Quark Home Firewall/Router w/ P2P?

[dealcorn]

I am intrigued by the announced but not yet available or priced Supermico A1SQN (http://www.supermicro.com.tw/products/motherboard/quark/a1sqn.cfm). The motherboard has a 2.2W TDP Intel Quark processor, 512MB of ECC DRAM, dual fast Ethernet nic's, a <= 32GB Micro SDHC card slot and a pair of USB 2.0 ports. Phoronix tested Debian on Quark (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTYyNTU) and it is not a powerful SoC. Still, I am confident Quark can handle a home firewall, router with NAT, DNS, DHCP. and OpenSSH servers (Shorewall, Dnsmasq and OpenSSH server). I am curious whether the remaining CPU cycles are adequate for a P2P daemon within the limits of a 32 GB SD card and a 1 Mb Internet connection. This is not a big deal: low end ARM router SoC's have handled this workload for years.

Quark is manufactured at a n-2 node (32nm) using transistors that are lots less efficient than the 14nm, but also maybe ~20% cheaper than 14nm due to the use of a fully depreciated fab. Even so, I suspect Quark may be the most energy efficient way to handle this almost trivial 24/7 workload. What efficient ARM motherboard that features/enables dual nic's should I also consider for this workload? Aside from entertainment value, my goals would be reasonable cost and maximum energy efficiency while being able to handle the workload. I have a soft spot in my heart for ECC DRAM in servers but ECC is not a must have feature.

 

[Shivansps]

I gona say no. not because it cant handle it, because there are better options, it does not even have GBlan controller, and performance side is not good, to the point that some router SoC may outperform it. Also, if its from Supermicro, it gona cost a lot.

 

[Nothingness]

I gona say no. not because it cant handle it, because there are better options, it does not even have GBlan controller, and performance side is not good, to the point that some router SoC may outperform it.

Indeed the performance will be an issue. BTW hasn't Intel decided to move away from standalone Quark with Edison which is based on Silvermont+Quark?

Also, if its from Supermicro, it gona cost a lot.

Not that much: 75 Euros

 

[dealcorn]

If it had a GUI or a RAID 5/6 array, I would demand a Gb nic or better. However, a Gb nic will not make my 1 Mb Internet connection go faster. Bulk transfers from the router to my desktop will be slow but I will never notice because I will configure this as a background, script driven process that requires no human interaction.

What affordable router SoC with dual Ethernet connections will be more energy efficient and preferably more economical? For this application and more, I do appreciate the benefits of the Xeon C2350 SoC with its quad 2.5 Gb ethernet connections and dual SATA 6 Gb/sec ports etc. However, that SoC is triple the ARK price ($43 vs $13.39), almost triple the TDP (6W vs 2.2W), and about 1 year after introduction, it has no availability in the retail marketplace. What more energy efficient, dual nic or better ARM alternative with retail availability should I consider?

 

[Shivansps]

I fail to see the point, a regular router running openwrt is not a better option?
Quark does not have the apropiate IO or the performance thats probable on the same level than a mips router soc.

If you can go itx there are a lot of better options.

 

[dealcorn]

Using the dual criteria or reasonable cost and maximum efficiency, I am asking what solution might be better. It costs money and efficiency for a router to support WiFi and 5 Ethernet connections. That is why I question whether a router SoC is the best solution for my needs. I want to test the adequacy of the Supermicro's Micro SD card solution for my router/P2P storage needs. I also want the fall-back alternative of a USB connected drive for expanded storage that could be used for, say, a PXE server with TFTP using DNSmasq and NFS-server. A mini PCIe slot, non MSATA SSD is an appealing option but they are currently overpriced for this home use case. I speculate a cased Supermicro solution with power supply may come in under 3 watts and US $100-110 (plus the cost and energy use of any USB 2.5" drive, if added).

Just to be explicit, the Supermicro board would act as a router solely for traffic going to the Internet (24/7). Fast Ethernet (100 Mb/sec) is not a speed limit for a 1 Mb/sec Internet connection. LAN only traffic (DVR excluded) will be handled using wired 1 Gb/sec (or better) Ethernet connections that are powered off when not in use. Perhaps, I will spend a USB connection for a 3rd fast Ethernet connection to drive a headless, disk-less, normally off DVR with WOL. 3 fast Ethernet connections is the upper limit on my connectivity requirements here. By not having WiFi, I never have to worry about it's security.

I love ITX and these functions are currently handled by my 24/7 Gigabyte J1800N-2DH ITX motherboard with an added 2nd nic. It's a delightful, rock solid, reasonably efficient, Debian (Jesse) desktop board using XFCE4. With 4 GB DRAM, a SSD and a 2.5 spinning drive, it draws many more watts than required when I log out, but never power off. I agree that a MIPS solution should be considered. What did you have in mind? My ideal storage option would be dual SSD's that support DevSleep configured with BTRFS in RAID 1. The Supermicro board does not readily support that. My (hopefully incorrect) understanding is that the not available Xeon C2350 may be the lowest TDP multi nic solution that supports dual SATA.

