EdgeRouter-X

Tony0945 · Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2020 1:05 am Post subject: EdgeRouter-X

I've been intrigued by the Ubiquiti EdgeRouters for quite a while. I finally bought the EdgeRouter-X four port direct from the manufacturer for $59 US.
Yesterday I tried setting it up. The default address is 192.168.1.1 and the default LAN is 192.168.1.XXX. I read that the Operating System was a derivative of Debian. People said the GUI was opaque and the real goodies were in the CLI whih had obscure commands.
The GUI is not as straightforward as I would like, not like the DLink GUI for instance. But the CLI is just a Linux terminal! Complete with the usual "exotic" commands like 'cat`, 'grep' and so forth. Unfortunately neither nano, vi, nor vim exist. That's really too bad, because I would like to change the syslog configuration file. On the other hand, although the GUI arrangement is not intuitive, it is clearer to me what happens than with the DLink GUI which trys to hide what is happening technically.

Since my existing network is based on the DLINK standard, I figured it would be easier to change the router than every computer. So I disconnected my server, which is located feet from the cable modem and router and eight port switch and plugged it into the Edgerouter. I ediited /etc/conf.d/net (I'm an OpenRC guy). The original default line calling "config_eth0="dhcp" was still there commented out, so I uncommented it and commented out the line assigning 192.168.0.102. Then rebooted? NO! This isn't windoze, it's Gentoo. So I ran "service net.etho restart". This caused moaning and groaning from samba but it settled down and ifconfig showed a connection at 192.168.1.38. I then fired up the Palemoon browser and pointed it to https://192.168.1.1 as instructed. The GUI came up and I changed the default password. Also put a bookmark in the browser toolbar.
Somewhere, a bit obscure, I found the network settings and changed the router's ip address and the network specification. Then pressed "save". I immediately lost the GUI of course. So again "service net.eth0 restart" and now I'm 192.168.0.39. I edited my bookmark, logged in with the new password. A surprise! Palemoon offered to save the password and now I never have to type it again.

More investigation, into the default firewall. Default on the wan port (eth0) is DROP. There is one rule, ACCEPT established and related. That's it! All my angst in a fairly recent thread (August?) when I was trying to make a a k-6III gentoo router was for nought. that's it. tighter than a drum and it works. I can web surf, get and send e-mail and run eix-sync. Perfect. From that point, it was a simple matter to assign static addresses according to the table that I had printed previous from the DLINK.

Next stop, turning the DLINK router into an access point. I unplugged, plugged into the DLINK and changed the default address to 192.168.0.2 and turned off DHCP. Supposedly this was enough to turn it into an AP. But I couldn't get the Amazon Firestick or the Samsung television to connect. I did get a Windows laptop to connect but even accessing the DLINK GUI was choppy and prone to stalling. Then I remembered that I have a DAP-1522 Bridge/AP that I used to use a wireless bridge before I got a cat 6 wire up from the basement to my second floor library (really bedroom #2 with no bed, a lot of bookcases and a desk). I flipped the switch from bridge to AP. I had previously tried using it as an AP to no avail. With the EdgeRouter it worked perfectly. I had a different SSID from the DLINK all-in-one router, so I had to tell the devices to use that one and use the remotes to enter the passphrases. Entering the passphrases with remotes was the hardest part of the whole adventure. Best of all the DAp-1522 is dual band and the router was not. Setting up QOS was easy too with GUI fields for maximum throughput both ways. the DLink never mentioned throughput numbers, just "typical applications" like "video, gaming" and the like for choices. I'm an engineer I like numbers. Nay, I LOVE numbers.

