Alternatives to R4S

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

Let's presume I have 1Gb/s and a dumb AP at my disposal. If we look in the far future, the most power-heavy scenario may be:

  • 3 people watching 4k videos
  • A honeypot, VPN, and a DNS server running on the device itself
  • The rest of the bandwidth being used by a Tor relay running on the device (thousands upon thousands of connections being made to the device)

I'm looking for something that could just about handle all of this without costing me an arm and a leg and without consuming as much power as a microwave would. From what I understand, the community is quite fond of R4S, but I have to wonder if there isn't something more suitable. Especially due to the plethora of disparate opinions.

Do you think that maybe a Banana Pi, Raspberry Pi, or other such board, would be more suited to my use-case?

Thanks.

2

R6S would be my choice. Or cheaper X86 mini PC.

3

I was considering it, but the price put me off... I've also heard the cooling could be better.

4

Well, anything under $200 would fit your needs

5

I'll take that into consideration. Thank you.

6

R6S isn't supported by Openwrt, yet.

If OP's in US, the WRX36, it's still $80 at Amazon.
But I'd grab an x86 too.

7

I'm in the EU.

In terms of x86, I am quite wary of it because, if I understand correctly, it usually consumes more power than, say, ARM.

8

That is not generically correct.

There are purpose-built x86_64 mini-PCs that are fine with 4.5 to 15 watts idle, depending on the actual model.

And there are modern high-end ARM 'plastic' routers that chug up to 25 watts idle from the wall.

It always depends on the exact hardware you're dealing with. Yes, your hand-me-down gaming rig is likely to use 70+ watts idle, but you can buy or build very low-electricity-but-fast x86_64 devices, but it needs a bit more attention (and a little luck to make good buying decisions).

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9

When considering power consumption, Intel N100 devices might be worth to take a look at. See https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/cwwk-topton-nxxx-quad-nic-router.39685/

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10

That's very intriguing!

Do you people have any experience with those? I presume it would be powerful to do just about everything I would want to on a router.

  • Is cooling sufficient?
  • Are these boards supported just as well as R4S?*
  • What about the power consumption?
  • I actually wouldn't mind hacking together my own images; quite the contrary. I just wouldn't want to write an absurd amount of code just to get it running. That rarely ends well.
11

These questions are not directly related to the topic of this thread? Should I change the title? What should I do in such situations?

12

Regarding N100: I have no 1st hand experience but info which others posted mention:

  • cooling: look for N100 devices with large heat exchange fins
  • N100 devices with i226-V NIC are well supported
  • Power consumption should be <10W
13

Acemagician T8 Plus can often be found for less than 140€/$, N95 and Realtek NICs, but it works well, AFAIK.

The performance differance between those two is 4%, but the N100 is a 6W CPU, while the N95 is 15W.

14

You referred to N100 twice, both as a different device. Isn't it rather N95 and N100?

15

It was, sorry, corrected.

16

I'm currently taking a look at N5100 and N5105. The former has a lower base frequency and 6W TDP, compared to latter's 10W TDP.

Let's take this exact model as an example: https://aliexpress.com/item/1005004864384920.html

  • Do you think it could really dissipate 10W?
  • Would installing a hypervisor and running OpenWrt alongside other general-purpose machines make sense on such a device?
17

Personally, I wouldn't buy anything that's supposed to last on AX, usually the after market support is non existing.

About the kind of product/design, sure, why not, 10W isn't a lot.

18

Fair point. Then again, the thread linked to above by @ed8 is really very long and is concerning basically only the models found on sketchy Chinese websites the likes of AX.

I took a peek on eBay, but found nothing sufficiently similar to N5105 devices with adequate networking support. I don't think I could realistically get them from anywhere else.

19

I managed to find some, but I would need to pay 2-4x as much compared to AX.

20

Fujitsu Futro S920 or S940, if you don't mind some DIY.

The S920 can easily be found for 30€ on ebay, just make sure you get the quad core version.