OpenWRT on first gen Pentium 4 system?

[TukangUsapEmenq]

Stumbled myself onto a one kind-of-ancient system with Willamette-era Pentium 4 1.8 GHz single core, ECS L4S5MG3 motherboard, 256 MB of RAM, and 40 GB of HDD. 

 

Well, I wanna try OpenWRT for it, probably will run it as the home router with a TP-Link router connected to it as access point, just for little Squid-based caching proxy (to, at least try, conserve some data plan if it works) or even Steam-cache as their download's just so darn big, and USB tethering over it. 

 

Or, if there's anything than OpenWRT that supports of what above, please let me know. 

 

Well.... It does work on this particular device, isn't? Use-case is for 2 PCs, and 4 phones via wifi. 

[Levent]

I suggest giving it a go but I dont think you will have an acceptable experience with hardware that old. You will most likely will have to build openwrt from source and include drivers for that motherboard.

 

[SupaKomputa]

Openwrt can run on sub 1ghz ARM cpu and 32mb ram, so you got a fast one there.

a huge power hog for such a simple task that a $10 router can handle.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

7 minutes ago, dhannemon13 said:

Stumbled myself onto a one kind-of-ancient system with Willamette-era Pentium 4 1.8 GHz single core, ECS L4S5MG3 motherboard, 256 MB of RAM, and 40 GB of HDD. 

 

Well, I wanna try OpenWRT for it, probably will run it as the home router with a TP-Link router connected to it as access point, just for little Squid-based caching proxy (to, at least try, conserve some data plan if it works) or even Steam-cache as their download's just so darn big, and USB tethering over it. 

 

Or, if there's anything than OpenWRT that supports of what above, please let me know. 

 

Well.... It does work on this particular device, isn't? Use-case is for 2 PCs, and 4 phones via wifi. 

That is a literal potato

 

If you just want something for dirt cheap then cheap used lga 775 system will prob go around 20-30$ or cheap 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th gen prebuilts like optiplexes can go for 50-100$, just depends where you live

 

No point in using a system like that unless you are retro gaming or something

[TukangUsapEmenq]

2 minutes ago, Levent said:

I suggest giving it a go but I dont think you will have an acceptable experience with hardware that old. You will most likely will have to build openwrt from source and include drivers for that motherboard.

 

Damn, that's tedious to build it from the sauce. Probably any alternative software like pfSense? 

 

Just now, SupaKomputa said:

Openwrt can run on sub 1ghz ARM cpu and 32mb ram, so you got a fast one there.

a huge power hog for such a simple task that a $10 router can handle.

Well, yeah. Beats gettin' a new router while I can experiment on it tho hahah

[TukangUsapEmenq]

2 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

That is a literal potato

 

If you just want something for dirt cheap then cheap used lga 775 system will prob go around 20-30$ or cheap 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th gen prebuilts like optiplexes can go for 50-100$, just depends where you live

 

No point in using a system like that unless you are retro gaming or something

Couldn't agreed more, dang Warcraft 3 runs barely good on this one system. We actually have a Pentium Dual Core E2160 system here, but dad gonna use it for his PC, so no way I'm gonna use it. Had a Prescott Pentium 4 3 GHz with hyper-threading either but can't find the CPU anywhere. 

 

And, no, I don't think I'll get a new system. It's just for experimental purposes. 

[Somerandomtechyboi]

3 minutes ago, dhannemon13 said:

Couldn't agreed more, dang Warcraft 3 runs barely good on this one system. We actually have a Pentium Dual Core E2160 system here, but dad gonna use it for his PC, so no way I'm gonna use it. Had a Prescott Pentium 4 3 GHz with hyper-threading either but can't find the CPU anywhere. 

 

And, no, I don't think I'll get a new system. It's just for experimental purposes. 

