:fire: Brume-W (GL-MV1000W) is live now on Kickstarter!

panpan · 2020-07-08T22:32:11.584Z

Woah! We reached our goal in a few hours! The early bird offers are still available!
Back us on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/glinet/brume-w-pocket-sized-wireless-gateway-for-edge-computing

brume-w_ks1200×628 73.4 KB

panpan · 2020-07-08T22:33:10.028Z

vvv · 2020-07-09T06:30:48.811Z

@panpan I am extremely disappointed with the Brume-W (GL-MV1000W).

Firstly, I love GL.iNet products - you guys are making some really special devices here that serve an underdeveloped market. I have supported you on Kickstarter, because I love your company, not because I think the Brume-W is a good product for 2020.

My issues with the Brume-W:

1. It is a Brume GL-MV1000 with external antennas

The only difference between it and the Brume GL-MV1000 are the external antennas - the original Brume also has the 2.4ghz wireless chipset built-in but was disabled.

2. 2.4 Ghz WiFi 802.11n is quite old

In 2020, a wireless device should support WiFi6 (802.11ax) - this doesn’t even support WiFi5 (802.11ac). WiFi6 gives better (not perfect) security upgrades with WPA3 and also handles congested WiFi networks much better than previous protocols.

3. The USB port is only 2.0

The USB port is 2.0 - so upgrading with an external WiFI USB adapter will not give significant improvements over the internal WiFi. It also limits the throughput of external broadband dongles or network adapters.

4. Competitors are pricing similar products at MUCH lower prices

NanoPi R2S is US$22, nearly identical specs - as you have said to comments on the project, the Brume-W is not intended to replace a WiFi access point - but the NanoPi R2S can do all the non-WiFi parts great too, just as good as the Brume.

The reason why I highlight these is in the hopes that you may continue to develop the device into a better product before release, this will help not just me, as a backer of the project but the commercial success of the device as a whole.

Again, I love GL.iNet, and hope for nothing but the continued success of your company.

alzhao · 2020-07-09T06:56:08.059Z

@vvv,

Thanks for your love of our products and comments.

But we cannot develop products, freely as we wish. There are limitations.

Old MV1000 does not comes with wifi disabled. There is no wifi. Some users got one with wifi chips but only beta. You were lucky if you had one. Now MV1000W is the official launch.
2.4G is old. Of course we want to put dual band inside. Unfortunately it is not possible because of hardware limitations. WiFi6 is popular now. But it is not easy to design a portal WiFi6 products and Brume is not designed for wifi6.
USB port is 2.0 for some reasons. First, USB3.0 port has some serious interference with 2.4G wifi. Intel | Data Center Solutions, IoT, and PC Innovation. Second, the USB3.0 interface of MV1000 is used as device mode, which works as virtual Ethernet interface when plugged in your PC.
NonaPi R2S? do not mention that it copied our case design?? It does not comes with professional Gigabit switch to work as router. We of course tested the chipset RK3328 before when we make MV1000 and we fully understand how much it can perform. Maybe compare it to raspberry pi.

Finally pls do not forgot all our effort to put the software and UI running smoothly out of the box. Only consider hardware specs is not really a good comparison.

But, you will see our small box with very affordable prices later, without all our great stuff
It will never replace MV1000.

vvv · 2020-07-09T08:02:26.008Z

I understand there are limitations but I wish you would push the boundaries just a little bit more.

To simply add 802.11n 2.4Ghz wireless, which you admit is not going to compete with any commercial router, was disappointing. Why make something that isn’t the best?

Even the Raspberry Pi comes with dual band WiFi5/802.11ac - not sure why your project graphic implies that it doesn’t have WiFi.

Completely agree that you’ve made a delightful software experience! Please do not take my criticism as a rejection of your products or company philosophy - I just want you to perform even better than today.

Johnex · 2020-07-09T11:53:02.757Z

The reason for the product is that a lot of people have been using the MV1000 with an external usb wifi dongle. The dongle and the MV1000-W with the wifi built in, end up doing the same, in a smaller package.

You are again comparing products that are not made for routing. A raspberry pi can not handle more than 5 or so clients because the networking is just not there. It is made to be a client, not a router. Doesn’t matter what the specs say, you need to dig deeper.

Remember the raspberry pi has a pcb antenna, in my own tests it is very directional, you want to point the antenna towards your router to even have the best performance as a client.

No matter which product you look at, the Raspberry Pi, the NanoPi, the GL products will always have better routing, as the chips used are designed for that.

