OpenWrt developers are partnering with Banana Pi to develop the OpenWrt One/AP-24.XY router board. OpenWrt is a lightweight embedded Linux operating system that supports close to 1,800 routers and other devices. However, this will be the first router board developed directly by OpenWrt.

The board will be based on the MediaTek MT7981B (Filogic 820) SoC and MediaTek MT7976C dual-band WiFi 6 chipset. The preliminary specifications for the OpenWrt One/AP-24.XY board include a dual-core Cortex-A53 processor, 1GB of DDR4 memory, 128 MB of SPI NAND flash, 4 MB of SPI NOR flash, 2.5GbE and Gigabit Ethernet ports, dual-band Wi-Fi 6, USB 2.0 and USB Type-C ports, and a MikroBUS socket for expansion modules.

The stated goal is to keep the price of the board under $100. The OpenWrt One/AP-24.XY router board is expected to be launched in 2024. The schematics will be publicly available under an open-source license.

Source: CNX Software – Embedded Systems News.

The Mixtile Cluster Box is a server enclosure designed for small business applications and edge computing. It consists of four Mixtile Blade 3 Pico-ITX single board computers (SBCs), each powered by a Rockchip RK3588 processor. The SBCs are connected to the enclosure via a 4-lane PCIe Gen3 interface through a U.2 to PCIe/SATA breakout board.

The Cluster Box has been recently released by Mixtile, following the company’s work on the software and technical details. It is available for purchase on Mixtile’s website for $339, excluding the SBCs.

The specifications of the Mixtile Cluster Box include support for up to four Mixtile Blade 3 SBCs, each with up to 32GB LPDDR4 RAM and up to 256GB eMMC flash storage. The enclosure also features a control board running OpenWrt 22.03, with a MediaTek MT7620A MIPS processor, 256MB DDR2 system memory, and 16MB SPI flash storage.

The Cluster Box includes an ASMedia ASM2824 PCIe switch with four PCIe 3.0 4-lane ports. It also provides storage interfaces through four U.2 breakout boards, with four NVMe M.2 M-Key slots (PCIe 3.0 x2 each) and four SATA 3.0 ports. Networking capabilities are offered through a Gigabit Ethernet port.

The enclosure is equipped with two 60mm fans for cooling and a power button with a blue LED indicator. It is powered by a 19 to 19.5V/4.74A power supply through a DC jack. The dimensions of the Cluster Box are 213 x 190 x 129 mm, and it is made of a metal case with SGCC steel materials. It has an operating temperature range of 0°C to 80°C and a storage temperature range of -20°C to 85°C. The relative humidity ranges from 10% to 90% during operation and 5% to 95% during storage.

Users can access the Mixtile Cluster Box through OpenWrt using SSH or a web interface. The Rockchip RK3588 boards come preloaded with a customized Linux system with Kubernetes. Control of each Mixtile Blade can be done through OpenWrt using a command called “nodectl,” which allows users to list active nodes, rescan nodes, power on/off nodes, reboot nodes, flash firmware, and enter the console of a specific node.

For more technical details and a getting started guide, users can refer to the documentation website provided by Mixtile.

Overall, the Mixtile Cluster Box offers a compact and powerful solution for building a four-node server cluster with Rockchip RK3588 SBCs. With its PCIe connectivity, storage options, and OpenWrt software, it provides a versatile platform for various server, Linux, DevOps, and home lab applications.

Source: CNX Software – Embedded Systems News.

OpenWrt 23.05, the open-source Linux operating system for routers and resource-constrained headless embedded systems, has just been released with significant updates and improvements. This release comes with over 4300 commits since the previous release of OpenWrt 22.03, which was launched a little over a year ago.

One of the notable features of OpenWrt 23.05 is its expanded device support. It now supports over 1790 devices, which is an increase of about 200 devices compared to the previous release. Some of the new targets include the Qualcomm IPQ807x target for WiFi 6 SoCs, the Mediatek Filogic 830 and 630 subtarget for WiFi 6/6e chips, and the HiFive Unleashed and Unmatched targets for RISC-V development boards.