Just buy a cheap pentium e5800 and stick it in your pc and do a slight bit of overclocking

 

It isnt gonna perform as good as the e8000 series clock for clock but you prob arrnt gonna be able to oc an e8000 series with your board so cheap pentium it is

 

These cpus usually go for pennies so not a big investment at all, though i will warn you that these cpus are kinda garb at overclocking since they need a ton of voltage, even my good e5400 needs ~1.52v for 4.5 but my e8400 needs ~1.45v, and to even boot at 4.5 my e5700 needs ~1.6v so yea pretty garb cpus ocing wise

[TukangUsapEmenq]

Just a little update after stumbling for hours. Yes, it does work, and I'm typing this while connected to the 'brand-new' router here.

 

Although did struggle on how the f I can install the additional thingies for USB tethering while I don't even have internet from ethernet, this custom OpenWRT firmware saved my ass from it.

 

https://www.helmiau.com/blog/helmiwrt-os

 

And here we go, below. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

Glad to see it worked, but something like an Atom N2800 can run rings (at least six times as powerful) around a high-end Pentium 4 using considerably less electricity.  So if you do consider running it 24/7 then buying a much newer low-power system will pay for itself in no time in electricity saved.

 

I have an old 2.4Ghz Pentium 4 laptop and honestly, its literally worthless.  It was an inefficient architecture even when it launched.

[TukangUsapEmenq]

2 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Glad to see it worked, but something like an Atom N2800 can run rings (at least six times as powerful) around a high-end Pentium 4 using considerably less electricity.  So if you do consider running it 24/7 then buying a much newer low-power system will pay for itself in no time in electricity saved.

 

I have an old 2.4Ghz Pentium 4 laptop and honestly, its literally worthless.  It was an inefficient architecture even when it launched.

Yeah, it's a total burnout of the bills, actually have an old laptop here with dual core 1.6 GHz and 3 GB RAM, but unfortunately it just reboot constantly on the same custom OpenWRT (albeit, 64-bit version) I put and so can't really use it despite of what I tried most. It didn't detect the LAN either, so it's a loss unfortunately.

 

Probably would just get an Android setup box for cheap or Raspberry later on.

[Alex Atkin UK]

On 9/21/2021 at 10:51 AM, dhannemon13 said:

Probably would just get an Android setup box for cheap or Raspberry later on.

If you're going ARM anyway, then wouldn't a consumer router make more sense?  You have the advantage of WiFi and a built-in switch that way.

I've not been fond of going RPi as you're limited to one ethernet port and would need a smart-managed switch to get the same functionality as a consumer router.  (I don't like USB ethernet adapters as any additional latency however small is not great IMO)

[TukangUsapEmenq]

4 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

then wouldn't a consumer router make more sense?

In fact I'm still considering of which one that I should choose. Is TP-Link MR3420 good enough? What really matters the latency doesn't too suck on the online games, yet good enough for standard use at home.

 

I'm actually fine of just having one ethernet port as most of the network would be wireless either. Actually got a spare unmanaged 100 Mbps switch here (could buy a gigabit if needed to, especially if I'm going for a NAS) if I really have to go. But yeah getting the router's seems the good way.

[CerealExperimentsLain]

*looks up from J4005 powered pfSense box*

Wow, that is one high power consumption router you've made there... o.O

[TukangUsapEmenq]

7 hours ago, CerealExperimentsLain said:

*looks up from J4005 powered pfSense box*

Wow, that is one high power consumption router you've made there... o.O

Yep, that's why I did this just for experiment and won't really implement it for 24/7 use: I'd blow the bills straight up lol

 

And unfortunately unstable either, keeps getting bricked every (hard) reset, so no matter how I have to use other solution either.

[heimdali]

You could run opnsense in a VM on your server?  My impression is that with that, latencies are lower than even what you get with an EdgeRouter Lite.  Only slightly maybe, but hey ...

