CWWK/Topton/... Nxxx quad NIC router

[Becks0815]

Wondering what people use all the ports for ,
One for WAN, one for LAN I guess , but if the LAN is going to a switch why the need of the other ports ?

- 1x WAN, 1x LAN - bought set to pass through on Proxmox
- 1x dedicated LAN port to steer Proxmox.

This leaves me with one unused one, which I could e.g. use to plug the Wifi AP in and have Wifif phyiscally separated from the rest (= all traffic must go through the router). Also could set up a dedicated DMZ network instead.

 

[AnthonyUK]

I pass through one port for the WAN, one for Proxmox itself (and VLANs) and use a VMBR for VM and LXC LAN access.

 

[miro123]

Two physical port - 1xWAN 1LAN
Logical - many VLANs
1. Parents PCs, workstations and server - 10 and 2,5 Gbps LAN links.
2. VIOP/ SIP servers.
3. three WIFI VLANs
- safe network - e.g. solar inverters and BMS, energy meters, wash/dish machines, weather info etc.
- familiy wifi - phones tables, google home etc.
- guest wifi
4. kids game PCs
---------
I did the network division based on data flow and each node security requirement.
The router/firewall stays mostly in idle since communication between VLANs is almost zero.

 

[casulo]

Any idea about which settings can be changed in BIOS to set the speed to 3200, when there aren't any specific memory timings or voltage settings?

 

[Darreno]

I ordered the Topton N100 x4 2.5g port which I had delivered today here in UK. I tried to cancel the order as it was no longer needed but it was already shipped. I am going to send it back to Topton, however would you think it would be wise to offer to sell on these forums before sending back to save someone time on shipping? I wasn't sure if the forums audience were North America based.

 

[AnthonyUK]

I ordered the Topton N100 x4 2.5g port which I had delivered today here in UK. I tried to cancel the order as it was no longer needed but it was already shipped. I am going to send it back to Topton, however would you think it would be wise to offer to sell on these forums before sending back to save someone time on shipping? I wasn't sure if the forums audience were North America based.

I’m in UK and may be interested. PM the details pls

 

[ocny153]

I don't think I'll bother with replacing the thermal compound for now. I'll check temps once I've got it up and running.

Idle temps were fine, around 35, but I was seeing spikes up to 65-70 when running passmark. I decided to get some new thermal paste and after I applied it, I could see the gap between the processor and the copper block... I filled it with more thermal paste for now but that is clearly sub optimal. I think options are:

• File down the motherboard risers. Not sure what the best way, I think it will be hard to make them an even size.
• Get a copper shim to insert between the copper block and the case. Looks like I would need a 25mm x 35mm plate and approx 0.5mm thickness
• Somehow bend the motherboard down, probably a bad idea
• Pretend I didn't see the gap...

Any other suggestions? Mine is a type B case from the first page

It's annoying that the motherboard has 4 holes around the CPU but they are unused. These would be ideal for making sure there is decent contact.

Other than that, I have proxmox running with Opnsense, checkmk (Not actually monitoring anything yet) and the omada controller. For the time being the WAN is connected to my existing network, but once I'm confident it's working correctly I'll replace my ISP router.

 

[ocny153]

Any other suggestions?

Actually another option is a thermal pad to bridge the gap. I've ordered an Arctic TP-2 50x50x0.5mm. I think putting it between the copper block and the case makes most sense? Then thermal paste between the CPU and the the copper block. If there is still a gap I can then put another layer between the cpu and the copper block.

 

[ocny153]

Actually another option is a thermal pad to bridge the gap. I've ordered an Arctic TP-2 50x50x0.5mm.

I installed the thermal pad (cut to size) between the case and the copper block, and thermal paste between the cpu and the copper block. I'm confident they now make contact, I think there is a tiny bit of bend in the motherboard when screwed down. I ran passmark and watching the core temps with "watch sensors" and the max I saw was 42 degrees. Idle is around 33-35. Much better than before!

Here are some passmark results, with PL1=8 and PL2=25

                          PassMark PerformanceTest Linux


Intel N100 (x86_64)
4 cores @ 3400 MHz  |  15.4 GiB RAM
Number of Processes: 4  |  Test Iterations: 1  |  Test Duration: Medium
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
CPU Mark:                          5186
  Integer Math                     17448 Million Operations/s
  Floating Point Math              10743 Million Operations/s
  Prime Numbers                    23.2 Million Primes/s
  Sorting                          8494 Thousand Strings/s
  Encryption                       3769 MB/s
  Compression                      49185 KB/s
  CPU Single Threaded              2066 Million Operations/s
  Physics                          448 Frames/s
  Extended Instructions (SSE)      2266 Million Matrices/s

Memory Mark:                       2424
  Database Operations              2575 Thousand Operations/s
  Memory Read Cached               17980 MB/s
  Memory Read Uncached             11920 MB/s
  Memory Write                     9697 MB/s
  Available RAM                    13967 Megabytes
  Memory Latency                   34 Nanoseconds
  Memory Threaded                  26894 MB/s
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[january_1_1900]

Is it me or is Topton super slow at dispatching things? I even paid extra for shipping, probably a mistake

 

[Becks0815]

That's why I did order the N100 from CWWK. Faster shipment, higher quality, and I get the case C, something I also wanted, after having a J3160 which always sat around 45°C while being idle and up to 55-60°C under load, no matter of what I tried to lower the temperatures.

