GL.iNet Flint 2 router review – Part 2: WiFi 6, 2.5GbE, WireGuard performance

GL.iNet Flint 2 Review

In the first part of the review of the GL.iNet GL-MT6000 “Flint 2” WiFi 6 router, I had a look at the package content and the hardware design with a teardown of the router, and quickly tried it out. I’ve now had more time to play with the router focusing the review on WiFi 6 and 2.5GbE performance, and checking whether of 900 Mbps Wireguard VPN claim had any truth to it. The router also supports the Tor network to anonymously browse the web, Adguard Home to get rid of unwanted ads, and Repeater mode among other features. Those all work with the Fliont 2 router, but I won’t cover those in detail here, and invite you to check out the GL.iNet Brume 2 security gateway review for Tor and Adguard Home and the GL.iNet Beryl AX review for the repeater mode test. Connecting wired and wireless clients The Flint […]

GL.iNet GL-MT6000 “Flint 2” WiFi 6 router review – Part 1: Unboxing, teardown, and first try

GL.iNet GL-MT6000 review

GL.iNet Flint 2 (also known as GL-MT6000) is a new WiFi 6 AX6000 router based on MediaTek MT7986 (Filogic 830) Arm SoC running of fork OpenWrt 23.05 and claims up of up tup to 900 Mbps VPN speed using WireGuard. The company sent us a review sample of the Flint 2 router, and since we’ve already listed the specifications, we’ll focus the first part of the review on an unboxing, teardown, and a first quick try, before testing some of the features, including the VPN speed, and comparing it to the Xiaomi Mi AX6000 router I own in the second part of the review in a few weeks. GL.iNet GL-MT6000 unboxing The package shows the model number Flint 2 / GL-MT6000 and key features such as the AX6000 WiFi 6, dual 2.5GbE, multi-WAN support, dual Ethernet WAN, OpenWrt, and VPN. The package features the router itself with its four antennas, […]

International Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2023 deals and coupon codes

Alixexpress Black Friday 2023

We’ve been writing about international Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals and coupon codes since 2014, as US-centric promotions such as Amazon’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals are not always available to the international audience of CNX Software. So once again, we’ve searched at Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2023 international promotions and discount codes from specific manufacturers as well as popular online stores such as Aliexpress, Banggood, and others. Aliexpress Black Friday and Cyber Monday event Aliexpress will have a Black Friday (and Cyber Monday) event in 2023, but we have limited details at this time since it will only start on November 23, contrary to some of the other deals we’ll feature below which are already up and running. But the event will have two periods: Nov 20-22 PT – Warm Up event where users can find and add items to the cart before purchasing during the […]

Giveaway Week 2023 winners announced!

CNX Software Giveaway Week 2023 Prizes

CNX Software’s Giveaway Week 2023 is now over and we’re ready to announce the winners. We offered some of the review samples we tested (or not) in the last year, and like the last two years, we were also joined by RAKwireless who offered two IoT development kits. All items given away are shown in the photo below, minus some accessories, and if you count more than seven you’d be right, as some are kits with multiple items like the GL.iNet GL-S200 Thread Border router which comes with three development boards, and more importantly, we also organized Giveaway Week on CNX Software Thailand for the second year running. We had seven winners on CNX Software: VOIPAC iMX8M industrial development kit – Kraingsak, Thailand TBS7901 mini PCIe DVB-S2X/S2 module  – Frank, Singapore RAKWireless WisBlock IoT Starter Kit – Andy, Russia GL.iNet GL-S200 Thread Border router kit – Augustin, Argentina WCH CH583M-R0-1v1 […]