 

[TukangUsapEmenq]

1 hour ago, heimdali said:

You could run opnsense in a VM on your server?  My impression is that with that, latencies are lower than even what you get with an EdgeRouter Lite.  Only slightly maybe, but hey ...

 

I have no server unfortunately. But curious here, how's the difference?

[heimdali]

The CPU of the ERL was about maxed out at 100% load when downloading games with my xbox or when doing speedtests even without going traffic over the VPN connection.  The resulting slowdown wasn't much because it would still reach the nominal limit of the internet connection.  With opnsense that goes smoother and also a tiny bit faster as it now looks as if the limiting factor isn't the router anymore whereas the ERL was right on the edege of what it could manage.

 

Latencies also seem a little lower.  It's like the difference between running your own name server on your LAN compared to having to wait until a request goes out to an external name server and then having to wait until the answer arrives.

 

Ping times to the VOIP provider are now between 7.5 and 8ms, and I think they were more like about 10ms before.  That's beyond measuring because it can be different tormorrow.

 

I have found that, under the same conditions, file transfers over a wireguard link with opnsense were about twice as fast as with pfsense.  (I tried pfsense first but when I found that the manufacturer has moved over to non-free software, I switched to opnsense.)  I don't have this comparison to the ERL.

 

So when it comes to bandwidth and latency, it's almost all subjective, and I can only assume that more powerful hardware plus perhaps things like package queues being optimized better (to reduce latency perhaps) make an enjoyable difference.  There is no looking back.

 

One thing I learned from this is that the internet connections we can nowadays get, if we're lucky, make it advisable to pay very close attention to whatever router and firewall solution you use.

[TukangUsapEmenq]

5 hours ago, heimdali said:

The CPU of the ERL was about maxed out at 100% load when downloading games with my xbox or when doing speedtests even without going traffic over the VPN connection.  The resulting slowdown wasn't much because it would still reach the nominal limit of the internet connection.  With opnsense that goes smoother and also a tiny bit faster as it now looks as if the limiting factor isn't the router anymore whereas the ERL was right on the edege of what it could manage.

*laughs in my aunt's 300 Mbps ISP puny GPON router (HG8245 I think) that serves 10 devices at one.

 

Surely as hell you can't even load Google at all while 4 of them happily streams YouTube.

  

5 hours ago, heimdali said:

One thing I learned from this is that the internet connections we can nowadays get, if we're lucky, make it advisable to pay very close attention to whatever router and firewall solution you use.

Hell, a decade ago and all I have is 240p YouTube, 802.11g wireless router (still have it, and actually still alive) and buffers like shit, even have to let my laptop work for 5 days straight without turned it off for a 7 GB download.

 

Now I complain too much when Steam download's below 2 MB/s (the peak's 4 MB/s here using cellular and tethering). I complain too much either when I accidentally turned on Steam 2 GB update by itself using my (not on the right time, 60 GB for 1 AM to 5 PM, 17 GB for 5 PM to 1 AM) cellular data.

 

Fun fact, I saw a 9 MB/s while I did tether the old PC router. Damn surely the tethering's signal the bottleneck as I realized.

 

And yes, I'm finally getting an Android STB box that I can use as a decent router.

[Alex Atkin UK]

17 hours ago, dhannemon13 said:

And yes, I'm finally getting an Android STB box that I can use as a decent router.

I really don't see how an Android box makes sense.  Its basically similar hardware to a consumer router but without the benefits of how their hardware is designed to be a router.  Though I can't comment on the specific product as that link just asks me to login.

[Biohazard777]

50 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I really don't see how an Android box makes sense.  Its basically similar hardware to a consumer router but without the benefits of how their hardware is designed to be a router.

Android box will have at least a quad core ARM v8 or better @ 1Ghz - 2Ghz and at least 1-2 GB of RAM, a consumer router will have something like a MIPS single core 600Mhz and 64-128 MB of RAM...The difference in HW is immense, if you want to get Android TV Box equivalent HW in a router you'd have to spend ~300$ on a router and that longer IMHO qualifies as regular consumer router (more like enthusiast level, Turris Omnia for example).

