Edge Router Lite- Very Basic Tutorial.

[Mahjik]

Originally Posted by SimonCIon

And the smallnetbuilder and dslreports forums are filled with anecdata that disagrees with you. It never hurts to ask around.

It's actually easier just to get pcap data at the router and see what's trying to come in. However, that's essentially what people have already done which is why I suggested linking to those write-ups.

[t0adp1p3]

Originally Posted by SimonCIon

Odd. Maybe I purchased an ERL that had an even _older_ version of EdgeMAX than yours did, but I _absolutely_ know that -out of the box- hardware offload was _disabled_. An Ars Technica recently ran a piece that mentioned that hardware offload was disabled out-of-the-box on the ERL as of a couple of years ago: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/...r-competition/ (search for "This didn't surprise me, because that was about what I saw out of Apache tests".)

Would you mind adding a couple of sentences somewhere that at least _mention_ that offload might be disabled, and mention how to enable it if it is disabled?



Or by going into configure mode and doing
show system offload




And the smallnetbuilder and dslreports forums are filled with anecdata that disagrees with you. It never hurts to ask around.

Ars ran the USG in that article I believe , not the same router... . anyhoo I believe it was changed/added back in like 1.6 of the firmware for the ERL (seems to be what UBNT says), so maybe that is why you and ars remember the good old days of turning it on...anyway the ERL is on by default, but this stuff turns it off

Ethernet Bridging (using ports on the EdgeRouter as a switch)
Ethernet Bonding (also called port-channeling by Cisco or trunking by HP)
Tunnel encapsulation (GRE offload support is coming in 1.7 though)
Quality of Service (QoS)
Policy Routing (in 1.7 this is improved as the existance of a MODIFY rule will no longer disable offload)
Unicast Reverse Path Filtering (uRPF)
5-tuple packet filtering (I think).
Netflow
Port Mirroring

Hard to find a full list, but that is what some people have discovered so far.

Anyway here is a UBNT article on how to disable it (because it is on by default....). And on the chance someone decides to do that for some reason, they provide a how to turn it back on....

https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/artic...-acceleration-

set system offload ipsec enable
set system offload ipv4 forwarding enable
set system offload ipv4 pppoe enable
set system offload ipv4 vlan enable
set system offload ipv6 forwarding enable
set system offload ipv6 pppoe disable
set system offload ipv6 vlan enable
Some features cause hardware offloading to be disabled.

I will add it in a few to the main guide though.

[SimonCIon]

Originally Posted by t0adp1p3

Ars ran the USG in that article I believe , not the same router...

True. They did, and it's not. However, if you read the article and search for the string that I provided, you'll see that -as I said-, the author is speaking about the ERL.

Originally Posted by t0adp1p3

...anyhoo I believe it was changed/added back in like 1.6 of the firmware for the ERL...

I don't see that in the release notes: https://community.ubnt.com/t5/EdgeMA...0/ba-p/1086373

And I was using the 1.6.0 betas because at the time I purchased the router it was the only easy way to get DHCPv6-PD support.

Originally Posted by t0adp1p3

...anyway the ERL is on by default, but this stuff turns it off...

Yeah, I'm doing _none_ of that and (aside from flirting with NetFlow a year after I got the router) have never done any of that.

Originally Posted by t0adp1p3

I will add it in a few to the main guide though.

Thanks! A quick mention of:
* why enabling offload is a good idea
* the steps to check to see if offload is enabled
* the steps to activate it
would be quite enough.

[t0adp1p3]

"As of v1.6.0 EdgeOS now supports hw offload for:

IPv4 forwarding
IPv4 vlan
IPv4 PPPoE
IPv6 forwarding
IPv6 vlan
IPv6 PPPoE"

https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/artic...-acceleration-


and darn near every single post or review or guide states hardware offload is on by default.