Going back to the NanoPi, you can see in a lot of benchmarks that the case they copied from the GL microrouters is not adequate for cooling. The device is constantly throttling, you don’t get the full performance and it gets extremely hot. A quote for tests in their official store comments:

Throttles under load and can not run at full 1500Mhz
Below results on armbian measured with armbianmonitor -m
Ambient temperature 25C
Power measured from the wall
71C / 2.5W / 600Mhz idle
85C / 3.7W / 1000Mhz under load

Sorry but even if it costed 10 dollars, at 71C i would not want to carry it with me, unless i want to warm up my coffee too?

sfx2000 · 2020-07-10T03:49:48.934Z

The NanoPi-R2S - Not one to sling things at FriendlyARM, but this is not one of their better efforts - it’s unfortunate they chose the form-factor/case design that closely mimics the Mango device…

R2S…

NanoPi_R1S-case1

Mango…

mango_500x500_1

Over on Armbian forums - I did call them out on this.

Anyways - enough of the FriendlyARM device.

Very happy that the Brume-W has hit the Kickstarter target - it’s a great device even without WiFi…

sfx

realjohny · 2020-07-10T21:49:46.330Z

Will it support PPPoE ?

Also will it support Alpha AWUS036ACH to provide full AC speed in AP mode?

amazon.com

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sfx2000 · 2020-07-11T02:54:23.121Z

realjohny:

Also will it support Alpha AWUS036ACH to provide full AC speed in AP mode?

USB2 is 480Mbps - with framing overhead… it’ll be lower, but still good.

That Alfa device is based on Realtek RTL8812AU

sfx

sfx2000 · 2020-07-11T03:07:08.457Z

alzhao:

NonaPi R2S? do not mention that it copied our case design?? It does not comes with professional Gigabit switch to work as router. We of course tested the chipset RK3328 before when we make MV1000 and we fully understand how much it can perform. Maybe compare it to raspberry pi.

The RK3328 is an applications processor, not a communications processor - different performance profiles. I doubt that the RK, even with a switch, would perform as well as a dedicated SoC/Switch combo like Brume…

Personal Opinion - anything Rockchip is going to be a challenge, not that they can’t be dealt with, but it is what it is…

While I’m partial to QCA SoC’s, I’ve done a project on MV3720, and it’s a solid chip.

Brume or Brume-W - it’s a good product… the $10 delta for the wireless version for some, it’s a win.

realjohny · 2020-07-11T13:43:54.332Z

Will Brume support PPPoE?

sfx2000 · 2020-07-11T23:05:28.103Z

I don’t know - as I’m not gl-inet…

I’m not seeing it when I look at the board however…

alzhao · 2020-07-13T05:17:37.180Z

I think so. PPPoE is network protocol so only software.

vvv · 2020-07-14T06:12:40.134Z

As a rule, if OpenWRT supports it, GL.iNet products will. The main interface is just an overlay over OpenWRT - if you go into Advanced Settings you’ll get the full OpenWRT experience, if required.

Based on this:

OpenWrt Wiki – 21 Oct 16

WAN interface protocols

WAN interface protocols Protocol "ppp" (PPP over Modem) :!: The package ppp must be installed to use PPP. Name Type Required Default Description device file path yes (none) Modem device node username string no(?) (none) Username for...

Should be supported.

sfx2000 · 2020-07-17T01:52:26.655Z

sfx2000:

I’m not seeing it when I look at the board however…

Must have glossed over - I was somehow thinking POE, not PPPoE - yeah, should be supported, if not directly in the SW, as a plugin…

panpan · 2020-08-08T00:36:57.482Z

stangri · 2020-11-10T01:17:58.700Z

@panpan, @alzhao – which wireless device is installed in GL-MV1000W? Are you using proprietary or OSS driver for the wireless device?

Are you by any chance considering the B1300 form-factor device with armada CPU, but reliable wireless device?

alzhao · 2020-11-10T04:18:20.882Z

stangri:

Are you by any chance considering the B1300 form-factor device with armada CPU, but reliable wireless device?

Will this be a popular product?

stangri:

Are you using proprietary or OSS driver for the wireless device?

I can check. I think it can be open source but I need to double confirm.

stangri · 2020-11-10T18:06:22.482Z

alzhao:

Will this be a popular product?

Well, depends on the pricing I guess. The WRT3200ACM/WRT32X are still the most powerful consumer routers and the SOC seems to work fine, they have had major problems with the OSS drivers tho, so WiFi was never as good as on some other SOCs. If you can manage to bundle a powerful ARMADA SOC with a reliable OSS driver wireless chip at about US $150 (or a WiFi6 chip at about $200-$250), it could easily become the premier OpenWrt router.

Because of the outdated WiFi driver in WRT3200ACM I’ve switched to a split router/AP set up and I’m now using the MT7621-based ER-X as my router; the CPU-intensive blocklist processing in my simple-adblock app is taking significantly longer on ER-X than it used to on WRT3200ACM.

alzhao:

I can check. I think it can be open source but I need to double confirm.

Also, could you confirm which wireless device is it?

alzhao · 2020-11-11T10:01:23.792Z

I check the code of wifi driver and it should be open source. But I need engineers to clear everything before put on github.

Thought about new router. The next router has to be wifi 6. There are some active development of open source wifi 6 drivers. Not sure when they can be used in a commercial level.