Hardware

In my network setup, it's almost done: we have 1) an Internet-connection, 2) a wireless access-point to pass some mobile device traffic trought it, but something is missing: a router to tie it all together. In my post about my Swedish ISP, it became evident, that running a router they threw at me for free wasn't an option. Second completely viable option would be to run my new Wi-Fi AP with DD-WRT as a router. Totally doable. It has all the suitable ports, DD-WRT is fully equipped to act as an internet router and all that.

Me being a total nerd, of course I wanted to build a real router. The suitable hardware for it would be something tiny having enough ports and packing suitable CPU/RAM/SSD to run a real Linux in it. So, my choice for this is:
Qotom Barebone Mini PC Linux Ubuntu Wintel Nano ITX Celeron j1800/1900 Mini Computer Desktop PC Fanless x86 pc Industrial PC Computer. The marketing people at Qotom chose an appropriate name for their product, huh! If I'd choose the name, I'd go anthing with less than 19 words, removed "Ubuntu", "Wintel", double "mini", double "PC" and then start cutting the words into something like: Barebone Fanless Mini ITX PC j1800/1900, or so. But that's only me.

So, at Aliexpress.com it looks like this:

As said, the form-factor is mini-ITX making it a tiny box on the desk. In real life, it looks the same than above marketing material (sorry, pics aren't too good, no DSLR available):

I have no idea who would need 3 x D9 RS-232 -ports, but there they are. My own spec was only to have at least two RJ-45 for Ethernet. This puppy has them with 1Gbit/s speed, adding HDMI and USB-3 on top of that, which are really handy.

Inside the box:

As you can see, there isn't much space around the 17x17 cm mini-ITX -board. The biggest one in the pic is the black cooling block on top of Celeron® J1900 CPU. Close up from the internals:

From left to right:

• Broadcom BCM943224HMP Wi-Fi adapter
• 64 GiB Hoodisk mSATA SSD
• Realtek RTL8168evl dual Ethernet connectors

There is some airspace for cooling inside the box:

For PSU there is an external transformer pushing in 12 VDC at 3 amps:

There is a commonly used IEC C13 on the other end of the transformer to make it easier to plug the thing into your country's choice of wallsocket.

I've been running the box for almost a month now, and I'm very pleased with it. The green power-on LED is way too bright. On a dark room, it illuminates everything with green, but other than that I got the perfect box for a router. As these low-budget boxes are easily available, it's mostly about choosing the most suitable one. Apart from having more than one Ethernet RJ-45, one of my selection criteria for this one was, that the manufacturer didn't take any second guesses about the CPU-cooling. It's easily the biggest block I could find among the competition. On top of that, the manufacturer did deliver the unit from UK-storage quite rapidly. What I missed from seller's page was the fact, that deliveries were made from tax-free -zone. I had to pay Swedish VAT for DHL on top of the purchase price.

My employer was kind enough to issue me new toys. Any proper nerd loves new toys, I know I do!

So, I got an upgrade for my old(ish) iPhone 6. To a rather big surprise, they're exactly the same thing. Here is a quiz for you iPhone-fans. Tell me which one is 6 and which one is 7:

And the easy one:

For the first three pics, I honestly don't know which one is which. The fourth one is an easy one, in iPhone 6 there is a white line right below the camera lens, also the lens is bigger on 7. Fifth one is a no-brainer, no 3.5 mm headphone jack exists in the new one.

Other than the missing jack, there isn't much to tell. Upgrade is almost a no-upgrade. Everything is the same, except I had to spend couple hours of restoring the backup. Actually, there was a quirk, my new phone had latest iOS, but the un-boxed one didn't, so I first had to go through the out-of-box-experience and then upgrade it to latest firmware. Then it was possible to do the restore and after restore the thing could start installing my apps.

List of things that didn't transfer:

• Touch ID fingerprints
  • Apple support HT204136 says that it should, but ...
• Apps from my employer's app store
• Keyboard dictionary
• Ringtone selections
  • I have a dozen or so own-made ringtones for incoming callers.
  • The ringtones did transfer ok, but the selection of which one is used didn't survive the transfer.
• Google Authenticator keys
  • Read the article "Is there an easy way to transfer Google Authenticator codes to a new device?" for reasoning.
• ... maybe something else I forgot to mention here

Ultimately I have to say, this wasn't worth it. I got the same phone without headphone jack, and I had to spend couple hours of work to get a 32 GiB thing to the point I started with a 64 GiB one. It's a shame there is no 64 GiB iPhone 7. They didn't let me get the 128 GiB, because it's too expensive. The new A10 CPU should be more energy efficient, but in reality it doesn't show. Only after upgrading to iOS 10.3.2, there was some improvement on battery usage. Before that, I had to charge the phone more often that my old one.

The only positive thing is, that now I have a fresh battery to my iPhone. I guess I should find some positive things with the new and improved "best ever" camera, but I simply cannot.

As I mentioned in my post about Swedish ISP, that I like to run Linux on my stuff. My weapon of choice for wireless networking has been DD-WRT for many years (I'm not sure how many exactly, 15+ or so). Any appliance I purchase must be supported by that.

I've been running a lot of Linksys in the past, but this time I chose to go with a Taiwanese TRENDnet TEW-818DRU. The spec is huge and it contains really good 802.11 radios, USB3-port, decent CPU and enough RAM to run it all. And finally: The manufacturer is really keen on supporting Linux.

