Beryl vs Brume-W connected Devices

donom31 · 2021-02-18T19:56:56.130Z

On the Amazon listing pages, it says that Beryl supports 40 connected wireless devices simultaneously while the Brume-W says it supports just 5. Why is that? Isn’t the Brume more superior and have more computational power?

Johnex · 2021-02-18T20:27:37.501Z

On the regular Brume you will need to supply your own wireless adapter which will be more powerful than the one included in the Brume-W. Notice also the Brume-W only has 2.4ghz wifi which is another limitation depending on your use case.

donom31 · 2021-02-18T20:32:06.060Z

But why is the simultaneous connections limited to just 5 for the Brume-W?

Johnex · 2021-02-18T22:24:50.245Z

There is no hard limit. I guess the engineers tested it and the connection speed was reduced so much that they put that as an artificial limit, so that users know it will degrade at that point.

donom31 · 2021-02-19T11:57:26.452Z

Thanks. I’m just trying to understand the reason behind it. So what you’re saying is the Wifi adapter on the router is what determines the maximum number of simultaneous connections?

Beryl has great wifi but less CPU - supports 40 connections.
Brume-W has max CPU, but only has 2.4 ghz wifi, hence does not support many simultaneous connections.

Did I get that correct? I was under the impression that metrics like CPU/RAM etc was what determined max number of simultaneous connections.

Also, going by your explanation if I were to add an ALFA dual band usb wifi to the Brume-W, it’ll support 40 simultaneous connections like what is advertised on the Beryl?

Thanks!

Johnex · 2021-02-19T13:47:22.601Z

Well no. The issue is that the adapter on the Brume-W is actually designed to be used as a client. Like when you connect it to your laptop to connect to wifi. But GL is using the adapter as an access point (which it was not designed to do technically) so the performance won’t be as great as a device that was designed to be an access point / router. This is also the reason why Brume-W only has 2.4ghz, the adapter in access point mode can only use one band, but if it was separate as it was designed, it would have dual band when connected to a laptop for example.

If i’m not mistaken Brume-W already has something like an Alfa adapter inside, the limitation comes from using it as an access point vs client. Basically they took the guts from the Alfa usb stick and shoved it into the Brume case, and still uses the same usb interface.

Can I ask what is your use case? Almost all the newer GL routers from AR750s and onwards support 40+ clients. The CPU performance does not affect the routing in reality, even a lower end model can do 50 000 connections to the internet at the same time. The CPU performance is more for other services such as VPN.

donom31 · 2021-02-19T14:02:45.213Z

Thank you so much, that was very helpful.

Can I ask what is your use case?

I have always had my eyes set on the Slate for use as a travel router in hotels and such. I’d use it as a hotspot piggybacking on the hotel wifi for longer stays.

I saw that the Beryl and Brume-W have been released recently and to me, the Brume-W seemed superior with the higher specs compared to Beryl except for the wifi.

I was thinking that I’d simply add an external usb antenna like the ALFA AWUS036AC to the Brume and I’d essentially get an upgraded version of the Beryl with higher CPU for the wireguard vpn while not compromising on the wifi.

Johnex · 2021-02-19T14:45:58.180Z

Yeah I see what you mean. Unfortunately I think Alfa + Brume vs Brume-W ends up being the same. Until GL releases a product that combines the power of Brume with the wifi of Beryl that has dedicated wifi inside, the wifi will be the bottleneck.

Hotel wifi tends to be patchy, so stronger wifi is probably they way to go. You can’t have good VPN if the wifi is bad so…

As other users pointed out in the other threads, if you do repeater with single band, you will half the speed. Beryl can connect using 2.4ghz for wall penetration to the hotel, and then supply 5ghz to your devices at full speed.

I saw you were also asking about Adguard. You can install it on a mini usb3 memory stick which doesn’t take much space externally.

funfun · 2021-02-19T16:50:39.144Z

Johnex:

You can install it on a mini usb3 memory stick which doesn’t take much space externally.

Or a microSD card and then it takes 0 external space

Johnex · 2021-02-19T17:14:48.753Z

USB3 memory sticks can do around 440 MB/s while microSD cards can do around 285 MB/s.
A memory stick will have slightly better cooling since it sticks out vs being inside near the already hot internals, and will cost much less for the same capacity.

So yeah if you don’t want 5mm sticking out the side, go for microSD, in all other ways a USB stick is better

funfun · 2021-02-19T17:18:20.504Z

It was mostly tongue-in-cheek as external space was mentioned

But you bring an interesting point. I really was not considering read/write speeds. And I also do not think they would be very important in the case of AdGuard Home (most of it would be cached anyway, right?). Is your experience different / more extensive in this? I’m not running AdGuard Home continuously.

Johnex · 2021-02-19T17:41:11.768Z

Well any time you do exroot or anything where the linux system will be using a second partition will affect the entire system. How much, it’s hard to say, but it will affect at least a bit. Even if the system does not use the full read speed, it’s always better to have the margin. The system needs to look up things on the external partition any time you do something on the system.

It is also great to check what chip is being used in the memory controller of the microsd / usb stick, they are not all built equal, some are really fast at looking up data and have large cache, while others might be lower quality chips where steps were skipped to keep the price down. If you stick with brand name cards / sticks, the issue is still there, but in a lesser extent.

Caching of the rules yeah, that is not really the issue.

A personally like to tinker with the partition and change things on my pc, and then just move the usb stick over when that is done. More convenient I prefer the usb stick in that regard as well, vs the microsd card that needs an adapter and a reader, not just plug and play in all devices.

donom31 · 2021-02-19T18:39:00.709Z

Thank you! I think I’ll opt for the Beryl - unless there is some reason to go for the older Slate instead? aside from the smaller form factor that is.

Johnex · 2021-02-19T19:11:51.218Z

Slate would run off your laptop, while Beryl seems to have a hard time with that, and the recommendation is to use the supplied power adapter for it. That will ofc depend on the load and so on, but since you might be using exroot you will probably need it.

I would go for Beryl since its a new product with longer support. It is not much bigger, and if you will use it at a fixed location and not so much on the go, that doesn’t matter too much.

Eli · 2021-02-19T19:23:20.108Z

I made that mistake too! Brume seemed more powerful and higher end. It turned out its WiFi is terrible.

Even as a client I have a hard time to connect it to a WiFi access point. It’s basically now a wired only device. I am not sure if it’s good for that either because it gets very hot for continuous operation.

In sellers website of course it says: powerful router, OpenVPN speeds of 100 mbs, full gb speeds, great cpu and 1 GB RAM etc. It doesn’t highlight that oh it’s single band, client and AP don’t work simultaneously, it gets very hot, power supply from laptop won’t work, wired only operation, not good for travel, OpenVPN speeds of 25 mbs, Tor doesn’t work, etc.