[t0adp1p3]

ERL TUTORIAL FOR BEGINNERS Continued:

I will keep adding parts tp the tutorial. I will cover the following stuff I ran into setting the router up in the hopes it will help someone.:

• Hardware Offload (How to turn it OFF and ON, and how to verify it is ON). This is basically to make sure your router is capable of achieving the speed you need it to.
• In the Web GUI for EdgeOS we will assign static addresses to clients on your local network (this will be useful for when we setup a vpn later)
• Setting up the router to update a dynamic DNS service. This is useful if you have services that rely on your PC/Router having a static IP, but you actually have a dynamic IP.
• Setting up the router to work with PLEX. For some reason, I had issues with the ports PLEX uses, so I step through opening the ports.
• Setting up the router for L2TP/IPsec. I step through setting up VPN on the router, and as a bonus how to enable VPN on an iPhone.
• Opening up port 8080 for speed test socket failure error.

For now though here is part 10:


Part 10: Hardware Offload
The EdgeRouter Lite has several features that can be offloaded to hardware. This significantly increases the throughput of the router. Without Hardware offload the router will pretty much top out around 200Mb/sec or less. Fortunately, it is ON by default allowing the router to perform at pretty much gigabit speed. EdgeOS supports HW offload for:

• IPv4 forwarding
• IPv4 vlan
• IPv4 PPPoE
• IPv6 forwarding
• IPv6 vlan
• IPv6 PPPoE
• Deep Packet Inspection (DPI which is awesome and we will cover it later)
• GRE offload support (Generic Routing Encapsulation)

There are a few things that will turn off Hardware offload though. They are as follows:

• Ethernet Bridging (using ports on the EdgeRouter as a switch)
• Ethernet Bonding (also called port-channeling by Cisco or trunking by HP)
• Tunnel encapsulation (GRE offload support is offloaded now though)
• Quality of Service (QoS)
• Policy Routing (a MODIFY rule will not disable offload though)
• Unicast Reverse Path Filtering (uRPF)
• 5-tuple packet filtering (I think).
• Netflow
• Port Mirroring

List courtesy of RPS https://community.ubnt.com/t5/EdgeMA...d/td-p/1223408

For some reason, it may become necessary to turn OFF hardware acceleration (I can’t foresee why, but I am also not some network guy, so take that for what it is worth). If that is the case, you can log in to the CLI and disable it. Here is an example of turning it off:
One note about the CLI. When you type configure you can start changing things and the prompt goes from a $ to a #. After you make changes however they aren't applied to your router until you type commit. Once you type commit they get applied to your router, but they will not stay applied to the router following a reboot unless you actually type save. So the process goes: CONFIGURE(make the change), COMMIT(apply the change), and then SAVE (Save the change). If you commit and don't wish to save simply type EXIT DISCARD (that means you will exit the configure mode and go back to the $ prompt without making any changes).

configure
set system offload ipv4 pppoe disable
set system offload ipv4 vlan disable
set system offload ipv4 forwarding disable
commit
save
exit

Here is an example of turning it back on:

configure
set system offload ipv4 forwarding enable
commit
save
exit

Note: IPv4 forwarding must be enable in order to enable the other offload features.
https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/artic...-acceleration-



You can verify HW offload is enabled by logging into the CLI and typing

show ubnt offload

Here is what I have offloaded for instance


In part 11 we will log into the Web GUI and assign static IPs to our PC and some other stuff. We will also take a look at the traffic analysis deep packet inspection.

Part 11 – Assigning Static IPs with the Web GUI.
In this part we are going to is assign a static IP to our PC using the EdgeOS Web GUI. This is really easy to do via the web GUI, and we need to do it anyway for setting up our VPN and forwarding ports later.

• Log in to the EdgeOS Web GUI
• At the top of the page select services
• Select the Action drop down for the LAN
• Select View Leases

You should end up with a pop up that looks like this:

Find the IP address that belongs to your PC in the list and select the MAP Static IP button. Another pop up will come up where you can assign it a name of your choice, like “MY PC” or something creative like that and then hit save.
Voila, your PC will now always have that internal IP.
You can view all your static IP selections by clicking the Static MAC/IP Mapping tab in that pop up.


Feel free to assign as many static IPs to things on your network as you like (assuming your on a home network, I don’t see the harm. Then again I know jack about networks so maybe its not a super idea. I do it anyway.

