[Arm-netbook] eoma68 router (qca9531)

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

okaaay so the plan is to restart the eoma68 router project, this time
with a pre-existing reference design based on the QCA9531. that has a
PCIe interface, USB2 and a 5-port GbE *and* a 2x2 2.4ghz WIFI antenna.
full source is available for everything so it can be entirely libre
and RYF Certified.

the advantage of having an EOMA68 Card in the router should be clear:
the Card will have considerably more resources: RAM, CPU cycles etc.
meaning that VPNs can be done without high latency, yet take advantage
of the LAN capabilities of the 5-port... you could put in a MiniPCIe
Card (a *proper* one) e.g. a 3G/4G/LTE Modem, WIMAX, 802.11ac... blah
blah.

the tricky bit: connecting the EOMA68 Card to the QCA9531. now, i
took a look at the Reference Design and i *really* do not want to
touch the layout for the GbE, WIFI or PCIe. so i figured, why not
connect the EOMA68 USB2 host interface back-to-back with the QCA9531's
USB host?

turns out that something called the Cypress AN2720 can do exactly
that, and it comes up as a cdc_subset of the usbnet linux kernel
driver. yay! quick search online: the datasheet is publicly
available, easy to find on digikey. yay!

so i would assume, because it's not an actual 10/100 ethernet, that it
would run at (saturate) the full 480mb/sec of USB2. so not quite GbE
speeds but pretty damn close. yay!

anyway should be quite straightforward.

l.

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[Christopher Havel]

Replying by phone; please forgive the top-posting (and potential typos)
that result from that.

Would it be possible to have *two* PCIe Mini Card slots, say one for WiFi
and one for 4g/LTE?

That would be awesome. Mom hates cables, and I mostly agree with her on
that... so look much easier, with the router in the front hall, to run WiFi
rather than Ethernet to the kitchen table, two rooms and ~30ft away...

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
okaaay so the plan is to restart the eoma68 router project, this time
with a pre-existing reference design based on the QCA9531. that has a
PCIe interface, USB2 and a 5-port GbE *and* a 2x2 2.4ghz WIFI antenna.
full source is available for everything so it can be entirely libre
and RYF Certified.
the Card will have considerably more resources: RAM, CPU cycles etc.
meaning that VPNs can be done without high latency, yet take advantage
of the LAN capabilities of the 5-port... you could put in a MiniPCIe
Card (a *proper* one) e.g. a 3G/4G/LTE Modem, WIMAX, 802.11ac... blah
blah.
the tricky bit: connecting the EOMA68 Card to the QCA9531. now, i
took a look at the Reference Design and i *really* do not want to
touch the layout for the GbE, WIFI or PCIe. so i figured, why not
connect the EOMA68 USB2 host interface back-to-back with the QCA9531's
USB host?
turns out that something called the Cypress AN2720 can do exactly
that, and it comes up as a cdc_subset of the usbnet linux kernel
driver. yay! quick search online: the datasheet is publicly
available, easy to find on digikey. yay!
so i would assume, because it's not an actual 10/100 ethernet, that it
would run at (saturate) the full 480mb/sec of USB2. so not quite GbE
speeds but pretty damn close. yay!
anyway should be quite straightforward.
l.
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[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

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Replying by phone; please forgive the top-posting (and potential typos) that
result from that.
Would it be possible to have *two* PCIe Mini Card slots, say one for WiFi
and one for 4g/LTE?

yes i was just considering that. one wired for USB (only).

actually now that i think about it, it would be sensible to put a
GL850G onto the QCA9531, then connect both the MiniPCIe (USB only) and
AN2720 onto that, rather than have the MiniPCIe wired directly to an
EOMA68 USB.

that way the MiniPCIe is still accessible by the QCA9531 even if
there's no EOMA68 Card in use.

That would be awesome. Mom hates cables, and I mostly agree with her on
that... so look much easier, with the router in the front hall, to run WiFi
rather than Ethernet to the kitchen table, two rooms and ~30ft away...

yeahyeah. well in this case 2.4ghz WIFI will already be on-board,
but if you wanted 5.4ghz or 802.11ac (assuming you can get a MiniPCIe
802.11ac Card) that's what you'd use that slot for.

l.

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[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/drivers/ath10k
QCA9880. ath10k. proprietary. blegh. but it's MiniPCIe.

so... doable.

l.

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[Christopher Havel]

Better, in my opinion, to have WiFi on a card. I've yet to meet a WiFi
adapter that didn't burn itself out within a year or two. In fact, the one
I'm using right now (Rosewill RNX-EasyN1 from Newegg) is barely piping data
at all... two weeks ago I could stream Pandora on here, but not today. I've
a replacement on the way, but I only ordered it yesterday so it's going to
be a (long) week...

