Best Router for VPN client

[RMerlin]

Some folks suggest that the reason why those QOTOM boxes are so cheap is that they're built from rejected Intel chips from the major ODM's supporting the big computer vendors - mostly due to stability and thermal issues, as those chips are primarily driven into a specific market segment - and the rejection numbers are a bit high - so there is a surplus of them in the Shenzen spot-market...

Just saying... could be fake news there, I suppose...

If it were true, wouldn't there be a lot of complains about dead/unstable Qotom boxes, especially as these come with no active thermal solution (just passive cooling)?

 

[CaptainSTX]

Some folks suggest that the reason why those QOTOM boxes are so cheap is that they're built from rejected Intel chips from the major ODM's supporting the big computer vendors - mostly due to stability and thermal issues, as those chips are primarily driven into a specific market segment - and the rejection numbers are a bit high - so there is a surplus of them in the Shenzen spot-market...

Just saying... could be fake news there, I suppose...

Yeah or they just fell off the back of the truck. In any case short term (two months ) I have had no problems and I have only rebooted a couple of times when making changes. Longer term we shall have to wait and see.

If it is a bust the cost is about the same as todays high end routers.

 

[CaptainSTX]

If it were true, wouldn't there be a lot of complains about dead/unstable Qotom boxes, especially as these come with no active thermal solution (just passive cooling)?

The aluminum case is a massive heat sink. Power use at low levels of activity is just 5 watts.

To the touch the Qotom is cooler than my AC1900P.

 

[sfx2000]

Was just relaying info from various pfSense oriented threads - somehow I'm thinking that this might be driven from folks with an interest to promote the Netgate/pfSense branded equipment...

That being said - with the QOTOM's - the J1800/J1900 models can perform very well, but since they're lacking AES-NI, 2.4 will be the end of the road for them...

There's an Core i5 ULT chip based one - that one is interesting, as it's basically the same chip in the MacBook Air and the Mac Mini 2014 (on the low end) - decent performers (the i5/i7 ULT's have amazing turbo clock ranges) - challenge is that the i5/i7 ULT's Tray Price (at the OEM/ODM level) is very close to the same price as the high end desktop i7's... which lends some credence that the QOTOM i5/i7 CPU's were sourced on the spot market as seconds...

Using Haswell as an example, but Broadwell/Skylake are going to be similar... Intel does take a big premium on the ULT SKU's (which makes sense in some way, as the die size is very similar, and the higher rated ULT's are bin sorted at the Fab - some are bound to get past QA)

 

[sfx2000]

If it were true, wouldn't there be a lot of complains about dead/unstable Qotom boxes, especially as these come with no active thermal solution (just passive cooling)?

Most of the QOTOM builds here on SNB Forums have been the Silvermont J1900 based units - and the TDP on those chips is really low - something on the order of 10W max, and in my experience, the J1800/J1900's in idle are down around 2W... which a passive cooler can handle quite nicely (the J1800, for example, in idle, clocks down to 1300MHz, but turbo's up to 2.5 - so the scenario design is max clocks, with the GPU also pushing at max, most QOTOM's won't be running anything on the GPU)

 

[RMerlin]

An i3-based Qotom would also be a nice entry-level pfsense box, with AES-NI support.

 

[RMerlin]

The aluminum case is a massive heat sink. Power use at low levels of activity is just 5 watts.

To the touch the Qotom is cooler than my AC1900P.

Ok, so thermal-based instability might not be a problem, but I would still expect far more instability issues if truly they used rejected CPUs.

 

[CaptainSTX]

Ok, so thermal-based instability might not be a problem, but I would still expect far more instability issues if truly they used rejected CPUs.

I believe that Intel has discontinued the I7 4500U processor Qotom built my box with so another possible explination is that Qotom probably buys odd lots and close outs at a steep discount making it possible for Qotom to sell an entire PC for less than the official list price of the processor.

Again time will tell if the Qotom box was a deal or a dud.

 

[sfx2000]

Ok, so thermal-based instability might not be a problem, but I would still expect far more instability issues if truly they used rejected CPUs.

Most of the ULT models are for the super thin/light Ultrabooks (MacBook Air and similar Windows oriented boxes), where the cooling solutions are very limited - so some chips may be be acceptable for those, but in a box like a QOTOM, they might be fine.

 

[sfx2000]

An i3-based Qotom would also be a nice entry-level pfsense box, with AES-NI support.

