck was the mechanical HDD, USB2, SATA, slow WIFI, but now it's the 1Gbit ethernet speed.

Everything else is much faster and will be limited by 1Gbit ethernet, SSDs, USB3, NVME, AX WIFI, even the damn USB is faster now.

For example in AX3600 I can do 1.6Gbit AX with 1 client only, but my bottleneck is at 1Gbit wired LAN.

As far as prices allow, there is a transition to faster ethernet speed, because it can be done and it's needed.

1 Like