For some reason, this card wants to work better if I plug it in after the
system completely boots, rather than if I boot the system with the card
attached. Oy. Machine is a Lenovo X420, before anyone asks -- its internal
card is even more horrible than the burnt-out USB one I'm griping about...
and I can't really change that without serious BIOS mucking (hooray for
whitelists, not!), which I pretty well don't want to do.

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

Post by Christopher Havel
Better, in my opinion, to have WiFi on a card.

QCA9531 it's built-in and i'm not messing with the layout, so it
stays. MiniPCIe (actual PCIe) is already on the reference design so
_that_ stays. USB2 MiniPCIe (with a SIM card) is something to be
added, definitely.

l.

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[Allan Mwenda]

Hi Luke have you looked into the Atheros AR9590 and AR9580? I think those
are the fastest i could find in the wild

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton

Post by Christopher Havel
Better, in my opinion, to have WiFi on a card.

QCA9531 it's built-in and i'm not messing with the layout, so it
stays. MiniPCIe (actual PCIe) is already on the reference design so
_that_ stays. USB2 MiniPCIe (with a SIM card) is something to be
added, definitely.
l.
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[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

Post by Allan Mwenda
Hi Luke have you looked into the Atheros AR9590 and AR9580? I think those
are the fastest i could find in the wild

it's more a practical matter of what's accessible. have a quick
look: search for any combination of keywords "AR9580 datasheet" or
anything along those lines. see if you can find something - anything.
even an indication of what chipset's in it... ah! "AR9580 linux"
turns up this: https://wiki.debian.org/ath9k whew ok so it's an ath9k
which means firmware's on-board (whew).

l.

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[Allan Mwenda]

Is msata okay? I know its sold as Compex msata cards

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton

Post by Allan Mwenda
Hi Luke have you looked into the Atheros AR9590 and AR9580? I think

those

Post by Allan Mwenda
are the fastest i could find in the wild

it's more a practical matter of what's accessible. have a quick
look: search for any combination of keywords "AR9580 datasheet" or
anything along those lines. see if you can find something - anything.
even an indication of what chipset's in it... ah! "AR9580 linux"
turns up this: https://wiki.debian.org/ath9k whew ok so it's an ath9k
which means firmware's on-board (whew).
l.
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[Allan Mwenda]

The 9590 cards are PCIe hope this helps
http://www.neobits.com/compex_wle350nx_7b0000_compex_wle350nx_p9420581.html
https://wikidevi.com/files/datasheets/compex/WLE350NX_DSv1.0.7.pdf

and
http://www.oxfordtec.com/us/airetos-aex-ar9590-ni.html
http://www.airetos.com/products/aex-ar9590-ni/

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
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Post by Allan Mwenda
Is msata okay? I know its sold as Compex msata cards

http://www.electronicdesign.com/memory/what-s-difference-
between-mpcie-and-msata
answer: no. you specifically want a PCIe SSD.
l.

[dumblob]

Hi Luke,

I've spread the news about this router and got a positive feedback,
but also a huge complaint, that on
http://rhombus-tech.net/community_ideas/router/news/ it says 5x 1Gbit
PHY, but QCA9531 has only 5x 100Mbit PHY.

In case the router will have just 100Mbit interfaces, then it doesn't
make any sense to make such a router (nobody would be interested in it
as it wouldn't add any value to the current routers as these are quite
often very capable, with firmware being open-source and targetting the
same price segment as the EOMA68 router).

Keep going,

-- Jan

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[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

Post by dumblob
Hi Luke,
I've spread the news about this router and got a positive feedback,
but also a huge complaint, that on
http://rhombus-tech.net/community_ideas/router/news/ it says 5x 1Gbit
PHY, but QCA9531 has only 5x 100Mbit PHY.

ah, i didn't know that (and didn't check): i'll modify the page.

Post by dumblob
In case the router will have just 100Mbit interfaces, then it doesn't
make any sense to make such a router (nobody would be interested in it
as it wouldn't add any value to the current routers as these are quite
often very capable, with firmware being open-source and targetting the
same price segment as the EOMA68 router).

ask them if they can get the firmware source for the WIFI module on
those gigabit WIFI integrated routers.

l.

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[dumblob]

Hi Luke,

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
ask them if they can get the firmware source for the WIFI module on
those gigabit WIFI integrated routers.

that's rather not possible as the spreading was done through a public
announcement on a web site with tens of thousands of visitors daily. I
can only change the announcement and read comments. I can't somehow
"ask" them for an alternative.

Anyway, do you know about any successor of QCA9531 ? I know about
decent amount of deployments (matching the size, capabilities, and
interfaces of such a "better" SOHO router) where 100Mbit is fine, but
I know about way more deployments where 1Gbit is the point which
separates the wheat from the chuff.

