networking News - Page 22 of 38 - CNX Software

April 26, 2022August 4, 2022 by Ian W MORRISON (Linuxium) - 10 Comments

Morefine S500+ Review – An AMD Ryzen 7 5700U mini PC tested with Windows 11, Ubuntu 20.04

Morefine has recently released their S500+ series of mini PC series which features models with either a Zen 2 or Zen 3 AMD mobile processor. Morefine kindly sent one for review and I’ve looked at performance running both Windows and Ubuntu. Morefine S500+ Hardware Overview The S500+ physically consists of a 149 x 145 x 40mm (5.87 x 5.71 x 1.57 inches) square metal case with a plastic top. As an actively cooled mini PC, it is available with either an AMD Zen 2 or Zen 3 mobile processor. The review model came with AMD’s 7 nm Zen 2 Ryzen 7 5700U Lucienne processor which is an eight-core 16-thread 1.8 GHz mobile processor boosting to 4.3 GHz with Radeon Graphics. The front panel has a power button, a light to indicate power, two USB 3.1 ports, and a Type-C USB 3.1 port with Alternate Mode. The rear panel includes a […]

April 13, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Broadcom unveils WiFi 7 chips for access points and clients

BCM4916 WiFi 7 access point with bcm27263 and bcm6726

We first noticed the new WiFi 7 (802.11be) standard in January 2022 with MediaTek demonstrating Filogic 802.11be processors, and later Qualcomm introduced the FastConnect 7800 WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.3 solution for wireless clients, but we had not seen anything for WiFi 7 access points yet. Broadcom has now announced four WiFi 7 chips for access points with the BCM67263, BCM6726, BCM43740, and BCM43720 up to 11.5 Gbps PHY rate, plus the BCM4398 Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5 combo chip for mobile handsets with up to 6.05 Gbps PHY rate. We’ve not quite at the theoretical 40+ Gbps PHY rate for WiFi 7, but those solutions will more than double the speed of existing Wi-Fi 6/6E solutions, while simultaneously delivering lower latency and extending range. The BCM67263 and BCM6726 chips are designed for the residential Wi-Fi 7 access point market with the following key features: Support for 4 streams of […]

April 11, 2022April 26, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

SolidRun launches 16-core LX2162A LX2-Lite SOM and ClearFog LX2-Lite development board

SolidRun has launched the LX2-Lite SOM based on NXP Layerscape LX2-Lite SoC with up to 16 Arm Cortex-A72 cores, together with ClearFog LX2-Lite development platform equipped with two SFP28 cages up to 25Gbps each, two SFP+ cage up to 10Gbps each, and eight Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 ports for networking applications. With a footprint measuring just 58 x 48mm, or about 25% the size of a standard COM Express 7 module, the company claims the LX2-Lite Mini SOM, based on LX2162A, is the smallest 16-core SOM platform in the world, and the module and development board target high-performance SD-WAN, network security, and industrial control solutions. SolidRun LX2-Lite SOM Specifications: SoC (one of the other) NXP Layerscape LX2082A with 8x Cortex A72 cores @ 2.0 GHz NXP Layerscape LX2122A with 12x Cortex A72 cores @ 2.0 GHz NXP Layerscape LX2162A with 16x Cortex A72 cores @ 2.0 GHz System Memory – Up […]

April 4, 2022 by Ian W MORRISON (Linuxium) - 1 Comment

Beelink SER4 Review – Windows 11, Ubuntu 20.04, and “overclocking” AMD Ryzen 7 4800U SoC

Beelink has released the SER4 which is the latest in their ‘SER’ mini PC series and it features a Zen 2 AMD mobile processor. Beelink kindly sent one for review and I’ve looked at performance running both Windows and Ubuntu and dabbled with ‘overclocking’. Beelink SER4 Hardware Overview The Beelink SER4 physically consists of a 126 x 113 x 40mm (4.96 x 4.45 x 1.57 inches) square metal case. As an actively cooled mini PC, it uses AMD’s 7 nm Zen 2 Ryzen 7 4800U Renoir processor which is an eight-core 16-thread 1.8 GHz mobile processor boosting to 4.2 GHz with Radeon Graphics. The front panel has an illuminated power button, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a Type-C USB 3.1 port with Alternate Mode, dual USB 3.1 ports, and a reset pin-hole ‘CLR CMOS’. The rear panel includes a gigabit Ethernet port, a USB 3.1 port and a USB 2.0 port, […]

April 4, 2022April 4, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Morse Micro MM6104, MM6108 Wi-Fi HaLow SoCs support up to 32.5 Mbps data rate

