[Soekris] Soekris net4801-60 as OpenVPN appliance?

[der Mouse]

> I am considering buying a few net4801-60 boxes to install Linux (or
> BSD) on.  My end goal is to build an OpenVPN network between two
> business sites who have no space or tolerance for the noise of
> regular PCs used as routers.

> Does anyone have similar experience with the 4801-60 as a
> VPN/Firewall setup?  What packet throughput was sustainable?  And, as
> an additional question, has anyone used the vpn1401 card with a 4801
> series box successfully under Linux and did it provide any
> improvements?

I once tried to use a 4801 as an OpenVPN endpoint.  It worked, but had
what for our application were throughput issues - I don't remember the
numbers in detail; what vague memory I still have says that it could
fill about one-third of a 10Mbit Ethernet.

I tried a crypto accelerator - it might have been the 1401, but I think
the number had "11" in it - and it made things worse; apparently the
overhead of crossing into the kernel more than outweighed the crypto
gain.  (It presumably would work better for something in-kernel like
IPsec.)

This was under NetBSD, though I would expect the user/kernel crossing
penalty to be at least roughly comparable under Linux, since it's
largely hardware stuff.

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