Keep going,

-- Jan

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[Allan Mwenda]

The cards i shared earlier are 450mbit i think. Fully libre too. I dont think you can get 1000 out of free firmware. The fastest would probably be the new broadcom AC wifi but that is a trap, the driver is libre, the firmware (which is neccesary) is not. Probably could be reverse engineered firmware-side but how hard that would be i don't know.

Post by dumblob
Hi Luke,

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
ask them if they can get the firmware source for the WIFI module on
those gigabit WIFI integrated routers.

that's rather not possible as the spreading was done through a public
announcement on a web site with tens of thousands of visitors daily. I
can only change the announcement and read comments. I can't somehow
"ask" them for an alternative.
Anyway, do you know about any successor of QCA9531 ? I know about
decent amount of deployments (matching the size, capabilities, and
interfaces of such a "better" SOHO router) where 100Mbit is fine, but
I know about way more deployments where 1Gbit is the point which
separates the wheat from the chuff.
Keep going,
-- Jan
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[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

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crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

Post by Allan Mwenda
The cards i shared earlier are 450mbit i think. Fully libre too. I dont
think you can get 1000 out of free firmware. The fastest would probably be
the new broadcom AC wifi but that is a trap, the driver is libre, the
firmware (which is neccesary) is not. Probably could be reverse engineered
firmware-side but how hard that would be i don't know.

it's not worth the effort. it often takes years and there's no
guarantee of success. it's much easier to convince qualcomm (or
mediatek) to just release the source code. chris from thinkpenguin
walked the atheros team (right up to director level) through the
process for the AR9271, and that took *two years* from start to
finish.

l.

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[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

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Post by dumblob
Hi Luke,

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
ask them if they can get the firmware source for the WIFI module on
those gigabit WIFI integrated routers.

that's rather not possible as the spreading was done through a public
announcement on a web site with tens of thousands of visitors daily. I
can only change the announcement and read comments. I can't somehow
"ask" them for an alternative.

no problem - you know what i'm referring to, at least.

Post by dumblob
Anyway, do you know about any successor of QCA9531 ?

i don't... but if it's from atheros it's almost certainly likely to
have ath10k... which will no longer be libre. we've had a hard enough
time even *finding* libre-compatible routers, let alone gigabit ones.

Post by dumblob
I know about
decent amount of deployments (matching the size, capabilities, and
interfaces of such a "better" SOHO router) where 100Mbit is fine, but
I know about way more deployments where 1Gbit is the point which
separates the wheat from the chuff.

*sigh* yeahh i knoww....

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[Lars Kruse]

Hi Jan,


Am Tue, 9 May 2017 12:22:04 +0200

Post by dumblob
[..]
In case the router will have just 100Mbit interfaces, then it doesn't
make any sense to make such a router (nobody would be interested in it
as it wouldn't add any value to the current routers as these are quite
often very capable, with firmware being open-source and targetting the
same price segment as the EOMA68 router).

This depends on your use case.
I am part of a wireless community in northern Germany. The vast majority of our
routers are Ubiquiti NS M5 or TP-Link CPE510 devices (outdoor wireless devices)
with one or two 100 MBit/s ethernet ports.
This was never a concern for our users, since the VPN that most of our members
use, requires loads of CPU power. Thus more than 10 MBit/s are rarely seen.
We were always looking for devices with a faster CPU, but these do not seem to
exist within the price range of approximately 100 Euros.

This is probably a quite a specific use case. Indoor users may well have a real
need for gigabit router ports - I cannot tell.

Cheers,
Lars

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[Stefan Monnier]

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
so i would assume, because it's not an actual 10/100 ethernet, that it
would run at (saturate) the full 480mb/sec of USB2. so not quite GbE
speeds but pretty damn close. yay!

Based on what USB2 gives us with "mass-storage" devices, 30MB/s is
basically the upper bound. And FWIW, when I connect my desktop to my
A20-based router via USB2 on one side and USB-OTG on the other (using
the "gether" gadget), I'm getting about 10MB/s, so "faster than
fast-ethernet" maybe, but be surprised if you get "close" to GbE speeds.


Stefan


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[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

Post by Stefan Monnier

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
so i would assume, because it's not an actual 10/100 ethernet, that it
would run at (saturate) the full 480mb/sec of USB2. so not quite GbE
speeds but pretty damn close. yay!

