gigabit WAN#
Vodafone was successful in upselling a faster connection to me. Now we have 1Gbps downstream and 50Mbps upstream. Just yesterday, the modem came by mail.
The Modem#
It’s a CGA6444VF.
There was no WiFi, because that’s ~3€ per month. LOL.
You can disable its firewall, but only for 24 hours. WTF?
Fortunately, there is Bridge-Mode.
https://www.vodafone.de/featured/service-hilfe/vodafone-bridge-mode-aktivieren/#/
https://www.vodafone.de/meinvodafone/services/meine-produkte/internet-phone/geraete-einstellungen
https://www.vodafone.de/meinvodafone/services/bridgeMode/bridge-mode-aktivieren
Now the modum is yet another dumb box next to my real router running OpenWrt - just how I like it. :)
Speedtests#
OpenWrt Routing/NAT Offloading#
When I ran the speed tests, I was underwhelmed. I got about 300Mbps down and 5Mbps up.
htop
reported load 4. All of the four CPUs were saturated.
Thanks to a post on the OpenWrt forums, I stumbled upon NAT offloading, i.e. using hardware to handle NAT requests. Another poster directed me to the following:
Configuration#
In LuCI:
Network > Firewall > General Settings > Routing/NAT Offloading
Software flow offloading
Hardware flow offloading
Note
OpenWrt says that NAT Offloading is an “Experimental feature. Not fully compatible with QoS/SQM.”
Result#
Afterwards I got full speed and the router’s load stayed below 0.1. Nice! 🤓