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Introducing the LEDE project – A reboot of the OpenWrt community

lede-project.org

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Re: Introducing the LEDE project – A reboot of the OpenWrt community

#71

Post by ullus12 »

antxxxx wrote: post #70
wtallis wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their hardware support is not as good as Linux, especially for WiFi and for embedded SoCs. Their network stacks are lacking in more advanced features like QoS that's not from the '90s (AQM, FQ, traffic shaping that accounts for the overhead your DSL or cable modem adds) and I'm not aware of any efforts to eliminate bufferbloat from NIC drivers the way BQL has for most Linux Ethernet drivers. I'm not sure how Linux co…

FreeBSD has QoS available via PF and ALTQ. As for performance, Netflix chose FreeBSD for their CDN for the better network performance over linux. I do take your point about hardware support on consumer routers though - most of these are based on linux so its relatively easy to get linux based *wrt installed on them

afaik netbsd npf is the first bsd packet filter to support multiple cores, and its far from backed.

big business usually use their own network stack as stock bsd is at most suited for soho workloads

Re: Introducing the LEDE project – A reboot of the OpenWrt community

#72

Post by supercheetah »

yk wrote: post #60
ricardobeat wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the reasons stated in the post? Number of active core developers at an all time low, no process for getting more new people involved. Unreliable infrastructure, fixes prevented by internal disagreements and single points of failure. Lack of communication, transparency and coordination in the OpenWrt project, both inside the core team and between the core team and the rest of the community. Not enough peopl…

All of these are made worse by a fork. [Edit:] Since I am getting downvoted let me get through their stated reasons: Number of active core developers at an all time low, no process for getting more new people involved. A fork is cutting the number of available devs in half and creates uncertainty for new people. So it should hurt in the short term. Unreliable infrastructure, fixes prevented by internal disagreements…

The egcs fork from gcc was the only thing that finally gave the gcc devs the kick in the butt they needed to start making much needed changes, and then things eventually got merged. Maybe it will happen with OpenWRT/LEDE too.

Re: Introducing the LEDE project – A reboot of the OpenWrt community

#73

Post by wtallis »

antxxxx wrote: post #70
wtallis wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their hardware support is not as good as Linux, especially for WiFi and for embedded SoCs. Their network stacks are lacking in more advanced features like QoS that's not from the '90s (AQM, FQ, traffic shaping that accounts for the overhead your DSL or cable modem adds) and I'm not aware of any efforts to eliminate bufferbloat from NIC drivers the way BQL has for most Linux Ethernet drivers. I'm not sure how Linux co…

FreeBSD has QoS available via PF and ALTQ. As for performance, Netflix chose FreeBSD for their CDN for the better network performance over linux. I do take your point about hardware support on consumer routers though - most of these are based on linux so its relatively easy to get linux based *wrt installed on them

Stop thinking like QoS has a singular meaning. ALTQ provides the aforementioned '90s-era inferior QoS techniques, and it isn't even available on FreeBSD without recompiling the kernel. The dummynet module is a little more modern, and in February patches appeared implementing the CoDel and FQ-CoDel AQMs that Linux has had for four years.

Re: Introducing the LEDE project – A reboot of the OpenWrt community

#75

Post by stephengillie »

jlgaddis wrote: post #40
stephengillie wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could use BSD underneath, like JunOS and Netscaler run on. But maybe an operating system is too large in scope. You're right that these devices only run one application, why use a tool (operating system) that can run many applications? It's a bit like running a hypervisor for only one operating system. There are benefits, true.

Well, there's the kernel, which handles flinging packets between interfaces, filtering, etc., but your average router has lots of services it provides as well: DHCP, DNS, file/print sharing via USB ports, etc.

Right, and the Kernel could just provide those. No need to write something to load extra code from storage and run it.

Re: Introducing the LEDE project – A reboot of the OpenWrt community

#76

Post by easp »

yk wrote: post #60
ricardobeat wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the reasons stated in the post? Number of active core developers at an all time low, no process for getting more new people involved. Unreliable infrastructure, fixes prevented by internal disagreements and single points of failure. Lack of communication, transparency and coordination in the OpenWrt project, both inside the core team and between the core team and the rest of the community. Not enough peopl…

All of these are made worse by a fork. [Edit:] Since I am getting downvoted let me get through their stated reasons: Number of active core developers at an all time low, no process for getting more new people involved. A fork is cutting the number of available devs in half and creates uncertainty for new people. So it should hurt in the short term. Unreliable infrastructure, fixes prevented by internal disagreements…

Your analysis seems predicated on your own ignorance of the OpenWRT project, and human nature.

