We hear all the time about promising kickstarters that fail and everyone just nods their heads in agreement that "shipping hardware is hard". And surely it is. But yet, here was one guy shipping thousands of custom-designed modern-ish computers to hobbyists and businesses around the world at a very fair price for multiple decades.
I have had an APU2C4 acting as my firewall (running OpnSense) at home for the past few years. It's been pretty a pretty good little box. My singular complaint is that the CPU has always been much slower than I'd like. Standard firewall functionality works fine, but doing any admin stuff involving package management takes ages, even with an SSD.
I'm not sure what I will replace it with when the time comes. Despite talk of alternatives in these comments, there is nothing on the market that checks all of the same boxes that the APU2 does: 1) AMD64 2) fanless 3) low power 4) multiple interfaces 5) under $200.
> Despite talk of alternatives in these comments, there is nothing on the market that checks all of the same boxes that the APU2 does: 1) AMD64 2) fanless 3) low power 4) multiple interfaces 5) under $200.
ODROID-H3/ODROID-H3+, maybe? [1, 2]
1) AMD64/x86-64 architecture (Intel chip).
2) optional fan; I'm unsure if it's necessary for any particular load
3) 2W at idle up to 18W with CPU+GPU pegged
4) 2 2.5GbE NICs builtin, M.2 card available to add another 4
5) bare board is $165 direct from hardkernel (H3+) or $129 (H3). Almost certainly over $200 once you include RAM, SSD, case, power supply, and shipping, but I think the same is true for pcengines stuff too?
While a Raspberry Pi is much more powerful than your basic router, these kinds of routers are those with genuinely extra features that will strain out a RasPi (for example, multi-gigabit routing, advanced traffic shaping, and in GP's case packet-based firewall with a possibility of deep packet inspection). Until we have decent emebedded ARM-based computers, it is still likely that there would be a reliance on x86 computers simply because they exist.
* Much better options for flash storage; it's real easy to buy an extreme high endurance m.2 with the device, vs constantly rolling the dice with a microsd card on a raspberry pi. The APU also has a SATA port and an SD card slot (which they also provide very high endurance SD cards for).
* x86 + coreboot means the device is well understood and open, and will run basically anything you want unmolested. No need to deal with crazy Broadcom firmware.
* High quality Intel Gigabit NICs mean they always "just work" in Linux, and work well.
* Expandable with m.2 pcie cards instead of relying on USB...PC engines will sell you a good vetted 802.11 card that basically just drops into their existing chassis.
* I think all of the APU2s have ECC ram.
* Before the Raspberry Pi 4, the APU2 had significantly more compute power than any prior RPi. I don't own a Raspberry Pi 4, so I have no idea how they stack up.
I've had a bunch of these for years now, and they all run unmolested basic Debian, and I've never seen one of them fail (I've seen an Alix fail, but it was recent and that unit has to be very, very old at this point). Every Raspberry Pi I've ever used has felt like a gamble whether or not it was going to die (I've lost a few, not being abusive to them either). In a router, it's absolutely worth it to know that every time that device powers up, it's going to work.
> people still buy the WRT54GL in large enough numbers that Linksys continues to earn millions of dollars per year selling an 11-year-old product without ever changing its specs or design. "To be honest, it somewhat baffles my mind," Linksys Global Product Manager Vince La Duca told Ars. But production won't stop any time soon as long as Linksys' suppliers, including chipmaker Broadcom, keep selling the parts needed to build the WRT54GL. "We'll keep building it because people keep buying it," La Duca said ... The WRT54GL and other routers in the WRT54G line have sold 31 million units in their 14-year lifetime. The WRT54GL is the only one still being manufactured and sold.
A valid question. The best answer is flexibility. On AMD64, I am guaranteed to be able to run pretty much any OS I want if my needs should change. OpenBSD, FreeBSD, weird Linux distros, whatever. Comparable ARM boards, however, tend to only work with Linux and have highly variable levels of support at that. Support can wane depending on interest and level of involvement of the community.
A Raspberry Pi would be an excellent choice if they ever offered one with multiple gigabit interfaces. But it's the only ARM board I would currently consider for the role.
I have had an APU2C4 acting as my firewall (running OpnSense) at home for the past few years. It's been pretty a pretty good little box. My singular complaint is that the CPU has always been much slower than I'd like. Standard firewall functionality works fine, but doing any admin stuff involving package management takes ages, even with an SSD.
I'm not sure what I will replace it with when the time comes. Despite talk of alternatives in these comments, there is nothing on the market that checks all of the same boxes that the APU2 does: 1) AMD64 2) fanless 3) low power 4) multiple interfaces 5) under $200.