Hi!
I have a Slate7 (BE3600) router. I successfully set up Zerotier on device and can connect to ZT network. I can ping, lookup and access simple shares and devices on my remote networks connected to this same ZT net. The latest opkg zerotier package is 1.10.3 (with OpenWrt 23).
My main problem is bandwidth. While simple static http serving devices can be accessed, complex https pages (like portainer, jellyfin, all servarr sites, etc) through https are timing out consequently. There are several performance optimization happened with Zerotier through their upgrades, namely:
Major Performance Improvements Since Version 1.10.3
ZeroTier 1.12.0 (August 2023)
The 1.12 release significantly reduced memory and CPU usage across most platforms, and improved throughput on Linux by anywhere from 10% to 30% depending on your system configuration. This version also included increased reliability, performance, and resource efficiency
ZeroTier 1.14.0+ (Current versions)
The newer versions include Linux performance improvements for up to 25% faster tun/tap I/O performance on multi-core systems and implementation of recvmmsg() for Linux to reduce syscalls, providing between 5% and 40% speed improvement on Linux, depending on system configuration and load. Additionally, version 1.14.1 introduced multithreading support that can provide 2x performance improvement when both ends enable multithreading.
Summarizing: Upgading from 1.10.3 to 1.14.1 has a possible 10 fold performance increase but at least 2-3 times faster throughput can be estimated
I've searched the OpenWRT repos, both 23.05 and 24 has zerotier has at least 1.14.1 (latest is 1.14.2) See here
The main problem when using
opkg install ./zerotier_1.14.1-1_aarch64_cortex-a53.ipk
on manually downloaded package is that slate7 architecture is not recognized with basic opkg repos when added as it has some special aarch64_cortex-a53_neon-vfpv4 architecture that is not available from standard OpenWrt packages. The closest architecture that I've found is aarch64_cortex-a53 only but opkg refuses to update.
I've found one topic on this forum that has the same issue as me and another one that mentioning slow connection issues with Zerotier. Here and here.
So I think the only resolution is that GL.iNet needs to build zerotier packages for this special architecture and publish the binary in their repos to be able to upgrade. Can this be done? I've bought this router as its description specifically stated supporting Zerotier but I had no clue with the version lag so extreme. I need to have a high speed solution to access my devices on the road. I have no possibility to change VPN to Tailscale or any other supported technology as Zerotier is working from all other devices already as expected.
Thank you for reading this. I hope there will be some changes to this soon. I'm here to test and feedback on released Zerotier app when needed.