Giveaway Week 2023 – GL.iNet GL-S200 Thread Border Router devkit

Getting Started GL-S200 Thread Border Router

It’s already day 4 of CNX Software Giveaway Week 2023 and today, we’ll be giving away GL.iNet GL-S200 Thread Border router kit that also includes three USB or battery-powered Thread development boards to experiment with various Thread topologies. The GL-S200 router comes with a Qualcomm QCA9531 MIPS router processor running a fork of OpenWrt and provides two Fast Ethernet WAN/LAN ports, 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi 4 802.11b/g/n up to 150 Mbps, and support for Thread (via an 802.15.4 radio) and Bluetooth 5.0. The development boards are based on the Nordic Semi nRF52840 microcontroller and each features a potentiometer+button, a PIR sensor, and two RGB LEDs. I reviewed the GL-S200 Thread Border router kit using the router’s dashboard interface and demo firmware provided for the three development boards. This enabled me to test star topology and mesh networking, and play around with demo scripts and code samples to display sensor and potentiometer […]

GL.iNet Flint2 AX6000 router supports up to 900 Mbps WireGuard VPN with MediaTek MT7986 SoC

Flint2 router

GL.iNet Flint2 (also known as GL-MT6000) is a new AX6000 router based on MediaTek MT7986 (Filogic 830) Arm SoC and supporting VPN speeds of up to 900 Mbps using WireGuard and 190 Mbps with OpenVPN. This caught my attention, as I previously covered other GL.iNet routers such as the Spitz AX (GL-X3000NR) and the Beryl AX (GL-MT3000) based on the previously generation Filogic 820 (MT7981B) CPU with claims of (only) 300 Mbps transfer rates with Wireguard, so the new model is supposed to triple the VPN performance. GL.iNet Flint2 (GL-MT6000) specifications: SoC – MediaTek MT7986 (Filogic 830) quad-core Arm Cortex A53 processor @ 2.0 GHz with hardware acceleration engines for Wi-Fi offloading and networking System Memory – 1GB DDR4 Storage – 8GB eMMC flash Networking 2x 2.5 Gbps Ethernet ports 4x Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports 802.11b/g/n/ac/ax WiFi 6 with 4x external Wi-Fi antennas Up to 1,148 Mbps @ 2.4 GHz […]

GL.iNet Puli AX (GL-XE3000) WiFi 6 & 5G router integrates a 6,400 mAh battery

Puli AX GL XE3000

GL.iNet Puli AX (also known as GL-XE3000) is a WiFi 6 and 5G cellular router with an integrated 6,400 mAh battery and running a fork of OpenWrt 21.02 on a MediaTek Filogic 820 dual-core Arm Cortex-A53 router SoC. If the design looks familiar it’s because it’s based on the same platform as the GL.iNet Spitz AX 2.5GbE, WiFi 6 and 5G cellular router that we reviewed last May, except the new Puli AX model comes with a 6,400 mAh which makes it even more convenient as a travel router. Puli AX (GL-XE3000) specifications: SoC – MediaTek MT7981A (Filogic 820) dual-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor @ 1.3 GHz System Memory – 512 MB DDR4 Storage – 8GB eMMC flash, MicroSD card slot Networking 1x 2.5GbE WAN Ethernet port 1x Gigabit Ethernet LAN port Dual-band IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax WiFi 6 up to 574Mbps (2.4GHz), 2,402Mbps (5GHz) RM520N-GL 5G cellular modem and 2x Nano SIM […]

Linux 6.4 release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures

Linux 6.4 release

Linux 6.4 has just been released by Linus Torvalds on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML): Hmm. Final week of 6.4 is done, and we’ve mainly got some netfilter fixes, some mm reverts, and a few tracing updates. There’s random small changes elsewhere: the usual architecture noise, a number of selftest updates, some filesystem fixes (btrfs, ksmb), etc. Most of the stuff in my mailbox the last week has been about upcoming things for 6.5, and I already have 15 pull requests pending. I appreciate all you proactive people. But that’s for tomorrow. Today we’re all busy build-testing the newest kernel release, and checking that it’s all good. Right? Released around two months ago, Linux 6.3 brought us AMD’s “automatic IBRS” Spectre defense mechanism, additional progress on the Rust front with User-mode Linux support (on x86-64 systems only), the NFS filesystem (both the client and server sides) gained support for […]