Based on what USB2 gives us with "mass-storage" devices, 30MB/s is
basically the upper bound. And FWIW, when I connect my desktop to my
A20-based router via USB2 on one side and USB-OTG on the other (using
the "gether" gadget), I'm getting about 10MB/s, so "faster than
fast-ethernet" maybe, but be surprised if you get "close" to GbE speeds.

g_ether over the A20's musb (Mentor USB) interface is... very broken.
musb is a ridiculously-low-cost OTG controller that has to be
partially-implemented in softtware. the current state of the linux
driver for musb is completely fucked-up. for example: if you plug a
USB3 hub into it, then plug in a USB 1.1 keyboard, it goes "aargh fuck
i have no fucking idea what to do, aaiyaaa splurgh". likewise the
usb speed-allication code is all screwed up: you can just about get
away with plugging in one device but a hub and then multiple devices:
forget it.

so what you are probably running into is the musb driver going "ha!
you plugged in a *what*?? pffh i have no idea what speed that is so
let's just assume it's USB 1.0 mkaay?"

a proper USB2 host controller should have none of these difficulties.

l.

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[Stefan Monnier]

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
g_ether over the A20's musb (Mentor USB) interface is... very broken.

No doubt. But IME that tends to apply to a large proportion of
USB thingies.

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
so what you are probably running into is the musb driver going "ha!
you plugged in a *what*?? pffh i have no idea what speed that is so
let's just assume it's USB 1.0 mkaay?"

I don't know what's the source of the 10MB/s performance, but note that
10MB/s is still 7 times faster than the theoretical upper bound of USB1,
so it's definitely not putting itself in USB1 mode.

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
a proper USB2 host controller should have none of these difficulties.

Let's hope so,


Stefan


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[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

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Post by Stefan Monnier

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
g_ether over the A20's musb (Mentor USB) interface is... very broken.

No doubt. But IME that tends to apply to a large proportion of
USB thingies.

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
so what you are probably running into is the musb driver going "ha!
you plugged in a *what*?? pffh i have no idea what speed that is so
let's just assume it's USB 1.0 mkaay?"

I don't know what's the source of the 10MB/s performance, but note that
10MB/s is still 7 times faster than the theoretical upper bound of USB1,
so it's definitely not putting itself in USB1 mode.

which one's the... wait... you said 10MB/s - is that 10
Megabytes/sec? which is 100mbits / sec?

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[Stefan Monnier]

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton

Post by Stefan Monnier
I don't know what's the source of the 10MB/s performance, but note that
10MB/s is still 7 times faster than the theoretical upper bound of USB1,
so it's definitely not putting itself in USB1 mode.

which one's the... wait... you said 10MB/s - is that 10
Megabytes/sec? which is 100mbits / sec?

That's right.


Stefan


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[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

Post by Stefan Monnier

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton

Post by Stefan Monnier
I don't know what's the source of the 10MB/s performance, but note that
10MB/s is still 7 times faster than the theoretical upper bound of USB1,
so it's definitely not putting itself in USB1 mode.

which one's the... wait... you said 10MB/s - is that 10
Megabytes/sec? which is 100mbits / sec?

That's right.

ok so that's odd, why limit a virtual device's speed?

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[Erik Auerswald]

Hi,

Post by Stefan Monnier

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
so i would assume, because it's not an actual 10/100 ethernet, that it
would run at (saturate) the full 480mb/sec of USB2. so not quite GbE
speeds but pretty damn close. yay!

Based on what USB2 gives us with "mass-storage" devices, 30MB/s is
basically the upper bound. And FWIW, when I connect my desktop to my
A20-based router via USB2 on one side and USB-OTG on the other (using
the "gether" gadget), I'm getting about 10MB/s, so "faster than
fast-ethernet" maybe, but be surprised if you get "close" to GbE speeds.

That is slower than Fast Ethernet which is 12.5MB/s.

Erik

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

http://rhombus-tech.net/community_ideas/router/news/

ok so i've done a preliminary layout and it's to be a 160x160 PCB.
the QCA9531 Reference Design's layout - i'm not touching it with a
10ft barge pole. it contains *really* complex R.F. layout and PCIe
connectivity. i'll be routing round this layout through some of the
gaps, to re-route some of the GPIO and also the USB connections, but
that's it: nothing else.

it's actually a really powerful board, with connectivity similar to
that of pcengines.ch alix boards and some of mikrotic's routers.

l.

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[dumblob]

Well, the router looks really good. Finally a possible competitor for
https://omnia.turris.cz/en/ .

I think there might be quite a huge user based interested in such a
router (judging based on the interest in Turris routers - see e.g.
their Kickstarter campaign).

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[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

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Post by dumblob
Well, the router looks really good. Finally a possible competitor for
https://omnia.turris.cz/en/ .

shrieeek! $EUR 339!! *splutter*! the qca9531 is $10, the rest of
the components would bring it to a mass-volum retail cost of say...
$75, and an EOMA68-A20 Card at mass-volume retail pricing would be
around $30.

Post by dumblob
I think there might be quite a huge user based interested in such a
router (judging based on the interest in Turris routers - see e.g.
their Kickstarter campaign).

good to hear.

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