The i3/i5/i7 chips with AES-NI - they are exceptional performers with AES-128-GCM -- with OpenSSL and other cypto (like GnuTLS) - intel has done some nice work with the RDRAND, AESNI, and SSE4 optimizations there...

 

[sfx2000]

I believe that Intel has discontinued the I7 4500U processor Qotom built my box with so another possible explination is that Qotom probably buys odd lots and close outs at a steep discount making it possible for Qotom to sell an entire PC for less than the official list price of the processor.

Inventory management is likely one item - they may have been ordered by an OEM, and the sell-thru on finished goods might not have been as high as predicted - so the chips end up on the spot market.

 

[RMerlin]

The i3/i5/i7 chips with AES-NI - they are exceptional performers with AES-128-GCM -- with OpenSSL and other cypto (like GnuTLS) - intel has done some nice work with the RDRAND, AESNI, and SSE4 optimizations there...

If I had some spare money, I think I'd get one of these boxes for tinkering. They look really nice in general.

 

[Xentrk]

If I had some spare money, I think I'd get one of these boxes for tinkering. They look really nice in general.

Perhaps we need to get a go fund me effort going for you @RMerlin! Or, at least some more PayPal donations for your efforts and hard work. I would love to get your opinion on the boxes. I went to YouTube the other day and saw a few videos on the boxes where they opened them up. I also read some reviews on Amazon. I definitely will keep my eye on these devices and look forward to @CaptainSTX keeping us posted on how his performs.

For my use case, OpenVPN performance is very important and as we all know, a good powerful CPU is a major factor that can only help.

 

[RMerlin]

Nah, it would strictly be for playing and tinkering, I'd have no intention of doing any development around that device, so that'd be a rather expensive toy.

 

[Xentrk]

qotom hardware topic on pfSense forum. I found this to be an interesting read.

https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=132528.0

 

[CaptainSTX]

qotom hardware topic on pfSense forum. I found this to be an interesting read.

https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=132528.0

The Pfsense installed on mine worked fine. I decided to use OpenWRT instead. Was the image legit? I don't know but it worked.

 

[Xentrk]

The Pfsense installed on mine worked fine. I decided to use OpenWRT instead. Was the image legit? I don't know but it worked.

At least no one complained about a bad cpu on the thread. I was concerned about what @sfx2000 reported. Hopefully it is fake news. Or, urban legend. I guess I am skeptical how they can make these at the price.

What made you switch to OpenWRT? I have never used that Firmware or followed it that closely. Are there features you like better or perhaps a lower learning curve?

 

[sfx2000]

The Pfsense installed on mine worked fine. I decided to use OpenWRT instead. Was the image legit? I don't know but it worked.

pfSense is open-source - they're particular about their trademark - which can lead to some friction... Netgate and pfSense have a tight relationship - think of Netgate being the HW arm of the pfSense lead... in my experience, the Netgate HW is pretty decent, does what it's supposed to do...

That being said - any platform that can run FreeBSD will likely run pfSense. pfSense does distribute the CE image, and yes, it's totally legit to run it pretty much on anything that'll run it.

 

[sfx2000]

At least no one complained about a bad cpu on the thread. I was concerned about what @sfx2000 reported. Hopefully it is fake news. Or, urban legend. I guess I am skeptical how they can make these at the price.

Who knows - I suspected it was fake news, and suggested that in my post - I'm also curious how they're getting fast chips and selling them at a low price -

Shenzen, I get it - and this is why we also see sub-$100 Intel Atom set top boxes for Kodi - either on a questionable Windows license, or running a hot copy of Android Open Source, with interesting access to the Google Play Store...

I probably shouldn't complain too much - I've got a little Shenzen ARM box - AllWinner H3 running a crazy version of Android myself - and it was $25USD - it works just fine for Netflix, Kodi, and a specific app I use for Japanese IPTV bounced from Hong Kong...

It's been a while, but when I was doing business in Shenzen - one could pretty much get anything one wanted at a price - including fake iPhones that ran real iOS - at least for a moment or two...

 

[CaptainSTX]

What made you switch to OpenWRT? I have never used that Firmware or followed it that closely. Are there features you like better or perhaps a lower learning curve?

I got Pfsense to work but the learning curb was steep. Getting the VPN client working wasn't happening. After the fact is seems it probably was an incompatibility with Astrill VPN. Switched to OpenWRT and still had to find another VPN provider that worked with this device.