A Raspberry Pi 5 OpenWRT Router with 2.5Gbps LAN!

[@JeffGeerling]

Thanks for this video; I may test out WisdPi's 5 Gbps HAT too, maybe it can do some fun speeds as well!

[@homenetworkguy]

Thanks! I thought you might find it interesting. I saw your video where you tested the 5 Gbps NIC which got me thinking if there was only a dual 2.5G NIC HAT then you could have 2.5G for both WAN and LAN which would be great. With only a single 2.5G NIC, you can only take full advantage of the throughput on a router if you have it as the LAN (with VLANs configured). It was nice to see 2.5G routed between the VLANs. Anyway, I searched for dual 2.5G NICs and found this: a.co/d/eKP6AT0 Also found this GeekPi one but it uses the USB ports for the extra bandwidth so it would be interesting to see the throughput when all of the interfaces are utilized: a.co/d/hMgyZTa

[@52Pi_Maker_Education]

what? you've built a Router via this 2.5Gbps hat board with Raspberry Pi 5 ? awesome !! that's cool ! thanks dude! your video is awesome!

[@homenetworkguy]

Yep! Works great. I realized that you have a 2.5G NIC + NVMe HAT which is nice. Also I saw a dual 2.5G + NVMe but one of the NICs uses the USB ports so I’m curious how much throughput you could get when utilizing all of the network interfaces at the same time.

[@52Pi_Maker_Education]

@@homenetworkguy The test result from this colleague is 800Mbps, but it's experimental data. The testing environment at the time was likely a gigabit switch and approximately 20cm of Category 6 Ethernet cable, using iperf3. However, I'm not sure about the performance of the two network cards under full load simultaneously, but it can be inferred that it might be similar to the throughput of a single network card, as the Raspberry Pi's own PCIe interface speed limit is already capped there.

[@homenetworkguy]

Cool. I was thinking it would be nice if there was a dual 2.5G (with nothing else sharing the bandwidth) because Jeff Geerling tested a 5 Gbps NIC and could get near full 5 Gbps throughput (when PCIe gen 3 is enabled). A dual 2.5G NIC HAT would allow nearly full 2.5G WAN and LAN and not just LAN (you can’t use it for 2.5G WAN when you have a single 2.5G NIC because the LAN is limited to 1G using the onboard NIC- so you can only take advantage of the 2.5G NIC when used as a LAN interface on a router when using VLANs).

[@52Pi_Maker_Education]

​@@homenetworkguy Absolutely, a dual 2.5G NIC setup without sharing bandwidth would indeed be ideal for maximizing throughput. Jeff Geerling's test results with a 5 Gbps NIC are quite impressive, showing that with PCIe gen 3 enabled, you can achieve near full 5 Gbps speeds. A dual 2.5G NIC HAT would offer the advantage of utilizing both WAN and LAN at nearly full 2.5G speeds, which is a significant upgrade from the 1G limit of the onboard NIC. This setup would allow for more efficient use of high-speed internet connections, especially when VLANs are employed to separate traffic on a router. It's a great way to future-proof your network infrastructure for higher bandwidth demands.

[@arunkhan4951]

Awesome video. For my use case, I added a USB 3 RJ45 lan adapter and made it the WAN interface. Thanks for covering building the custom firmware. I haven't come across any openwrt YT vlog covering custom firmware builds. I personally like to use DOH (dns over https) out of the box, so the following strings "-dnsmasq dnsmasq-full https-dns-proxy luci-app-https-dns-proxy adblock-fast luci-app- adblock-fast" plus the kmod and firmware packages for the additional Ethernet devices.

[@homenetworkguy]

Thanks! I’m surprised you haven’t seen others cover building custom firmware. It makes things work a lot better out of the box especially when you need hardware drivers for network interfaces.

[@drbyte2009]

Great video again!. At the moment i am also playing with openWRT to use it as an OpenVPN for the arr stack. For so far it works, but i need to make some firewal rules or something else to stop the traffic when te vpn connection drops........

[@homenetworkguy]

Thanks! Sounds like you are wanting to implement a ‘kill switch’ when not on the VPN. I know many OPNsense users discuss setting that up. I haven’t tried it since I don’t use external VPNs.

