x86-based, barebone router
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From: Steve Wolfe on 26 Mar 2007 10:08 > I need kind of a programmable router running on Linux or FreeBSD > based on an x-86 arch-type box that should comsume the minimal amount > of power (like a basic router) ... For quite some time, my home router was an old DEC machine - a dual Pentium 133 with 96 megs, and no hard drive. It ran Coyote Linux which I modified to use an SMP kernel just for kicks. While saturating a 6-megabit line with multiple bittorrents, I measured the electrical draw from the wall at 45 watts. I have a couple of Via C3-based machines now which don't do any better, and one draws MORE power from the wall. Between having a hard drive, CD-ROM, and seemingly much lower-efficiency power supplies, the actual power draw is often 65 watts. A P3-650 with three hard drives in use as a file server only drew barely more than that. As another comparison, I have some Athlon64 3800+ machines which, when under easy usage (say, surfing), only draw about 60 watts from the wall. In fact, in planning for UPS capacity, I found that those machines WITH a 19" LCD would only draw more than 100 watts together a few times during the "usage cycle" - startup, network login, normal usage, shutdown. In any event, ANY of those machines will have much more than enough power for routing - the dual Pentium 133 very rarely exceeded a load of .02, and CPU time spent in system usage was rarely more than 1% or 2%. As others have said, to get power levels much lower than those, you'll have to go to non-x86 hardware. One of the routers on which you can put Linux (and hence, customize to a great extent) will probably use 1/4 of that power.
From: CptDondo on 26 Mar 2007 15:55 Steve Wolfe wrote: > > As others have said, to get power levels much lower than those, you'll > have to go to non-x86 hardware. One of the routers on which you can put > Linux (and hence, customize to a great extent) will probably use 1/4 of that > power. > I put a meter on my WRTSL54G (or whatever alphabet soup Linksys came up with) and it metered at a whopping 70 ma booting and about 140 ma when the radio came on. I could be wrong on those numbers by a few ma, but work out the math: 140 ma @ 5v = .7W Whee! a 200 MHz MIPS chip is a nice thing. --Yan
From: Måns Rullgård on 26 Mar 2007 16:01 CptDondo <yan(a)NsOeSiPnAeMr.com> writes: > Steve Wolfe wrote: >> As others have said, to get power levels much lower than those, >> you'll have to go to non-x86 hardware. One of the routers on which >> you can put Linux (and hence, customize to a great extent) will >> probably use 1/4 of that power. > > I put a meter on my WRTSL54G (or whatever alphabet soup Linksys came > up with) and it metered at a whopping 70 ma booting and about 140 ma > when the radio came on. > > I could be wrong on those numbers by a few ma, but work out the math: > > 140 ma @ 5v = .7W > > Whee! a 200 MHz MIPS chip is a nice thing. Most (all?) of the Linksys routers have ARM chips. Still nice, of course. -- M�ns Rullg�rd mans(a)mansr.com
From: CptDondo on 26 Mar 2007 16:49 M�ns Rullg�rd wrote: > CptDondo <yan(a)NsOeSiPnAeMr.com> writes: > >> Whee! a 200 MHz MIPS chip is a nice thing. > > Most (all?) of the Linksys routers have ARM chips. Still nice, of > course. > Are you sure about that? OpenWrt only has experimental arm support but very stable MIPS support. Most of the chips are MIPS. http://wiki.openwrt.org/TableOfHardware --Yan
From: Måns Rullgård on 26 Mar 2007 17:09
CptDondo <yan(a)NsOeSiPnAeMr.com> writes: > M�ns Rullg�rd wrote: >> CptDondo <yan(a)NsOeSiPnAeMr.com> writes: >> >>> Whee! a 200 MHz MIPS chip is a nice thing. >> Most (all?) of the Linksys routers have ARM chips. Still nice, of >> course. >> > > Are you sure about that? OpenWrt only has experimental arm support > but very stable MIPS support. Most of the chips are MIPS. > > http://wiki.openwrt.org/TableOfHardware You're quite right. I was looking at that list some time ago, and most of the models on sale here (UK) seemed to be the ARM varieties. -- M�ns Rullg�rd mans(a)mansr.com |