 

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

3 hours ago, Biohazard777 said:

Android box will have at least a quad core ARM v8 or better @ 1Ghz - 2Ghz and at least 1-2 GB of RAM, a consumer router will have something like a MIPS single core 600Mhz and 64-128 MB of RAM...The difference in HW is immense, if you want to get Android TV Box equivalent HW in a router you'd have to spend ~300$ on a router and that longer IMHO qualifies as regular consumer router (more like enthusiast level, Turris Omnia for example).

 

 

But can you even run a router OS on the Android box?  How will you add additional network adapters?

[heimdali]

@Biohazard777

 

What a router costs doesn't say anything about wheather it fulfills the requirements of the network you plan to deploy it in.

 

@dhannemon13

 

What do you want with some kind of "android box"?

 

[TukangUsapEmenq]

21 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I really don't see how an Android box makes sense.  Its basically similar hardware to a consumer router but without the benefits of how their hardware is designed to be a router.  Though I can't comment on the specific product as that link just asks me to login.

 

8 hours ago, heimdali said:

What do you want with some kind of "android box"?

 

Well, it's actually exactly as @Biohazard777 said, for firsthand I even thought about getting a TP-Link MR3420, but.. On the same price at $14, I can get the STB box with much more RAM (32 MB vs 1 GB) and ROM (4 MB vs 8 GB), and definitely way more processing power.

 

Specs for the TP-Link router: https://openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3420https://openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3420

Specs for the STB I just bought (ZTE B860H):

Spoiler

 

 

 

17 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

But can you even run a router OS on the Android box?

Custom build OpenWRT specifically for those STB are available. The OpenWRT aren't running on the ROM tho, it runs on a microSD card. 

 

The setup so far, I haven't yet to tidy it up, getting it works first. In a nutshell that Samsung provides the whole internet (cheap 4G modem for $7), that STB as the router that receives the USB tethering ($14), and that AP.. Spread it, ofc. Have it for free, and ofc would be a looooota better than the puny Samsung's internal wifi antenna.

 

Tbh it seems like some 'overkill' setup just to spread the internet, but that Samsung tethering sucks like, af, keeps disconnecting and things, not even got good range, and it runs hot while got constant use.

Spoiler

 

Speed and latency below. A hour of testing it now and still runs like charm (I'll let you guys know if it suddenly go onto crap). Even got 100% better ping (it's around 40-50 ms before) than usual. Speed could've touch 30-40 Mbps, but can't complain much, it's fast enough at least for us.

Spoiler

 

 

17 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

How will you add additional network adapters?

This, actually, is the main problem. The STB got only 1 ethernet (which, actually, still better than nothing and I only need 1 anyway), but the STB comes with additional 2 USB ports you (probably, never tried it myself) can add additional USB-to-Ethernet adapter.

[Alex Atkin UK]

5 hours ago, dhannemon13 said:

This, actually, is the main problem. The STB got only 1 ethernet (which, actually, still better than nothing and I only need 1 anyway), but the STB comes with additional 2 USB ports you (probably, never tried it myself) can add additional USB-to-Ethernet adapter.

I have actually used USB adapters, the biggest problem is they generally aren't designed for 24/7 use and can add a little latency, though the latter I think is less so with USB 3.0.

 

Though saying that, I got a spare x86 device to test as a backup for my pfSense box and decided to convert it into a combined switch (in software, huge waste of CPU power but its for clients that aren't used heavily) and torrent box, which I plugged a 5Gbit USB adapter into so it has 3.6Gbit uplink to the main switch (due to being USB 3.1 Gen 1 so it doesn't actually support 5Gbit throughput).  Just testing to see how that goes.

Like you said earlier, sometimes its just fun to try doing things just to see how it works, especially as I already had all the parts already.