[@drbyte2009]

@@homenetworkguy That is exactly what i mean. I will search the internet for that, and hope i find something😀 Maybe an idea for an next video🤔

[@SB-qm5wg]

I hope some carrier boards come out with switch ports for the Pi5.

[@homenetworkguy]

For the CM5? It would be nice to see at least dual 2.5G Ethernet interfaces (even on a Pi 5 HAT) because I know Jeff Geering tested a 5Gbps NIC and it got almost the full 5 Gbps on the PCIe bus. Of course if you are sharing that with NVMe bandwidth, performance won't be so great but if using the device more for the higher network throughput, a USB drive or microSD card could still be used.

[@g76312459777865m]

super awesome video. i wish pi's weren't so expensive, can't justify the price for using it only as an instance of opnwrt

[@homenetworkguy]

Thanks! Yeah even the cheapest one at $50 USD is a bit high once you start adding HATs, etc.

[@SmalltimR]

This is great! Any idea if this could be used in a fail-over situation along with Opsense ?

[@homenetworkguy]

Thanks! It was a fun experiment to mess around with. Jeff Geerling tried a 5 Gbps NIC and could get almost 5 Gbps so someone needs to make a dual 2.5Gbps HAT so you can have 2.5Gbps for both WAN and LAN! Edit: I just checked real quick and found this dual 2.5Gbps HAT (www.amazon.com/PCIE-2-5G-Ethernet-HAT-High-Speed/dp/B0CZHZJ89S)! I need to try that out sometime! haha. Ideally it's probably better just to set up 2 OPNsense boxes in HA or have a virtualization cluster where you can failover the VM to another node.

[@Mbro-dq2do]

Great Video. Trying to make one of my Pi 5's an OpenWRT router Its 8GB RAM. Seems tough to set up but havent dove into it yet Maybe on a Pi 4 compute module. I have so many different Pi's

[@homenetworkguy]

Thanks! Yeah it’s a neat project if you have several Pi’s. OpenWRT doesn’t need a lot of RAM or disk space so you could use a Pi with less RAM if you like. It’s not as hard to get it running OpenWRT on the Pi 5 since it’s supported in the 24.10 RC2 image and the snapshot images.

[@Mbro-dq2do]

@@homenetworkguy thanks bro. I have a Compute Module with 4GB RAM Should be fine. Its on an IO board

[@bcboncs]

Great video. I know you mentioned you're still learning the deeper openwrt options but do you think this could replace opnsense all together? I worry about failure points and inability of myself and/or others being able to restore with so much various software nuances to learn. Also just a heads up I wanted to find this video and "openwrt home network" didn't even show you on first page, had to insert the guy suffix. Just something to consider for better algorithm returning.

[@homenetworkguy]

Thanks. Yeah it could be used instead of OPNsense. There’s a good bit of overlap in features and you can add packages to get more features. Whether it is more simplistic to set up than OPNsense may be debatable since the out of box experience with OPNsense should just work for most users. Thanks for the info about searching on KZbin. I realize I probably don’t have everything optimized as much as I should but there’s so much OpenWRT content that I would be surprised if my small channel would have a video featured on the first page of search results. I’m not worried about the algorithm so much and just making content I want to make, which I know is not a good idea for maximum growth on KZbin. I have to enjoy what I’m producing. Otherwise there’s no point in doing it because I don’t think I can get to the point of doing this for a living. I only do it in my limited free time.

[@bcboncs]

@homenetworkguy got it. I'll be flashing the American-banned tp-link wireless ap with openwrt so I'll see about it's features. I mainly just want the multiple ppsk option for 1 ssid. Vlan firewall rules and management to be handled downstream by opnsense but I'm also hoping for the client isolation option. Read a review that client isolation didn't work on eap613 even though it was available, hoping openwrt will resolve that for me.

[@homenetworkguy]

@@bcboncs The ban isn't official yet and it may only be the TP-Link routers, but still doesn't hurt to be cautious with their other hardware as well. I recommend not relying on client isolation alone for security between your wireless devices (as you have described, it may not always work as advertised). The PPSK or multiple SSIDs on different VLANs are better options for isolating devices (there's also RADIUS authentication as well).

