Was considering getting the Brume, but the absence of a 5Ghz radio changed my mind.
The Brume product page (generically) claims 'External 5G AC Wi-Fi dongle supported', but doesn't list any specific models. Not a big fan of dongles in any case. Will stick with the slate for now....
Memory usage looks like this after 60 days uptime:
The Qotom is great. It's built like a tank and it runs cool and completely silently - the entire case is a heatsink and there are no fans.
The only downsides are the relatively high cost and the fact that you generally need to order them from China, so extra taxes come into play. I was lucky and managed to find an unused one in the UK on eBay.
2 Likes
I haven't used USB storage at all I'm afraid.
What sort of thing are you intererested in? I can try attaching a couple of USB sticks.
I'm with you on making backups of backups. I backup all my stuff to a Synology NAS and then backup those backups to a second NAS at my parents house, and they do the same in reverse.
The Qotom should be able to handle multiple USB drives easily. The CPU is way more powerful than anything in Synology's DS series. I do love Synology's NAS devices though.
At the moment I have OpenWrt running on the bare hardware, but in the long term I would like to virtualise everything so I can use the Qotom's full capacity to run other stuff like a full Linux distro and LibreNMS (which I currently have running on a Pi). It's tricky when it's your main router though - my family won't thank me for messing about with it and (temporarily) breaking their internet connection 
My main goal when buying the Qotom and moving to OpenWrt (from Tomato) was to get performant QoS on a 200Mbps connection, and it does that with its eyes shut. I suspect it could handle a symmetric gigabit connection with ease. Hopefully I can find out within the next couple of years if CityFibre get their act together...
3 Likes
TP-Link and LTE connection already worked. Like on Fritzbox.
But both are slow and provide basic encryption and mesh VPN
networking. As my next option i tend to Huawei.
url=https://consumer.huawei.com/en/routers/4g-router-3-prime/
It seems a good solution. And working.
I've got to say that is a pretty neat set-up. I'm a little jealous. Your goal was hardware for 200 Mbps QoS though? I'd say you've exceeded your goal in spades: QoS on ramips MT7621.
You may even be ready for 200 MBps someday, if only those pesky Gig ethernet ports could keep up with the CPU!
Seriously though, that device looks great. It will probably handle full speed VPN and QoS simultaneously for you for a while.
1 Like
Yeah, I got annoyed with constantly upgrading the hardware to a new MIPS/ARM unit and hitting a new limit a year or two later, so I decided to buy something that'll definitely last many years.
I managed to get Proxmox running on it yesterday with OpenWrt running as a VM. Pretty cool.
Nice, but why not run OpnSense on the Qotom and OpenWrt on the Wifi-APs?
4 Likes
Has the issue where this device does not support VLAN on the WAN port been solved?
That's a pretty nasty showstopper for me, otherwise the device is a great choice..
how about amlogic tv boxes ?
most of it have about 2gb ram with quadcore cpu, 8gb storage..some has dual band wifi, just lack of ethernet ports
with the price of low-end routers, higher performance than high-end routers
wifi sucks so no usage as router
my favorite router for now is Newifi3 D2. its a capable hardware handling gigabit connection via hardware offloading, has gigabit rj45 ports, and all the wifi goodness. and all of this I can buy this for around 20USD or less at least here in my place.
getting this device loaded with openwrt is really easy, you dont even need fancy tools for ttl or open it up. just follow this one youtube video that enables telnet and load a .ko file which what it does is flash the bootrom with breedweb.
1 Like
Mine would have to be the Raspberry Pi 4...the 1GB or 2GB version along with a case can be had for $30-40, and the quad-core Cortex-A72 CPU + gigabit LAN is a great combination, particularly if you run it in a router-on-a-stick VLAN setup like I do.
2 Likes
Do you really mean enthusiast device? $20-$40 usually means cheap, no?
Favorite cheap openwrt devices
some might feel enthusiastic at 200$+ like r7800
Ehh, I guess you could call the RPi4 both cheap AND an enthusiast device. The Pi itself may be cheap although you might need to end up shelling out an extra $20-30 for a managed switch, and possibly more if you want a PoE-capable setup.
1 Like
what is the advantage to have vs router??? I thought Raspberry was more like mini computer, not router
You can get with 1,2,4,or 8 gigs of ram
4 cores at 1.5ghz
SD card of any size
With a TP link ue300 gigabit adapter as a secondary gigabit you will get 980mbps thruput even with shaping
Just set one up and I’m quite happy with it so far
2 Likes
A router is in fact, exactly like a mini computer.
Not sure what you mean would be the difference.
1 Like