So there it is. I'm very pleased, but my internet service is only 30M down and 5M up. I've read the ER-X chipset and memory aren't enough for anything over 450. I'm a long way from that. Ubiquiti has Edgerouters to handle Gigabit service, but that costs around $400, not $59.
I'm extremely pleased to have separate units for router, AP, and switch (TP-Link eight port unmanaged rack mountable). I also have a Buffalo $14 router/AP that I bought on clearance for $11. It is dual band and switchable between router and AP by virtual button on the interface. It already was 192.168.0.3 (not the default). Can't say much for the Buffalo except it's cheap and it works. It has pre-programmed reboots to fix memory leaks! Instead of fixing the damn code! But it works. I get connection in the kitchen which is a very bad spot because of metal appliances and metal ductwork just below. I mounted the Buffalo in the basement just below the mini-tv with attached Roku and Firestick using a 50 foot cat 5e cable. Using the 5.0 band helped a lot with interference from nearby strong (possibly illegal) 2.4 transmitters.

That's my experience so far. Anyone else using an EdgeRouter and care to comment on their experience?

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

I've been curious about the brand in general, but haven't decided to buy yet. In part because of past security issues, but also in part due to what seems like an overly complicated product line. Some products require their centralized configuration mechanism (Cloud Key I think). I'd also prefer to be able to replace their OS. Not sure if that is reasonably possible. I had hoped to find a reasonable replacement for all-in-one devices, but I'm not seeing what I'd prefer.
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Quis separabit? Quo animo?

Tony0945 · Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2020 2:31 pm Post subject:

pa4wdh · l33t Joined: 16 Dec 2005 Posts: 815

Some time ago I was looking for new home-router hardware and I did consider EdgeRouter's hardware, they have nice hardware for a good price. The biggest letdown for me is that I can't run gentoo on it to make my own gentoo based router-os. I ended up with a PC-Engines APU4d4: https://pcengines.ch/apu4d4.htm
_________________
The gentoo way of bringing peace to the world:
USE="-war" emerge --newuse @world

My shared code repository: https://code.pa4wdh.nl.eu.org
Music, Free as in Freedom: https://www.jamendo.com

Etal · Veteran Joined: 15 Jul 2005 Posts: 1931

Wait, so Tony uses a router with systemd on it???

Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course! :lol:

If you want to install an editor, you can add Debian repositories, since EdgeOS is essentially Debian with some proprietary bits on top. But careful with editing files because they might be wiped on reboot unless you use their "configure" cli tool.

I personally installed OpenWRT on mine. The only thing I miss is the deep packet inspection feature which was kinda neat.

Tony0945 · Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2020 4:08 pm Post subject:

Tony0945 · Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2020 4:47 pm Post subject:

Etal · Veteran Joined: 15 Jul 2005 Posts: 1931

Tony0945 · Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2020 8:43 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the link! I never had a link to the source before. Only pre-compiled binaries.

pa4wdh · l33t Joined: 16 Dec 2005 Posts: 815

Tony0945 · Posted: Sun Sep 20, 2020 2:12 pm Post subject:

I missed that the CPU code name is Jaguar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar_%28microarchitecture%29
Instead of building on the unit itself, maybe using a Ryzen buildbox? I haven't compared the instruction sets yet. I use a 2700X to build big packages for for Phenom II and a Phenom II to build 32 bit packages for a k6-3. Except for eix which has some hidden use of a instruction from the build box. It crashes on the k6 (independently verified).

pa4wdh · l33t Joined: 16 Dec 2005 Posts: 815

Even when using my full bandwidth (70 Mbit/s down, 20 Mbit/s up) and 5000+ concurrent connections the system load is still 0.01 :lol:

so even when it's compiling it still performs pretty well.
So besides the fact that it takes time, I barely notice it's working. That's why i don't feel the need to build on a different PC, and it saves me all the headaches from setting it up properly

I like it to be completely self-supporting.

The CPU is indeed a Jaguar GX-412TC , it also has the Crypto Co-Processor which has hardware acceleration for a lot of algorithms, which is quite useful when using VPN's

_________________
The gentoo way of bringing peace to the world:
USE="-war" emerge --newuse @world

My shared code repository: https://code.pa4wdh.nl.eu.org
Music, Free as in Freedom: https://www.jamendo.com

AJM · Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2020 9:01 am Post subject:

DaggyStyle · Watchman Joined: 22 Mar 2006 Posts: 5910