 

[sm625]

Quark is meant to be cheap. But Supermicro is not cheap. Unless you get these boards at a fire sale, they will cost many many times what they should. They arent going to compete with something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813135368

 

[sourceninja]

If your going to build your own router, it's always an act of love rather than an act of savings. You are going to find it really hard to complete with the size, power usage, and flexibility of modern routers like Ubuiquit Edgerouter lite.

There is some magic that comes only from building things yourself however....

 

[justanotherboy]

I'm also looking for a good option for a home router. It seems the best x86 SoC family is Rangeley for a router. It has very good IO options and have the Quick Assist module. The problem is you can't find these SoCs in their 2 core version, at least not for the average Joe, also this usually come in Mini-ITX form factor, hence high power usage.

I found Minnowboard MAX to be a good alternative, the problem here is you will need an extra Ethernet port (the card have one Gb) and cost more that $100. I board is focused for makers, but I really like to see a home router build around this.

If you find a better alternative, please let me know. I've been looking for a system that can do everything you want plus integrated AP. I prefer x86 to experiment with Open vSwitch, I've been found some issues cross compiling for ARM.

 

[dealcorn]

sourceninja:

The Ubuiquit Edgerouter lite looks like a wonderful router, but it has no storage capability such as USB and I saw a report on RVNetwork that it draws 7 watts. For those reasons, it is a non starter for me.

Locally, each watt burned in 24/7 mode cost almost US $3.00/year. I view a home router as an appliance that should last 10 years and local politicians are ordinary folks with families that may benefit from rising electric rates. For these reasons I value a watt saved as worth $25-30. While there are open issues about the adequacy of Quark's performance in my specified use case, my impression is that it may be the most energy efficient alternative that can get the job done.

Upon reflection, I note the Supermicro Quark board has dual mini PCIe slots. Today, non mSATA, mini PCIe SSD's are overpriced new technology. In 2 years, the price may come down significantly. If they offer a reduced power state similar to DevSleep, I could probably upgrade the file system to BTRFS RAID 1 in due course. I should have a reasonable handle on how far I am comfortable pushing the Quark CPU before committing to upgrading the storage system. In my use case, the storage system is likely the weak link that might bring down the server. I prefer that not happen.

 

[Shivansps]

if someone wants a cheap option this is probably a good option
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813135322

But BT are a better option even if expensive.

Using the dual criteria or reasonable cost and maximum efficiency, I am asking what solution might be better. It costs money and efficiency for a router to support WiFi and 5 Ethernet connections. That is why I question whether a router SoC is the best solution for my needs. I want to test the adequacy of the Supermicro's Micro SD card solution for my router/P2P storage needs. I also want the fall-back alternative of a USB connected drive for expanded storage that could be used for, say, a PXE server with TFTP using DNSmasq and NFS-server. A mini PCIe slot, non MSATA SSD is an appealing option but they are currently overpriced for this home use case. I speculate a cased Supermicro solution with power supply may come in under 3 watts and US $100-110 (plus the cost and energy use of any USB 2.5" drive, if added).

Just to be explicit, the Supermicro board would act as a router solely for traffic going to the Internet (24/7). Fast Ethernet (100 Mb/sec) is not a speed limit for a 1 Mb/sec Internet connection. LAN only traffic (DVR excluded) will be handled using wired 1 Gb/sec (or better) Ethernet connections that are powered off when not in use. Perhaps, I will spend a USB connection for a 3rd fast Ethernet connection to drive a headless, disk-less, normally off DVR with WOL. 3 fast Ethernet connections is the upper limit on my connectivity requirements here. By not having WiFi, I never have to worry about it's security.

I love ITX and these functions are currently handled by my 24/7 Gigabyte J1800N-2DH ITX motherboard with an added 2nd nic. It's a delightful, rock solid, reasonably efficient, Debian (Jesse) desktop board using XFCE4. With 4 GB DRAM, a SSD and a 2.5 spinning drive, it draws many more watts than required when I log out, but never power off. I agree that a MIPS solution should be considered. What did you have in mind? My ideal storage option would be dual SSD's that support DevSleep configured with BTRFS in RAID 1. The Supermicro board does not readily support that. My (hopefully incorrect) understanding is that the not available Xeon C2350 may be the lowest TDP multi nic solution that supports dual SATA.

Well the quark board from supermicro does not have msata, they are mpci-e, quark does not have en embedded sata controller.
In that case you could probably use something like this to connect hard disks directly, but they are not cheap.

Im not sure how many watts is your J1800 is using but keep in mind that even routers use about 10 and that quark board probably its not going to be any better.

Personally ill just pick up a good linux capable router im actually using a TP-Link TL-WDR3500 for what you want, openwrt + transmission + samba server (file server with 3x2TB usb hard disks).