In this video, I will build a 10 Gbps x86 OpenWRT router PC with Mellanox Connect x3 SFP+ Ethernet adapter. There are different SFP+ adapter manufactures: Intel, HP, Mellanox, etc. After checking the price and driver compatibility, I decided to go with Mellanox Connect since it was fully supported with OpenWRT 21.02, plus the pricing for OCP form factor (Open Compute Project) is much more cheaper compare to the PCIE form factor.
In order to connect the network adapters together, I used DAC (Direct Attached Cable) due to the price. Of course you can use SFP+ module & Fiber cable, but this will make the cost very high.
Finally, to get the SFP+ Ethernet card up and running on OpenWRT, I just need to install kmod-mlx4-core (for Mellanox Connect x3) or kmod-mlx5-core (for Mellanox Connect x4).
Unfortunately, one of the OCP to PCIE adapter I received was faulty and the card was detected as x1, instead of x4. This made the throughput limited to 6 Gbps on WAN to OpenWRT side.
In the video, I have performed iperf test from WAN and OpenWRT router to the client PC. I have also run the same test with Flow Offloading enabled. At the same time, Open Speed Test was run but due to the limited on the server side, the speed is limited to ~ 6000 Mbps. At the end of the video, I did a simple power consumption test with a Tuya smart plug.

Video timeframe:

00:00 - Intro
01:16 - Mellanox Connect x3 SFP+ Ethernet Adapter & DAC Cable
03:29 - Network Diagram
04:43 - Hardware Installation
07:24 - Download & Write firmware to USB drive (ubuntu)
11:06 - Boot up the x86 OpenWRT Router PC & Configure WAN
13:45 - Install driver & Configure Mellanox Connect x3 Card (kmod-mlx4-core)
17:08 - Access LuCI & Network Interfaces Overview
19:37 - OpenSpeedTest and iperf3 test
26:01 - Speedtest with Software Flow Offloading
27:56 - Another setup - Configure Mellanox Connect x3 as LAN ports
30:16 - Same OpenSpeedTest and iperf3 test, but on Windows 10
31:56 - Power Consumption of the x86 OpenWRT Router PC

Link to the userful post - [ Ссылка ]

Thanks for watching and see you all in the next video!

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