 

[TraXter]

I initially ordered a N6005 box from Topton and they offered me immediately a free upgrade to N200, as N6005 production has been suspended. Box came within 14 days from .cn to .de, which is quite fast, with customs and everything already done by Topton. It's also a model C. Thermalpaste has been replaced by me with Arctic MX4 even before turning it on once, so cannot judge here.

Everything else was good with Topton here.

 

[RevAngel]

Hi everyone!

I ordered the N200 from Topton today, the 4-2.5G-Version. I am trying to setup opnsense there (as for more ease-of-use updates than on x86 openwrt). Has anyone experience with bare-metal setups since the may update of opnsense or is proxmon the way to go here?

 

[Becks0815]

Try bare metal. If it doesn't work, you will immediately see the errors during the set up.

 

[AnthonyUK]

Hi everyone!

I ordered the N200 from Topton today, the 4-2.5G-Version. I am trying to setup opnsense there (as for more ease-of-use updates than on x86 openwrt). Has anyone experience with bare-metal setups since the may update of opnsense or is proxmon the way to go here?

How fast is your WAN and are you using any CPU intensive plugins? I guess WAN speed will be limited to 2.5gbit.

The N200 does not really add enough benefit over the N100 for a router so would make more sense to use Proxmox if you wanted to make use of the improved GPU.

 

[RevAngel]

Wondering what people use all the ports for ,
One for WAN, one for LAN I guess , but if the LAN is going to a switch why the need of the other ports ?

At least 3 of the ports, 1 for WAN, 1 for LAN, 1 for a wifi AP (if you don't want to stick your wifi to your LAN)

 

[RevAngel]

How fast is your WAN and are you using any CPU intensive plugins? I guess WAN speed will be limited to 2.5gbit.

The N200 does not really add enough benefit over the N100 for a router so would make more sense to use Proxmox if you wanted to make use of the improved GPU.

My WAN speed is only 102 Mbit/S, LAN only 1Gb/s. Only planning to run a ad-filter plugin, and stateful packet inspection (if that is not included in the firewall), maybe DNS for local.

And I am doing that just as a hobby project, to have a comparism to my ARM powered firewalls. Maybe I am using the N200 as a travel-multimedia box or just for office use, or minecraft server or something completely different. Thats why I have chosen the N200 over the N100. It seemed to me that for 37€ plus from the N100, compared to the 70€ plus from the N200 to the N305 the sensible benefit/cost way to do (300 MHz more boost and 32 instead of 24 EU for graphics).

These little boxes are so versatile, small, silent and powersaving that you just have to get one to try out what's all possible with them.

 

[RevAngel]

Wondering what people use all the ports for ,
One for WAN, one for LAN I guess , but if the LAN is going to a switch why the need of the other ports ?

Well, I guess
1x for WAN
1x for LAN
1x for wifi access point (to have a guest network without access to LAN)
1x for a physical VoIP phone network (to have packet priorisation over other clients, but that could be solved for LAN ports as well, but it is imo better to have a different IP range - not only vlans - for phones and the LAN, but that is a personal preference)

 

[RevAngel]

Actually another option is a thermal pad to bridge the gap. I've ordered an Arctic TP-2 50x50x0.5mm. I think putting it between the copper block and the case makes most sense? Then thermal paste between the CPU and the the copper block. If there is still a gap I can then put another layer between the cpu and the copper block.

You could also use thermal putty, for ease of use and still 13.5W/MK, even when the gap between the copper and the cpu are a bit too big for paste and the gap differs. Or thermal pads in different strengths.

 

[AnthonyUK]

My WAN speed is only 102 Mbit/S, LAN only 1Gb/s. Only planning to run a ad-filter plugin, and stateful packet inspection (if that is not included in the firewall), maybe DNS for local.

And I am doing that just as a hobby project, to have a comparism to my ARM powered firewalls. Maybe I am using the N200 as a travel-multimedia box or just for office use, or minecraft server or something completely different. Thats why I have chosen the N200 over the N100. It seemed to me that for 37€ plus from the N100, compared to the 70€ plus from the N200 to the N305 the sensible benefit/cost way to do (300 MHz more boost and 32 instead of 24 EU for graphics).

These little boxes are so versatile, small, silent and powersaving that you just have to get one to try out what's all possible with them.

I don't know why but the CPU mark tests are higher on the N100 than N200 currently.

These boxes are way over powered for 100mbit WAN. I ran an APU2 which easily coped.

Even on my 'old' J4125 box which is around half the CPU power of the N100, running OPNSense in Proxmox with 2 cores assigned, the CPU rarely goes above 30% on a 1gbit connection when NTOP-NG is enabled. Without this it is low single digits.
Running Proxmox allows it to also run 5-6 small containers for Pihole, Adguard home etc.

If you are familiar with these online latency graphs, This is my connection.