Mono Gateway (an NXP-based router thingie)

[pfry]

I didn't see this flying around, and someone had to start it, so I figured I might as well.

An NXP-based router that... should support OPNsense. I wonder about the hardware offloading, as I figure it would play hell with monitoring/logging.

It looks like the first development kit sale has closed, awaiting a second or production run. Hopefully they make it, but it's a tough market.

Maurice, do you have one?

[Maurice]

Yes, I have one and it does indeed run OPNsense. Hardware offloading is supported and really sets it apart from anything I've seen before. And yes, it can offload connections which are firewalled by pf. Pretty impressive.

I recommend watching Tomaž's latest video on YouTube.

Cheers
Maurice

Full disclosure: I've been contracted by Mono to maintain their OPNsense update server.

[OPNenthu]

Tomaž's videos would show up in my algorithm from time to time.  Awesome development w.r.t to OPNsense.  Very cool, @Maurice! 

I did cringe a bit when he mentioned Claude, but those are very appreciable gains that he discussed.  I guess the question I have is whether the AI produces fewer bugs and vulnerabilities than a team of humans would.

[Patrick M. Hausen]

I just placed a pre order :-)

[meyergru]

I followed Tomasz'sYT video series for a while now, and noted early that I would like to see OpnSense on it, instead of OpenWRT - this seemed infeasible at the time...

However, apart from the entertainment and enthusiast aspect of this effort, which in itself deserves praise, I see three problems:

1. The box only has 2x SFP+ ports and 3x 1 GbE ones. I know why it was infeasible to do 2.5 GbE, however, I think that is something left to be desired.

2. The price is now 600€ (the finished product will even be more, AFAIU), which is more than I would pay for an x64-based appliance with 3x 2.5 GbE and 2x SFP+. AFAIK, the routing speed is 10 Gbps as well for those.

3. As it appears, there are some legal obstacles with conflicts of the GPL v2 and commercially licensed code, which Tomasz has acknowledged in a pinned comment under his video and now seeks legal counsel as to if and how it will be possible to do it they way he intended.

[nero355]

Yes, I have one and it does indeed run OPNsense. Hardware offloading is supported and really sets it apart from anything I've seen before. And yes, it can offload connections which are firewalled by pf. Pretty impressive.

But where does one put this SoC based on it's performance ?

Similar to ARM64 A3x/A5x/A7x or maybe even X1 and the likes ?
Similar to Intel Atom N97/100/150/305 ?

Of is this like the 500 MHz MIPS SoC was in my old Router that pretty much completely depended on it's Offloading Features ?!

And why suddenly use Offloading while it's always recommended to disable all of it for both OPNsense and pfSense ?!

This is also something I have no experience with :

64 MB NOR flash for Bootloader

Is that like :
- /boot ?
- UEFI Boot Partition ?

And how much do we currently need for OPNsense ?
How "futureproof" is it sizewise ?

I did cringe a bit when he mentioned Claude, but those are very appreciable gains that he discussed.

I guess the question I have is whether the AI produces fewer bugs and vulnerabilities than a team of humans would.

+1 :)

I like stuff actual humans actually thought about!

And especially when it costs € 600+ !!!

I would like to see OpnSense on it, instead of OpenWRT

I don't mind OpenWRT as long as there is active development and good community support for the port for a specific device.

But that's not always the case sadly...

1. The box only has 2x SFP+ ports and 3x 1 GbE ones. I know why it was infeasible to do 2.5 GbE, however, I think that is something left to be desired.

2. The price is now 600€ (the finished product will even be more, AFAIU), which is more than I would pay for an x64-based appliance with 3x 2.5 GbE and 2x SFP+. AFAIK, the routing speed is 10 Gbps as well for those.

+1 :)

If you are asking € 600 for a device then just give me 4 x 10 Gbps RJ45 NICs that can work at 1/2,5/5/10 Gbps and be done with it!

_{(This is based on 4 x € 100 for the NICs and another € 200 for the AARCH64 SoC Mainboard which is IMHO more or less the average price for those parts sold seperately.)}