ENABLING DPI
While we are in the GUI go ahead and click the Traffic Analysis Tab.
Click the Radio button on for Operation Status to Enabled
You will get some pop up, just click yes.
This will enable DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) which let’s you drill down to see exactly what each device on your network is doing and how much data they are using.

I refreshed mine so it is only showing generic data at the moment. It will show stuff down to telling you how much data facebook or pinterest or steam is using. Its pretty cool. It also takes advantage of hardware offload, so at least for me it isn’t effecting performance. Later they plan on adding functionality where you can base QoS rules and other crap off of that screen.

[SimonCIon]

Originally Posted by t0adp1p3

"As of v1.6.0 EdgeOS now supports hw offload for:

IPv4 forwarding
IPv4 vlan
IPv4 PPPoE
IPv6 forwarding
IPv6 vlan
IPv6 PPPoE"

Except for _maybe_ the PPPoE offloading, that was all supported in EdgeOS 1.2.x. If it hadn't been, then that Tolly report that UBNT commissioned would have been a big fat fabrication. Also, notably absent from that quote is "The default for hw offload has been changed from 'off' to 'on'."

Originally Posted by t0adp1p3

and darn near every single post or review or guide states hardware offload is on by default.

Cool? I'm not sure why you're mentioning that. My ERL shipped with it off. Running the 1.6.0 betas did not turn it on; I had to do that manually. The Ars Technica reviewer who I linked to upthread also got an ERL that shipped with offload off. Plus, you've gone to the trouble to make an entire writeup about manipulating hardware offload.

[t0adp1p3]

Not going to turn this into an argument. I accommodated your request to put a section in on how to turn it off and back on. If you have a question about HW offload, you can go to the official UBNT response on the matter whcih shows you how to turn it off:

https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/artic...-acceleration-

[guest]

I have this router as well running 1.9

Was easy to setup. My first try was the console I think I had 1.6, the newest at the time. When I put it in use at my house I uploaded to 1.9 and just used the wizard. Pretty damn easy.

@ubnt:~$ show version
Version: v1.9.0
Build ID: 4901118
Build on: 08/04/16 11:31
Copyright: 2012-2016 Ubiquiti Networks, Inc.
HW model: EdgeRouter Lite 3-Port

[KAC]

What is this Edge router. Sorry, due to me having ADD, I can't possibly read all that is posted in this thread. So TLDR version?

[t0adp1p3]

Originally Posted by KAC

What is this Edge router. Sorry, due to me having ADD, I can't possibly read all that is posted in this thread. So TLDR version?

It's a non wireless 3 port router that is super reliable (carrier class reliability), can do a million packets per second, runs a pretty powerful OS, and is super cheap. You can do a lot with the router for really cheap and it is supposed to be better than your typical consumer router from Asus, netgear, linksys,etc... The downside is it is only a router, so you still need a switch and wireless access points.

[kingofslackerz]

Bought the next version of the ERLITE-3 last week, arrived today and got it running tonight. This thing is a beast.

Before I turned on SQM it maxed out my connection with ease hitting 130 down, I know most routers will do that fine, but my shitty linksys e2000 was struggling to hit 70 down. Also turned on SQM to take advantage of the codel traffic shaping as I host a few things and was experiencing lag spikes and general packet loss when upload was active. Tomato's QoS was beyond terrible but the sqm seems to be kicking ass.



With the e2000 bufferbloat was a D and quality was a C. Quality and Bufferbloat look good now, we'll see how things go when I have a lot of connections active, but so far looking good.

[DigitalDemon]

Got a couple ER-8 Pros to play with, and I must say for the price these are incredible. While it's no match for my Sophos UTM at home, a comparable unit for business use is thousands of dollars, plus the yearly sub. The latest firmware adds a bunch of features to the gui, though cli is still required for advanced configuration. 9.5/10

I would have no hesitation in recommending the ER-Lite/5 to anyone that doesn't want to be enslaved to the wifi-router upgrade cycle.