LEDE-OpenWrt supported devices: wireless router/modem 802.11n or 802.11ac, fast CPU

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

Hi,
I would like to have an advice about buying a new wireless router or wireless router/modem that it is supported by the LEDE-openWRT project and it will be supported in the future (5 years)
For the wireless router it should have the following specifications:

  • Gigabit ethernet

  • 802.11n or 802.11ac or both

For the wireless router/modem it should have all the previous specification plus VDSL2 capability.
Can you recommend me something?
At the moment I have and old WNDR-3700 netgear with latest LEDE-openWRT installed and a tp-link TD-W9980 that I cannot convert to LEDE-openWRT project since I need both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz support.
Thank you

2

You can use the Table of Hardware for such kind of questions:
https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_modem_supported?datasrt=^wlan%205.0ghz
The BT Homehub 5 has good OpenWrt support for example.

3

Thank you very much. I followed your tip and I bought it.

4

Hi @sebastian_de
I'm using the router that you suggested and it is a great router.
However, I found that I cannot use openVPN plugin client since it seems that the router has slow SoC (Lantiq XWAY VRX268 (PSB 80910 EL V1.2) MIPS 34Kc).
I ran benchmark in order to test encryption performance following this guide. I get:
| r3560 | xRX200 rev 1.2 | BTHOMEHUBV5A - BT Home Hub 5A | MIPS 34Kc V5.6 | 332.54 | 1.0.2o | 25504330 | 22153860 | 12252030 | 3649200 | 3882310 | 1475740 | 6657450 | 5786680 | 5134420 | 5.5 | 206.2 15.8 | 16.7 |
While for instance, my laptop (i7- i7-3537U) in which openVPN works well, I get:
| | 1.0.2o | 424338410 | 344252780 | 199024370 | 228348100 | 57664760 | 18779730 | 96382760 | 91406340 | 57513530 | 455.4 | 18359.5 1639.3 | 1371.7 |
Both are using the same version of openSSL 1.0.2o. i7 is 10-15 times faster than SoC.
In your opinion, I need a different router? Is CPU processing for openSSL enough?
Thank you

5

Not surprising. "Fast enough" for OpenVPN is a relative term. If you can achieve the bandwidth you want through the SoC, then it's "fast enough". If not, then I'd recommend a multi-core x86_64 with AES. You can run the OpenVPN endpoint on a machine that isn't the router and/or use the "router" as a dumb AP and do the routing directly on the x86_64.

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6

This SoC has a crypto accelerator which is supported by OpenWrt. The kernel module is called ltq_deu_vr9.ko. Look for ltq_deu_vr9 in /proc/crypto to see the supported algorithms. To access this driver from userspace, you need the kmod-crypto-user package, which provides the AF_ALG interface. OpenSSL can use AF_ALG starting from version 1.1.0. Unfortunately, even the development branch of OpenWrt still comes with OpenSSL 1.0.2, which has been discussed elsewhere in the forum, so you will need to do some customization if you want this.

Disclaimer: I have not tried this configuration myself.

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7

I am not familiar with this SoC and/or the crypto driver. You could try to use it via the cryptodev module that is part of OpenWRT and specify “engine cryptodev” or “engine dynamic” (there is an “engine” option if you configure VPN via LuCi.

If this works and you have some control over the “other side”, as in you have your own site-to-site you could try to increase the “tun-MTU” to 9000 to make it “sort of” jumbo frames inside the tunnel. This will increase the blocks and should help improve performance using the hardware engine. Your mileage may vary...

1 Like
8

http://cryptodev-linux.org/

9

Hi,
thank you for the answer, since the thread starting to deviate from it original purpose, I opened a new one.
You are welcome with any advice.
Thank you