Hardware

Maybe it's a little bit too early to answer this question yet, nevertheless: can you tell if there will be a m0n0wall version for the new ALIX Boards (http://www.pcengines.ch/alix.htm - successor of the EOL WRAP) by PC Engines?

Bye,
fordprefect

I'm sure there will be, as there will be for the new net5501 from Soekris. Though you should be able to use the generic PC image on one.

I've received an ALIX.1B beta board today and have run a few tests with m0n0wall 1.231 and 1.3b2 on it. Note that this is not the definitive WRAP replacement yet, but a more PC-like Mini-ITX board (with an Award BIOS instead of tinyBIOS, VGA and PS/2 connectors and only 1 NIC on-board, etc.), but otherwise using mostly the same chips that will be on ALIX.2A. For specs, see http://www.pcengines.ch/alix1b.htm

Results:

- m0n0wall 1.231 generic-pc boots without a hitch and recognizes the on-board VIA Rhine NIC (vr0)

- m0n0wall 1.3b2 works as well, but USB 2.0 must be disabled in the BIOS (kernel panics on boot otherwise)

I also did some basic LAN<->WAN throughput tests with the default configuration, WAN configured with a static IP address and NAT enabled (with an Intel PRO/1000 GT NIC "em0" in the PCI slot as "WAN" since there's only 1 NIC on-board), using iperf with a single TCP connection:

m0n0wall 1.231: 94 Mbps at ~55% CPU

m0n0wall 1.3b2: 94 Mbps at ~80% CPU

This is roughly 3-4 times as fast as a 266 MHz WRAP, so the ALIX beta board certainly lives up to my expectations. I hope things will still be this good with two/three VIA NICs.

dmesg output is attached.