This is what it looks like. It won't win any design awards, as obviously some software engineer designed the plastic case:

Linux /proc/cpuinfo for Cortex-A17:

model name : ARMv7 Processor rev 0 (v7l)
processor : 0
BogoMIPS : 1594.16
Features : half fastmult edsp tls
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 7
CPU variant : 0x3
CPU part : 0xc09
CPU revision : 0

Memory, physical is 128 MiB, but some is needed for hardware:

             total   used    free shared  buffers  cached
Mem:        124536  38296   86240      0   4108     12212
-/+ buffers/cache:  21976  102560

Ports at the back:

• USB3
• USB2
• WPS-button for those who don't care much for security
• 4 x RJ-45 for LAN
• RJ-45 for WAN
• O/I for power
• Barrel connector for 12 VDC, 2 amps power input

Bottom:

It really doesn't get much simpler than that, which is perfect for engineering type persons. Like me!
You'll get a reliable box with ton on features and possibility of tweaking it to do whatever you need.

In next part I'll put a DD-WRT into it.

It took a lot of time and effort to rent an apartment, Sweden (especially Stockholm are) is notoriously difficult with that. And the first thing any new apartment needs is an Internet-connection. Mobile data in Sweden sucks royally, its expensive and horribly capped with transfer limits. So, something with a wire for me thanks. In this apartment, the options for wired net were highly limited. It's either Comhem or nothing. I chose Comhem.

Back in the 90s, Swedish government subsidied building optical fiber connections to literally every house. They ended up paying roughly 50% of the building costs of proper connections to entire country. Not a bad investment, I have to say. Some businessmen threw rest of the required money and as the result of that, Swedes even today enjoy faster Internet connections than nobody else.

The wall box

Here in Stockholm area this is a very common thing to see:

There is something coming into the box from a hole in a wall. I don't know what that could be, possibly fiber, or possibly something with copper in it. If you know, drop a comment! The output is FM-radio, cable-TV and Internet. Radio and TV are regular 75Ω RF-connectors, something you'd generally expect. Data is an F-connector, also very typical for cable-TV Internet connectivity.

The router

Sorry, the pics are really crappy. I don't have my proper camera here in Sweden, so I have to use whatever mobile junk happens to be at hand. The router looks like this:

In the back there are your expected set of connectors:

• RJ-11: no idea what this is for, my guess is for a landline phone connection (who needs that!?)
• 4 x RJ-45: Your standard 1 Gbit/s ethernet switch
• Reset pin: do a factory reset with a small pointy thingie
• F-connector: for incoming cable-TV signal
• O/I switch: For on-off needs
• Barrel jack: for 12 VDC power connector, 2,5 amps
• (bonus): 2,4 GHz / 5 GHz Wi-Fi router

Bottom:

Yes, this is one of those French-made Sagemcom boxes. Spec is at: F@ST 3686 AC. Sagemcom is quite big in manufacturing consumer boxes for TV/IPTV/cable internet.

There is nothing special nor surprising there in the router. It's your basic free giveaway box the ISPs throw at you when you sign a subscription. Most people love the fact that this one packs a modern Wi-Fi access point. Personally, I hate integrated crap and want to tinker with my access point more than these integrated things allow me to do.

The admin

As you could expect, there is a web-based GUI admin interface at 192.168.0.1:

Logging in gives you more details for the router status:

Wi-Fi settings:

My IP-address, Wi-Fi SSIDs and serial numbers have been redacted, so those of you with evil plans, note that you'll be targeting somebody else.

The speed

I'm subscribing to a Bredband100. The promise is 100 Mbit/s download (actually they say 50-100) and 10 Mbit/s up (range 7-10).

Speedtest, ethernet cable, 1 Gbit/s:

Speedtest, iPhone 6, 802.11ac, 5 GHz:

Speedtest, Asus Nexus 7, 802.11n, 2.4 GHz:

Not bad! They keep the promise.

If you stumble on the Wi-Fi specs, check the article about Wireless N & Wireless G @ Flashrouters blog about those.

The nominal speed of 802.11n is much higher than 63 Mbit/s, but 2.4 GHz is always very saturated. I haven't counted how many wireless access points are visible here to my apartment, but its easily 50+. Also the throughput of a 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi will drop, if any of my neighbours are using a microwave. Cisco claims, that microwave oven interference can reach 25 feet / 7.5 meters, see the article about that. Unfortunately all my toys will support 5 GHz, so I'll have to run both for the time being.

The result

Generally people love hating big corporations, especially ISPs and telcos. I know I do. A good example of that is: Comhem stumbled on my router delivery as their logistics partner started bouncing the shipment back and forth in the same terminal. Eventually I got the router, plugged it in and it worked. Their customer support is good, I called them at least 4 times to get a subscription and for the delivery issues.

After running this box for a week, I have to say it does the job. On a negative side, the router in router/NAT-mode, the router drops your TCP-connections super fast. This mostly affect SSH and as a remedy I have this in my .ssh/config:

Host *
  ServerAliveInterval 25

25 seconds is very fast. Never seen anything like that before. My obvious plan is not disable the wireless AP and switch this baby into a bridge mode and build a real Linux-router to do the NAT. But I'll have to post about that someday.

Ultimately I'm quite happy with this ISP and the router they provided. Out-of-the box it works enough for all people, but provides enough flexibility for me to do some advanced network stuff.