@Shu What router have you been using that 1.3 million nat entries is possible? Couldn’t seem to find it in this topic.
He’s running a pc with router software
Well, this is going to be another epic journey autonomi has brought me. I’ll go and try to get my MS-01 to work as a router.
It probably is but I’m going for it anyway 
I’m going for a 250 GB NVMe and 32 GB of RAM.
@Shu is there a particular reason you went with pfsense? Chatgpt is recommending me either pfsense or OPNsense and to be fair OPNsense does seem a bit more user friendly. Anyone that can shine their light on this?
And I just want to say that I came in autonomi knowing nothing about Linux, networking etc. and I think it’s pretty awesome that over the last few months I got to learn all these things and now feel confident enough to go and try to build my own router famous last words.
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Did you go this way by any chance @d3su?
Been using pfSense for 18+ years… not planning on switching to OPNSense anytime soon.
I am very comfortable with the advanced options of pfSense interface.
And 32GB RAM is not over-kill for router… you can run a lot of neat applications (i.e IDS) that can consume that much memory easily.
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Anything based on FreeBSD should work much better than Linux, if you need huge NAT tables. Always check the OS/kernel first, because that’s really what makes or breaks NAT.
I have seen 1U server with Ubuntu doing NAT for 10k home users, needed just some kernel parameters changed from defaults and some limits raised.
It may not be as efficient as BSD network stack, but I would say go for what is easiest for you to configure and what you understand best.
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I went for what was easiest for me (Linux), set kernel parameters, but switched to FreeBSD because the Linux stack was just not up to it. (On a huge server.) When NAT tables become really large, the kernel needs to be able to prune old entries efficiently. It was a lesson learned for me.
10k users don’t come close to running a few thousands of Autonomi nodes in terms of the stress on NAT table maintenance. Hundreds of connections per node plus constant churn of peers and NAT entries. Autonomi would be a great benchmarking tool.
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All this talk of pfSense etc has made me think about repurposing the bits of my last “good” PC as a router. They have sat for 2yrs doing nothing so why not?
earlyish i5 with 16GB RAM and Gigabyte mobo should be able to take a couple of new NICs and I have a pal who speaks BSD (and PDP10/11 so him and @neo would get on…)
A few years back I ran a BSD Apache server for a few months without major problems. Not that I scratched the surface of BSD but its not that different AFAICS
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One thing I would consider is the power draw. For your router running long term the costs will add up. Also I’d match the router H/W to the network size you expect to be running. For instance if like my internet it is 40Mbps uplink, then its not much use going all out to have a NAT table size that can handle millions of entries, and I estimate that a Odyssey 4 core 4 thread SBC is more than enough for the task and draws 5 watts doing it. And its cheap enough adding 2 more 10Gbps ports to it with a cheap M2 adaptor. That makes 2x2.5 and 2x10Gbps
But since sizing that out, I grabbed a MikroTek 5009 and it does all that is needed and I have no need to maintain H/W or software other than let it update itself when I allow it.
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I hope to continue to have 500Mb up and down.
power draw is a thing of course…
Neil was muttering in the pub about a Mikrotek for ~£120, I had thought they were a good bit more ezpensive do thats an option too
But run what you brung, the h/w is free, bar another NIC, If it s a success, then I wont be giving a shit if I can be 5% more efficient with the power, I’ll just be happy we made it work 
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That is prob the RB5009, its cheap and made for “home labs” to have the good features all in one unit. decent CPU good memory good ethernet. EDIT: Just looked it up and its < 200USD for me.
Not for major setups but anything under 1Gbps up/down connections people have been having good results with it
Can actually fit 4 in a 1RU rack space
I 3D printed a 10" rack setup and a mount for a singular one in the 1RU 10" rack
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Yes, I got the 12600H with 32Gb Ram and installed OPNSense on it.
Everything is working fine on it: I was able to configure OpenVPN, I can also port forward successfully (TCP or UDP) and all my devices were able to connect to internet.
The ONLY thing not working is port forwarding WITH Autonomi… (not a single put or get).
I’m writing a new topic to get some help, it’s driving me crazy.
I’m still figuring out opnsense in general. Is OpenVPN something you need to get autonomi to work or is it just an additional security measure?
no
Just useful if you want to vpn into your homenetwork from remote.
Or to tunnel all your internet traffic through a vpn provider if you believe that it provides extra security.
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As Erwin said, it is just a VPN, a mean to connect securely to your home network remotely.
It could allow you to monitor your nodes without exposing any port to the internet (no need to expose your SSH ports if you want to connect to your home servers remotely).
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@Shu I cannot remember where you asked for observations from the node v 0.3.1 update (or was v 0.3.0?)
Anyhow The upload bandwidth required by nodes has been increasing over time.
upload link limited to 37Mbps by router using a queue to smooth out upload data to 37Mbps
- Start nodes - 100 node < 37Mbps zero average packet queue length
- After few days - reduced to 80 nodes due to queue length rising to 20K at times
- after a few more days - reduced to 70 nodes due to queue length creeping back up to 20K packets at times
- today - reduced to 60 nodes due to queue length over 45K packets long for much of the time. Average upload rate is now 35Mbps for the 60 nodes.
At no time was the buffer in danger of overflowing but the delay in packets being transmitted over the wire was nearly 1.5 seconds at 45K packets. It did show that there has been an increase in upload bandwidth required over time.
The reasons, I can only speculate to be more downloads happening, or more churning, or some bug
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Team is working on improvements on the network traffic and load. We are well aware of some the load patterns others are seeing on their antnodes, including our own. Internal testnets are already underway to assess potential improvements. Team should be back as a whole after the holidays with further updates to follow and share (usually via Thursday updates) (I assume).
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found this , a good perf. and power use ref. for anyone considering the Mikrotik 5009
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These Mikrotik routers sound like a proper job. Considering I need wifi too, it sounds like the MikroTik hAP AX3 maybe the one I need.
Anyone else had joy with these too?
How does the wifi range compare with regular/cheap retail routers?
I will be connecting it to my fibre broadband (FTTP), at 500mb or 1gb (may upgrade for the £5pm!).
Maybe Autonomi should work better on commodity routers, but by Fritzbox 7530 issues are slowly driving me insane…
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