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I like learning about the latest and greatest developments in these compact, fanless router boxes. But, so many are only available through seemingly random AliE

I like learning about the latest and greatest developments in these compact, fanless router boxes. But, so many are only available through seemingly random AliExpress sellers. Maybe this is being overly cautious, but I would never trust my home and small business networking duties to off-brand hardware like this. I worry about poor QC, nonexistent customer support and nonstandard/undocumented gotchas. This is not even considering outright malicious behavior by one of these storefronts. I've used Protectli and PC Engines boxes before, which have been great. I'm definitely leaving some value/performance on the table compared to the hardware described in this article. I also know that Protectli hardware in particular is supposed to be identical to some of the Aliexpress boxes, at a higher price. But at least I have some assurance that the company behind the hardware has a reputation at stake and will hopefully stand behind their products.

MrFoof 4y ago
The stewards of the OPNSense project, Deciso B.V. in The Netherlands, currently sells some of their own designed hardware to help support the OPNSense project on the OPNSense Shop: https://shop.opnsense.com/product-categorie/hardware-appliances/ https://shop.opnsense.com/product-categorie/hardware-applian... Recently I picked up their fairly high-end DEC750 which is based on their Netboard A10 Gen 3 board, which uses an AMD Ryzen Embdedded V1500B, VLP LPDDR4 unregistered ECC memory, has an M.2 socket with a PCIe x4 NVMe SSD, three Intel i210 ports and two SFP+ ports. Idles at 8W, about 16-17W at full tilt either pushing 10Gbps through it, or nearly 2Gbps of IPSec traffic. With much lower latency (54us) than the 150us they provide in the specs. Once Wireguard is in kernel space, I'd expect around 2Gbps using Wireguard as well (more around 900Mbps right now with it in userspace). Barely gets warm to the touch. The DEC700 series are meant to be on a desktop or shelf, but they make a rackmount version as well. There's also older devices using AMD EPYC Embedded. Nothing they make is cheap, but it's very high quality, very high performance kit coming from an organization I trust. With my DEC750, I figure I'm good until 203x.
- hamandcheese 4y ago
  This hardware looks great... is it possible to run a custom OS? I currently run exclusively NixOS in my homelab because of its great reproducibility and deployment story, but this hardware looks very nice and surprisingly affordable as well.
  - MrFoof 4y ago
    Should be able to no problem, though if you just want a router appliance OPNSense is similar to PfSense in that it also forked off of Monowall. PfSense appliances by Netgate are very common to see in datacenter racks hosting Amazon, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure equipment, though OPNSense is starting to show up as well. You can read more about that specific Netboard here: https://www.deciso.com/netboard-a10-gen3/ https://www.deciso.com/netboard-a10-gen3/
    - walterbell 4y ago
      > optional PCIe x4 Edge Connector Do they mean an extra M.2 slot? > 2x integrated 10Gbps SFP+ A rare usage of Ryzen's 10Gbps IP block, https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/ryzen_embedded/v1500b#Networking https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/ryzen_embedded/v1500b#Netwo... Their previous generation hardware looks like an upscale version of PC Engines APU2, similar CPU, more RAM, better case. Does it support coreboot? https://shop.opnsense.com/product/dec695-opnsense-desktop-security-appliance/ https://shop.opnsense.com/product/dec695-opnsense-desktop-se...
    - hamandcheese 4y ago
      I feel slightly bad for saying this but the Deciso OPNSense hardware is just so much more aesthetically appealing to me compared to Netgate. I want my rack to look as good as folks running Ubiquity gear :’) NixOS is a hard requirement in my lab, so no plans to use OPNSense or any other BSD at this time. The Deciso hardware page says that “Linux” is supported so I might give it a try.
- walterbell 4y ago
  That's a nice fanless Ryzen Embedded. Does the BIOS receive security updates? ASRock has a Ryzen Embedded NUC, but with Realtek NICs, questionable BIOS and not much of a focus on Linux/BSD. HP t740 thin client with Ryzen Embedded is closer to Mac Mini size, with PCIe slot for low-profile NIC.

MrFoof 4y ago

The stewards of the OPNSense project, Deciso B.V. in The Netherlands, currently sells some of their own designed hardware to help support the OPNSense project on the OPNSense Shop: https://shop.opnsense.com/product-categorie/hardware-appliances/ https://shop.opnsense.com/product-categorie/hardware-applian... Recently I picked up their fairly high-end DEC750 which is based on their Netboard A10 Gen 3 board, which uses an AMD Ryzen Embdedded V1500B, VLP LPDDR4 unregistered ECC memory, has an M.2 socket with a PCIe x4 NVMe SSD, three Intel i210 ports and two SFP+ ports. Idles at 8W, about 16-17W at full tilt either pushing 10Gbps through it, or nearly 2Gbps of IPSec traffic. With much lower latency (54us) than the 150us they provide in the specs. Once Wireguard is in kernel space, I'd expect around 2Gbps using Wireguard as well (more around 900Mbps right now with it in userspace). Barely gets warm to the touch. The DEC700 series are meant to be on a desktop or shelf, but they make a rackmount version as well. There's also older devices using AMD EPYC Embedded. Nothing they make is cheap, but it's very high quality, very high performance kit coming from an organization I trust. With my DEC750, I figure I'm good until 203x.

hamandcheese 4y ago
This hardware looks great... is it possible to run a custom OS? I currently run exclusively NixOS in my homelab because of its great reproducibility and deployment story, but this hardware looks very nice and surprisingly affordable as well.
- MrFoof 4y ago
  Should be able to no problem, though if you just want a router appliance OPNSense is similar to PfSense in that it also forked off of Monowall. PfSense appliances by Netgate are very common to see in datacenter racks hosting Amazon, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure equipment, though OPNSense is starting to show up as well. You can read more about that specific Netboard here: https://www.deciso.com/netboard-a10-gen3/ https://www.deciso.com/netboard-a10-gen3/
  - walterbell 4y ago
    > optional PCIe x4 Edge Connector Do they mean an extra M.2 slot? > 2x integrated 10Gbps SFP+ A rare usage of Ryzen's 10Gbps IP block, https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/ryzen_embedded/v1500b#Networking https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/ryzen_embedded/v1500b#Netwo... Their previous generation hardware looks like an upscale version of PC Engines APU2, similar CPU, more RAM, better case. Does it support coreboot? https://shop.opnsense.com/product/dec695-opnsense-desktop-security-appliance/ https://shop.opnsense.com/product/dec695-opnsense-desktop-se...
  - hamandcheese 4y ago
    I feel slightly bad for saying this but the Deciso OPNSense hardware is just so much more aesthetically appealing to me compared to Netgate. I want my rack to look as good as folks running Ubiquity gear :’) NixOS is a hard requirement in my lab, so no plans to use OPNSense or any other BSD at this time. The Deciso hardware page says that “Linux” is supported so I might give it a try.
walterbell 4y ago
That's a nice fanless Ryzen Embedded. Does the BIOS receive security updates? ASRock has a Ryzen Embedded NUC, but with Realtek NICs, questionable BIOS and not much of a focus on Linux/BSD. HP t740 thin client with Ryzen Embedded is closer to Mac Mini size, with PCIe slot for low-profile NIC.