[@lckillah]

This is exactly what I was looking for. Would you recommend going this route and using my TP Link AX11000 router as an access point and have the pi 5 as a router/homelab for personal cloud storage and route all traffic through the PI? Or is using the Pi 5 connected to the AX11000 and have the Pi 5 handle the VPN, Adguard, and other homelabs function? I just got the pi 5 and was thinking of going this route: ISP Modem > Pi 5 > AX11000 router. I'm probably going to end up getting the GL.Inet flint 3 when it comes out. But just wondering what are the possibilities of the Pi 5 since I just got the Pi 5 with 8gb ram while there is a micro center nearby where I am vacationing for the holidays.

[@homenetworkguy]

I haven’t tested the full performance of the Pi 5 other than the basic setup which seems to handle routing across VLAN interfaces at 2.5G. The TP-Link would likely be the better all in one solution for router/WiFi but now there’s talk of banning TP-Link (just routers?) in the US due to vulnerabilities, potential ties to the Chinese government, etc so maybe it’s not a good idea to have the TP-Link router on the edge of your network. You could use it just as an AP if you’re trying to make use of hardware you already have instead of buying dedicated wireless access points. You may even install OpenWRT on the TP-Link as well if it’s supported. At least you could feel better about the firmware and keep it more up to date. If you went that route, you could use the TP-Link with OpenWRT installed on the edge of your network. A Pi 5 could be used to handle VPN, AdGuard, etc although I’m not quite sure of the VPN performance of the Pi 5. You might be happier using the Pi 5 for various homelab services as you mentioned (AdGuard, etc). Perhaps use Docker, etc to get some stuff up and running. For those type of services, I imagine the Pi 5 will do quite well. You could still use the 2.5G HAT if you think you need the extra bandwidth on your Pi 5 server. 52Pi makes a different version of the HAT I have which has both NVMe and the 2.5G NIC. Of course it share the PCIe lane so it’s possible you could lose some storage or network performance if you got that HAT but it should still be much better than using a microSD and the onboard 1G NIC.

[@lckillah]

@@homenetworkguy I see. I am using the 4b 4gb right now with wireguard and adguard with the AX11000 but the AX11000 acting as the router and I am routing my traffic from the router to the 4b. I am probably just gonna go that route with the Pi5 until the flint 5 comes out. Unfortunately, I can't install openwork on the ax11000 and the VPN capabilities of that router is only openVPN (along with ipsec and another one that's an old protocol). I tried openVPN and it's just so slow, that's why I went with the pi route. I might still give it a shot with the pi being the router and use the ax11000 as an access point or my other router, which is a real access point, netgear WAX204. Until the flint 3 arrives. Yeah probably going to get rid of the AX11000 with reports saying they send traffic to 3rd party servers. I saw this NVME + M.2 hat on amazon (just like what you have) by geekpi and I might go that route. I just like tinkering with the pi now that I got started with it lol. I know, an x86 NUC box would probably perform better and cheaper but it's more so the learning journey for me with the Pi and Linux. Crazy what this little thing can do!

[@dktol56]

Since you have the 8GB version of the RPi5, you should try overlaying Proxmox 8 over the RPi OS Lite (64-bit, based on Bookworm), then install OpenWRT in a VM and virtualize the physical NIC's.

[@homenetworkguy]

I stated in the video that 8GB is completely overkill for OpenWRT )even the 2GB model is because it uses less than 100 MB of RAM out of the box). I bought the 8GB model so I can experiment with a variety of projects. I haven’t tried installing Proxmox on RPi OS Lite.. does it work on Arm CPUs? I installed a community port of Proxmox 7 (I think) called Pimox but there were certain issues with various features. Also I believe you still have to use all Arm based software for anything else that you virtualize in Proxmox. I don’t think you can install any x86-based software and have mixed CPU architectures.