How many system-level developers do you know who'd throw themselves into creating a new project, hashing out the governance, etc unless the alternative was even worse? I know, roughly, none.

I'm an OpenWRT user, not a developer, and it seemed pretty clear, even from that distance, that there was something broken given the way infrastructure problems were (or weren't) dealt with earlier this year.

I recognize many of the developers committed to the new project, and my understanding from others is that the new project includes many of the most active OpenWRT developers.

Clearly it would be better if they didn't feel this fork was necessary, but for now, I think this fork is promising.

Re: Introducing the LEDE project – A reboot of the OpenWrt community

#77

Post by easp »

stephengillie wrote: post #27
Animats wrote: post #21

Now if they could just get rid of Linux underneath and use something with better security. L4, maybe. After all, this is for embedded devices which basically run one program.

They could use BSD underneath, like JunOS and Netscaler run on. But maybe an operating system is too large in scope. You're right that these devices only run one application, why use a tool (operating system) that can run many applications? It's a bit like running a hypervisor for only one operating system. There are benefits, true.

A big part of the OpenWRT project is hardware support for wireless chipsets and SoCs.

Sure, they could move all that to BSD, but then if they wanted to do that, why didn't they do that in the first place, rather than working on Linux?

Re: Introducing the LEDE project – A reboot of the OpenWrt community

#78

Post by easp »

stephengillie wrote: post #75
jlgaddis wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there's the kernel, which handles flinging packets between interfaces, filtering, etc., but your average router has lots of services it provides as well: DHCP, DNS, file/print sharing via USB ports, etc.

Right, and the Kernel could just provide those. No need to write something to load extra code from storage and run it.

Loading even more functionality into the kernel is at odds with security, stability and maintainability. Its also not going to save much/any in the way of resources.

Re: Introducing the LEDE project – A reboot of the OpenWrt community

#79

Post by easp »

wtallis wrote: post #42
DiabloD3 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why parent is being downvoted. Linux probably isn't the best OS for this, a microkernel OS or something based on BSD seems to be far saner, especially since we don't need weird hardware support, all home routers use the same three or four families of MIPS and ARM SoCs.

Home routers come with one of three instruction set families (MIPS, ARM, PowerPC) with CPUs or SoCs from at least six major manufacturers (Broadcom, Qualcomm-Atheros, Ralink/MediaTek, Marvell, Freescale/NXP, Realtek) and WiFi interfaces from any of them except Freescale but plus Quantenna. And there are multiple generations of hardware in the market at any one time. That adds up to a hardware ecosystem that is vastly…

Your point about the diversity of the router hardware ecosystem is an important one, and from what I can tell, makes up a significant portion of the OpenWRT project.

I think though that the "industry" work on QoS and rate control has been pretty dismal and counter-productive. The major improvements in QoS in OpenWRT didn't come from the router industry, and the router industry hasn't been speedy about incorporating it. Fixes for queuing and rate control in the WiFi stack are also coming from outside (when they come), and who knows how long they will take to get mainstreamed.

Re: Introducing the LEDE project – A reboot of the OpenWrt community

#80

Post by easp »

grandalf wrote: post #3

While I'm excited about OpenWrt, why wouldn't the ecosystem move to Raspberry Pi at this point, considering that a Pi and multiple wireless NICs can be purchased for much less than a typical access point?

The RPi is tied to the 12-24 month product cycles of consumer electronics devices.

That's great in that it means relatively frequent upgrades. Though at this point, the RPi3 is a very unbalanced system. Particlarly, as others have noted, with regards to network I/O.

Router platforms are tied to the lifecycles of networking standards. The underlying standards change much more slowly, roughly ~5-10 years for major changes. The router SoCs and WiFi chips change somewhat more quickly, but not as quickly as consumer electronics SoCs.

This slow rate of change is probably a good thing for OpenWRT/LEDE, because it means that there is more time for software support to mature for each hardware generation.

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