Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2015 13:39:18 -0600 From: John Nielsen <lists@jnielsen.net> To: Jim Thompson <jim@netgate.com> Cc: freebsd-wireless@freebsd.org, freebsd-embedded@freebsd.org Subject: Re: looking for suggestions for a small router/appliance board/SoC Message-ID: <7D3FEA1A-0EAF-4B0A-867D-49DCEF34D0CC@jnielsen.net> In-Reply-To: <ED6B0DC8-7325-4054-A4CF-ED62A14FD39F@netgate.com> References: <2EB47812-4744-48B5-BEBF-B2074D9EEA8F@jnielsen.net> <ED6B0DC8-7325-4054-A4CF-ED62A14FD39F@netgate.com>
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On Oct 22, 2015, at 12:19 PM, Jim Thompson <jim@netgate.com> wrote: >> On Oct 22, 2015, at 12:57 PM, John Nielsen <lists@jnielsen.net> wrote: >> >> Hi- >> >> I’m working on a proof-of-concept for a kind of networking swiss army knife. Can anyone suggest a board that meets the following requirements? CPU arch doesn’t matter as long as it will run FreeBSD (Atom, ARM, MIPS, etc). >> >> - Small form factor (SoC, probably) >> - Can support at least 2 802.11a/b/g/n adapters, prefer 3 (any combination of chip-integrated and mini PCI-e slots. Prefer to avoid USB if possible) > > I openly question your need or the desirability for 3 802.11 adapters. It can be made to work, but you’re going to have some intermod. I don’t mind being questioned. :) I haven’t yet had to worry much about intermod; can you educate me? One or two of the radios would be in the 5GHz band at any given time. One scenario (out of several) where I envisioned having 3 radios is taking a wireless uplink (STA in either 2.4 or 5 GHz band) and repeating it (HOSTAP) on both 2.4 and 5 GHz. Totally crazy? >> - Has or supports at least 2 1GbE ports. Prefer 3-5 ports with switching functionality >> - Storage not super constrained. Built-in storage (if any) can be small (which I’m arbitrarily defining as less than 128MB) if there is also an SD card slot or similar. USB storage will do in a pinch. >> - Has at least 2 free USB ports after meeting previous requirements >> - Serial port or header (or GPIO pins that can be used as one? Not too familiar with that) >> - Low power consumption (within reason taking the above into account) >> - Low cost (again, within reason) >> >> I may just start with a PC Engines apu1d, but if there are boards that are smaller, cheaper, have lower power requirements and/or have integrated wifi or switch capabilities I’d like to look in to them as well. > > you can probably get APU in low-volume, but quantity is very constrained these days (it’s been true all year). Good to know. > We do have the RCC-VE and RCC-DFF units available. > > http://store.netgate.com/Desktop-Systems-C83.aspx Thanks for the link!
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