I use the great mini routers from GLI for a while and I love them. Now I would like to use a setup for which I need some help to get the optimal configuration.
I would like to use a mini router with a connected LTE-USB-Stick as wireless AP in my car to provide (fast) internet to my android head unit. The minirouter is connected to a power-outlet which is switched on and off with the ignition of the car. So after starting the engine the router must boot before the head unit can connect. This already work very well but I now would like to increase the usability by reducing the boot-time of the mini router.
At the moment I have the following mini routers:
GL-MT300N
GL-MT300A
GL-AR150
GL-AR300M
Here are my questions:
Which of my devices should I use for fastest startup?
How can I tweak the setup of this device to get fastest possible startup time?
AR300M and AR150 should boot a little faster. But all the routers are pre-installed with a lot of software packages which slows down the boot progress. Seems you only need to tethering your data and there is a lot of kernel modules and software package could be turned off.
If you have some openwrt skills you can try to use the clean packages and then only install necessary packages.
You asked which protocol I use:
I use a LTE USB-Stick which shows up as network interface.
I did some testing which shows the results you already predicted.
I measured the boot-time with stock firmware V2.25 from plugging in until the WIFI-LED is switched on (as I checked with a fast WIFI scanner this is also the time when the SSID of the mini router shows up) - I used a fixed WIFI channel. Here are the results:
GL-AR300M: 48s
GL-AR150: 49s
GL-MT300A: 53s
GL-MT300N: 112s
As predicted by you the Atheros devices are faster. So I moved forward with the GL-AR300M. I deactived the services for SMB and UPNP –> this reduced the boot-time by only 2 seconds.
So far I don’t have advanced openwrt skills - nevertheless I moved forward by cloning the actual sourcetree from github and built it with the inital configuration (NAND firmware). After that I installed LuCI by opkg. No I get a boot-time of 34s instead of the 48s before which is good but still more than I desired.
Now I am unsure how to get forward. Without deep knowledge about openwrt I have no clue which packets I should include to get the basic function I need (tethering by just provide the 3G internet access by the WIFI-AP) and which packets I can safely remove to get the minimal system. Are there some suggestions?
The firsttime it needs a little more time to boot. I think with more optimization in the kernel the boottime can reduce to 20 to 30 seconds, but it is very difficult to get faster any more.
The firsttime it needs a little more time to boot. I think with more optimization in the kernel the boottime can reduce to 20 to 30 seconds, but it is very difficult to get faster any more.
If your firmware size is between 3 and 4MB, there is not too many package you can remove.
Just to complete this issue I started, here my final results.
I compiled a clean openwrt version and I used the one provided als “clean” firmware V1.0 form GLI. With both I get a startup time of about 34 seconds on a GL-AR300M. It seems that it would not be easy to reduce it furthermore. So I will stick with “clean” firmware from GLI.
To use tethering over USB I added the packages “kmod-usb-net kmod-usb-net-rndis kmod-usb-net-cdc-ether usbutils udev”. This did not increase the boot time significantly.
So I have a solution for my needs with a boot time of 34 seconds instead of the initial 48 seconds.