[@drbyte2009]

Just another question, not related to this video. I've read an article on your website about Duplicacy as a "replacment" for Duplicatie. Are you still using Duplicacy, or did you go for an other solution. The reason i ask you is because i'am rebuilding my homelab, and i also need another backup solution.

[@homenetworkguy]

I liked Duplicacy a lot better than Duplicati because I had issues with database corruption with Duplicati. It was also pretty slow to backup/recover in my experience but that was several years ago. Perhaps it is better now than it was back then. After I built a dedicated TrueNAS box instead of having my bulk storage hosted on my Proxmox host, I decided to move to Storj (which is owned by the same company as TrueNAS) since it was cheaper to store data than Backblaze B2 (but there is a small fee for downloading lots of data but it is still less than the amount you save per month for storage). Storj integrates nicely with TrueNAS and I just set certain datasets in TrueNAS to backup to Storj at various intervals.

[@drbyte2009]

​@@homenetworkguy I don't have a truenas server at the moment, but that may come in the future. I'm going to use duplicatie until I find something else. Thnx!

[@bcboncs]

I saw wireless option in settings... does this pi5 work as wifi access point in bridge mode within your opnsense network?

[@homenetworkguy]

When I was having trouble getting the package built on the OpenWRT website (because the custom firmware builder tool sometimes breaks), I temporarily set up a WAN interface using the onboard WiFi as a client on my primary network so I could download the driver package for the 2.5Gbps interface. There are options in OpenWRT to use the WiFi as an access point but I haven’t tested it on the Pi 5. I’m not sure how well that would work but if you only need to connect couple of WiFi devices it might be ok.

[@biggyk87]

No concerns with quick sdcard degration?

[@homenetworkguy]

Believe it not, I’ve never had a microSD card fail but I don’t typically use the microSD in high write scenarios on the Pi. If you use the squashFS version, it’s a read only filesystem so there will be no additional writes after you image the microSD card! But you would need to compile your own firmware to include all the packages you will want installed ahead of time.

[@karlgimmedatforfreemarx]

Whats the difference between OpenWRT and OPNsense?

[@homenetworkguy]

Lots! OpenWRT is based on Linux while OPNsense is built on top of FreeBSD. OpenWRT is very lightweight and was originally designed to installed on consumer grade routers to replace the stock firmware. OPNsense can run on any general purpose PC. OpenWRT can be run on ARM based hardware and OPNsense doesn’t have official ARM support. Much more could be said.

[@nianhbg]

Thanks :)

[@cyrilpinto418]

Great video as always; but your tree is missing a star.

[@homenetworkguy]

Thanks! Yeah.. I just got whatever leftover tree my kids didn’t want in their rooms (they each get a small tree to put on their nightstands). My wife and I go Covid before Thanksgiving and then it was cold nasty weather outside so I barely got decorations up outside. My wife had a surgical procedure earlier this week so I was working hard to get the video done before all that and Christmas in case I didn’t have time to do much else before the end of the year. Lots of school parties and Christmas plays.

[@cyrilpinto418]

Hope you guys are better now; once again thanks for everything.

[@hardwares]

If someone is thinking about turning a pi5 into a router, I'd recommend to reconsider the idea. It might be better to buy some compact travel router which has a stable build of openwrt for it, and it would be better because: - it would have a decent case - it wouldn't heat as a rpi5 - it would have a stable build of openwrt - it would have better WiFi - it's a ready to use solution, you won't need to buy additional hardware - rpi5 requires a 5a power adapter, how many of which do you have lying around? - it would be cheaper and faster to get everything working The only reason to turn a rpi5 into a router is that if you have a lot of free time, and desire to play with hardware/software in other words, just for fun. There are traveling routers which are of the same size, have all popular power plugs included, with a nice carrying case.

[@homenetworkguy]

Valid points. I just like making projects and tinkering so it was fun for me to see what is possible. What I demonstrated was not very feasible on older Raspberry Pi’s. This is what homelabbing is all about. I certainly would not recommend this solution for the average user. That is why I never say in my project videos, “you should do this!” but rather it’s like “look at what you could do if you like to build things!” I just like to demonstrate things I find interesting in hopes others will find it interesting too! 🙂