OpenVPN 2.6 w/DCO

[Swammy]

Is OpenVPN 2.6 in the future plans for Merlin. More important will DCO be able to run within the ASUS Merlin Hardware (AX88U, AX86U…)?
I have done some reading on the OpenVPN website and it sounds like DCO is a feature that will eliminate some of the throughput limitations of OpenVPN. It also sounds like multi threading is available in 2.6
I would love to see this feature brought to Merlin if it fits in the scope of all the great enhancements that is currently in Merlin.

 

[RMerlin]

OpenVPN 2.6 yes, but for DCO it will depend on its requirements. Current development builds of the DCO module requires a very recent development kernel. DCO would need to be able to work with kernels 4.1 or 4.19 to be usable under Asuswrt.

 

[partment]

OpenVPN 2.6 yes, but for DCO it will depend on its requirements. Current development builds of the DCO module requires a very recent development kernel. DCO would need to be able to work with kernels 4.1 or 4.19 to be usable under Asuswrt.

Upgraded my AX-88U to 388.2_alpha2-g9dba35b46c.
Seems like there's no DCO support currently?
Didn't find anything related to DCO in git commits either.

 

[RMerlin]

Upgraded my AX-88U to 388.2_alpha2-g9dba35b46c.
Seems like there's no DCO support currently?
Didn't find anything related to DCO in git commits either.

DCO is not happening. It requires kernel > 5.2.

 

[doomdog]

It has been backported to 4.18 in the redhat world. So maybe if Asus bumps the kernel to at least that version, there is a chance to replicate what they did.
And damn what a difference it would make.... On x86 it does bring openvpn up from 200Mbps to ~900Mbps.

 

[RMerlin]

It has been backported to 4.18 in the redhat world. So maybe if Asus bumps the kernel to at least that version, there is a chance to replicate what they did.
And damn what a difference it would make.... On x86 it does bring openvpn up from 200Mbps to ~900Mbps.

Red Hat's kernel has a ton of kernel backports, so it's not really pure 4.18, a lot of stuff from 5.x was backported to it.

 

[sfx2000]

It has been backported to 4.18 in the redhat world. So maybe if Asus bumps the kernel to at least that version, there is a chance to replicate what they did.

Likely won't happen - as @RMerlin mentions, RHAT's kernel is somewhat custom - the HND software dev kit kernel is also custom...

Backporting likely won't happen - there's been a shedload of changes in that part of the kernel that would make backporting any changes very difficult to implement, but more importantly, maintain over time...

If you want to run a cutting edge kernel, then OpenWRT support devices are likely the best choice there...

 

[doomdog]

Got it. But I still think at some point a little bit of magic from Mr. Merlin will make it happen.
I've just finished a migration to 2.6.8 with DCO on server and clients and it's beyond impressive. (On x86 beefy hardware with many simultaneous clients).
I guess I just want more from my router than I paid for, as usual

 

[RMerlin]

Got it. But I still think at some point a little bit of magic from Mr. Merlin will make it happen.

No, it won't. I already looked at it. DCO code relies on features of the kernel stack that don't exist in 4.xx, and a backport of kernel changes is largely impossible even by a kernel developer because Broadcom's drivers were not developed to work with these changes.

 

[RMerlin]

What's frustrating is that Broadcom decided to stick with 4.19 for their BCM4916 Wifi 7 SDK. I guess I shouldn't be surprised there, considering their SDK still includes dnsmasq 2.78 (from 2017) and curl 7.35 (from 2014). Seriously...