In terms of security, OpenWrt 23.05 has switched from using wolfSSL to MbedTLS as the default. This change was made because MbedTLS has a smaller footprint and offers a more stable ABI and LTS releases. However, it’s worth noting that MbedTLS lacks support for TLS 1.3. Therefore, users who require TLS 1.3 can still switch to using wolfSSL.

Another significant addition in this release is support for packages written with the Rust programming language. Some examples of these packages include bottom, maturin, aardvark-dns, and ripgrep. This expansion of supported programming languages provides developers with more flexibility and options when creating applications for OpenWrt.

OpenWrt 23.05 also brings updates to its core components. It now utilizes Linux 5.15 as the foundation for all targets, as well as updated versions of busybox, musl libc, glibc, gcc, and inutils. Additionally, the networking components have seen upgrades, including the use of the hostapd master snapshot from September 2023, dnsmasq 2.89, dropbear 2022.82, and cfg80211/mac80211 from kernel 6.1.24.

For users looking to upgrade from OpenWrt 22.03, the migration from swconfig to DSA configuration that was introduced in the previous releases is no longer an issue. Most people should be able to upgrade smoothly using the sysupgrade utility, which will preserve the configuration. However, it is still recommended to back up the configuration before proceeding with the upgrade.

OpenWrt 23.05 is now available for download, and users can find binary images for their specific targets on the OpenWrt website.

Source: CNX Software – Embedded Systems News.

GL.iNet has released the Flint2 (also known as GL-MT6000), a new AX6000 router based on the MediaTek MT7986 (Filogic 830) ARM SoC. This router supports VPN speeds of up to 900 Mbps using WireGuard and 190 Mbps with OpenVPN. Compared to previous GL.iNet routers like the Spitz AX and the Beryl AX, which were based on the Filogic 820 (MT7981B) CPU with transfer rates of up to 300 Mbps using WireGuard, the Flint2 is expected to triple the VPN performance.

The GL.iNet Flint2 router comes with the following specifications:

• SoC – MediaTek MT7986 (Filogic 830) quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor @ 2.0 GHz with hardware acceleration engines for Wi-Fi offloading and networking
• System Memory – 1GB DDR4
• Storage – 8GB eMMC flash
• Networking:
  • 2x 2.5 Gbps Ethernet ports
  • 4x Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports
  • 802.11b/g/n/ac/ax WiFi 6 with 4x external Wi-Fi antennas
    • Up to 1,148 Mbps @ 2.4 GHz
    • Up to 4,804 Mbps @ 5 GHz
    • DFS (Dynamic Frequency Selection) support
  • VPN – OpenVPN server/client tested up to 190 Mbps, and WireGuard server/client tested up to 900 Mbps (tests over Ethernet in client mode)
• USB – 1x USB 3.0 Type-A port
• Dimensions – 233 x 137 x 57mm

The GL.iNet Flint2 router comes pre-installed with OpenWrt 23.05 (or a fork) with Linux 5.15 and the GL.Inet Admin Panel, which is common to all GL.iNet routers. It supports four different network modes: router, access point, extender, and WDS. The router also includes features such as AdGuard Home, parental controls, and Cloud remote management.

The significant improvement in WireGuard performance, tripling the previous model’s speed, is noteworthy. While the upgrade from a 1.3 GHz dual-core Arm Cortex-A53 CPU to a 2.0 GHz quad-core Cortex-A53 CPU partially explains the increase, the main reason is likely the switch from Linux 5.4 to Linux 5.15. The Filogic 830-based router benefits from in-kernel WireGuard support introduced in Linux 5.6. As a point of comparison, the first Flint router achieves speeds of up to 500 Mbps with WireGuard.

The Filogic 830 SoC used in the Flint2 is also found in other devices, such as the Banana Pi BPI-R3 and BPI-R3 Mini router SBCs.

Source: CNX Software – Embedded Systems News.