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Hi all, just more info about the RTL drivers. I've started upgrading bits of my network to 2.5G, prompted by putting a CAT8 cable from one side of the house to the other. This has given good gains with my NAS as expected.

I picked up a J4125 4 port pc with all ports being Intel 2.5G for a sily low price. Unboxed, no heatsink or PSU. Tested it, fantastic!

Its is currently on the workbench so I can make an enclosure (not easy with all the cutouts) and heatsink arrangement. So the J6412 1G unit is back in service. I plugged the RTL 2.5G USB adaptor in to retain the network speed on the branch with this PC and the NAS. It's not reliable. Functions for periods, but goe quiet, and stays that way until the router, 2.5G switch and my PC are rebooted. It's also clocking errors, where the others do not.


A router with all RTL chipsets, like the N150 and adaptor, worked reliably. All Intel works reliably. A mix of the two - definitely not :-) 

I personally didn't have any issues with the RTL USB3 ethernet adaptor. I'm not a gamer and don't transfer large files out of my local network though. However, the N150 was ticking over all the time and I had a better use for it. So I now have a Celeron J6412 4 port 'passive' cooled lump. The passive cooling is ok up to about 20C, but the UK has been reaching nearly 40C for periods this year, and it was getting too hot.

The copper block is very good, with thermal compound between it and the chip and with the aluminium case. But it's not a heat pipe and temps were reaching 100C on occasion. Thermal lag. With a slow running 12" fan it's staying cool.

Unsurprisingly no issues with it either! It's basically ticking over also.

I'm very impressed with OPNsense and it can be considered a 'utility' not an experiment or lab kit. It auto updates every month and basically fit and forget :-)

My Hisense telly likes to call its friends around the world. No updates, adfest on TV channels. Are you running Unbound and is it simply caching all the websites your telly also likes to invite?

i been running opnsense in "basic/noob" mode for a year now

NEWB to NEWB. That's good to know.

After much rabbit-holing, trying, looking at out of date Youtubes and switching packages (and the order they are installed).....and trying again: I've got OpenWRT working.

A proper house of cards to set up, and the backup doesn't remember what versions or add on packages you need. There is ANOTHER utility that does a full backup and I will explore that. IF it works with the other packages I've installed.

1. Hardware offloading gets newtwork speeds up to where they should be.
2. Adblock. I could not get this to work with Unbound. Adblock-fast integrates much better, once you find the missing settings.
3. GUI terminal addon is handy.
4. Netdata is an interesting hardware monitor with lots of graphs. Edgerouter4 seems to have plenty of power. Quad core Cavium 1Ghz. 1G DDR3 and 4G EMMC. Fanless.
5. Some basic settings (like MAC spoofing) are frustratingly hidden in plain sight. You have to click the greyed-out port to configure that. Argh!

I have a feeling the next firmware update will break it. I didn't get that feeling with OPNsense at all. With the myriad hardware supported, this isn't surprising. A bit like Armbian, except they will have a comparatively massive user base and hence more updates, and minimal bugs now.

Another update. DNSMASQ and Unbound don't play well. Either you get no IP addresses handed out, or Unbound crashes every second or so. You can unlink them, and I have, but it's really not clear what's going on. Various versions, upgrades, changes in operation and general incompatibilities. It's working, it survives reboots, but what a monster.

OPNsense: Powerful, easy to us (once you have a clue what it is you are trying to achieve) and it hasn't failed in what I wanted out of it. Loads of info, and the GUI helps you. Top Job :-)

OPENwrt: Very much like a Raspberry Pi clone in terms of software. I have a couple of Friendly ARM SBCs, an Orange Pi and a horrible Mango Pi. Most of them have some restriction or a dozen required work-arounds. They are gainfully employed as security cams, christmas lights etc and until recently a pi-hole. Only the Mango lies dormant though. No support.

It's not that bad, but reminds me of certain motor drives I've configured in my work. Limited instructions, 'simplified' software diagrams and things you are told to set up monkey-see monkey-do. Doesn't work? start at step 1 again. Thanks Rockwell. Siemens on the other hand, give you masses of good paper and online information, plus detailed diagnostics to see what's happening. It's overwhelming to start with, but much easier once you've got the basics.

Update: it had been running for 9 days until 01:00 on 1st May. Then a total crash. This is the exact same time I'd set a CRON task to update Unbound blocklists. Rebooted.

Ran again for an exact number of hours, and this time just the WAN gateway was missing. Smoking gun?....... This was the exact time I'd set another CRON task to check for firmware update. Reaches for smokes in the old brown, leather top desk. Leans back in the creaky old chair. The dusky New York office lights up for a brief spark, before drifting back into the gloom.......

Anyhow. There WAS a firmware update and it did say 'CRON error fixed'. Where's that Linux Pi to test with gone? Before I get Roger Rabbit arrested  :-)

Hi @drosophila - I am, of course, only playing at this :-) That test software looks like the equivalent of an engine dyno.

However, it's been up for 3 days now, happily accepted VPN and various dodgy test websites, although the IPN slowed some elements on the pages down, which I expected. Teams on my work machine and their VPN also good. Bit-torrent also happy, plus my wife's PC, various Amazon and Android devices and the TV which likes to call its friends.

The USB adaptor might well produce a melt-down at full load for extended periods, but cruising around town, out on the motorway or overtaking, it seems good.


You've made me curious though. I'll probably try iperf via an SBC on Linux to one of the listed servers and see what happens. Windows networking always seems a bit 'touchy' to me.

Thanks for the rapid feedback. I saw several warnings about this online. However, I had the hardware laying about (apart from the 8256) which didn't stand me for much money.

Getting a dual NIC X64 PC etc with a half decent CPU in it would be a bigger investment. I have some DDR 3 laying about somewhere though, which would help a lot these days.
 

If it all goes die-down (geddit) or otherwise, I'll feed back.

Hi All, These are the results I've had with the USB3 Ethernet adaptors listed in the title. N150 Acemagic Vista V1. I used the appropriate RTL and AX plug-ins.

RTL8153. Reaches virtually the available ~900Mbps download and upload available on my fibre. crashes occasionally under load. Fail!
AX88179. Limited to 250Mbps, but reliable. Fail!
RTL8256BG. Reaches the available bandwidth. Seems reliable depite my attempts to break it with speed test, Teams etc. Win!

With various packages like a blocklist in Unbound, Crowdsec and Intrusion Protection turned on, the most CPU useage I see is 20%. Memory, far less than 1G. My reason for switching from my recent TP-Link AX73 device is mainly because their firewall setting is now an android-controlled paid app. So I have that set up as an AP with an RE705 extender located in the other end of the house. That gives me reliable +-800Mbps over wifi(6) tapped into the extenders Gigabit port.


I hope this is of use to others.