Australian company Morse Micro MM6104 and MM6108 Wi-Fi HaLow SoCs should offer some competition to the Newracom NRC chips found in all 802.11ah WiFi HaLow boards and devices released so far. Both MM610x chips have similar features, but the MM6104 SoC supports 1/2/4 MHz channel bandwidth for up to 15 Mbps data rate – just like the Newracom NRC7292 chip – while the more powerful MM6108 can handle a data rate of up to 32.5 Mbps thanks to 1/2/4/8 MHz channel bandwidth. MM6104/MM6108 specifications: Optional 32-bit RISC-V Host Applications Processor (HAP) Single-Chip IEEE802.11ah Wi-Fi HaLow transceiver for low-power, long-reach IoT applications Worldwide Sub-1 GHz frequency bands (850MHz to 950MHz) On-chip power amplifier with support for external PA option MM6104 – 1/2/4 MHz channel bandwidth for up to 15 Mbps data rate (Note: the datasheet reads “single-stream max data rate up to 40 Mbps”, but it appears to be a mistake […]

April 3, 2022April 4, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Add WiFi HaLow to Raspberry Pi with ALFA Network AHPI7292S HAT

ALFA Network AHPI7292S is a Raspberry Pi HAT with WiFi HaLow (802.11ah) offering low power connectivity, up to one kilometer line-of-sight range, and that’s mostly useful for security cameras, but it can also be used to extend the range of the network for other purposes. The Newracom NRC7292 expansion board adds to be few WiFi HaLow hardware we’ve seen in the past year including a mini PCIe card, a WiFi HaLow development board, and a gateway kit to extend the range of IP cameras. ALFA Network AHPI7292S specifications: Chipsets – Newracom NRC7292 WiFi HaLow SoC (IEEE 802.11ah draft 8.0 compliant) RF – Qorvo RFFM6901 front-end Frequencies – 847 MHz (TW), 866 MHz (EU), 915 MHz (US), 922 MHz (KR), 924 MHz (JP) Modulation – OFDM with BPSK, QPSK, 16QAM, 64QAM Data rate – 150 Kbps ~ 15 Mbps Channel bandwidth – 1/2/4 MHz Antenna connector – 1x IPEX/U.FL connector or […]

March 31, 2022April 1, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 23 Comments

How to Install dnsmasq caching DNS server in Ubuntu

As you may have noticed in recent days, my domain registrar (HostFast) suspended cnx-software.com domain for what I believe are dubious reasons, meaning the site was inaccessible to the outside world and myself. I cannot do much about the latter and I’m held hostage to what the domain registrar’s will, but I was able to access my own website with my domain name after installing a DNS server through dnsmasq on my Ubuntu 20.04 laptop. Edit: most of the steps below are actually not needed in Ubuntu 20.04, since you could just edit /etc/hosts (step 4). I’ll just leave the instructions below in case somebody needs to install dnsmasq. Here are the steps I followed. Install dnsmasq

sudo apt install dnsmasq

1	sudo apt install dnsmasq

This did not work at first since systemd-resolved is already installed, so I disabled it by following instructions on askubuntu:

sudo systemctl stop systemd-resolved
sudo systemctl disable systemd-resolved
sudo systemctl mask systemd-resolved

sudo systemctl stop systemd-resolved

sudo systemctl disable systemd-resolved

sudo systemctl mask systemd-resolved

I then added name servers to /etc/dnsmasq.conf:

server=8.8.8.8
server=4.4.4.4

1 2	server=8.8.8.8 server=4.4.4.4

and cnx-software.com IP […]

February 20, 2022June 2, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 73 Comments

Fixing performance issues with Realtek RTL8156B 2.5GbE USB dongle in Ubuntu

A few days ago, I reviewed a USB 3.0 to 2.5 Gbps Ethernet adapter based on Realtek RTL8156B chip in Ubuntu 20.04, and let’s say the reliability and performance were underwhelming. I got some recommendations like changing cables, the MTU size, etc… Playing around with cables did no help, but one comment mentioned the cdc_ncm driver could be the issue, followed by another saying that updating to Linux kernel 5.14 should install the correct r8152 driver… So I just did that:

sudo apt install linux-oem-20.04d

1	sudo apt install linux-oem-20.04d

This upgraded Linux 5.13 (shipped with Ubuntu 20.04 + HWE) to Linux 5.14, but still no luck as the system kept using the cdc_ncm driver with a half-duplex link:

jaufranc@cnx-laptop-4:~$ inxi -n
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet 
  driver: r8169 
  IF: enp2s0f1 state: down mac: 98:28:a6:0f:06:07 
  Device-2: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter 
  driver: ath10k_pci 
  IF: wlp3s0 state: up mac: 70:c9:4e:b7:84:77 
  Device-3: Realtek USB 10/100/1G/2.5G LAN type: USB driver: cdc_ncm 
  IF: enx1cbfced40321 state: up speed: 2500 Mbps duplex: half 
  mac: 1c:bf:ce:d4:03:21 
jaufranc@cnx-laptop-4:~$ uname -a
Linux cnx-laptop-4 5.14.0-1022-oem #24-Ubuntu SMP Mon Jan 31 16:00:31 UTC 2022 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

jaufranc@cnx-laptop-4:~$ inxi -n

Network:

Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet

driver: r8169

IF: enp2s0f1 state: down mac: 98:28:a6:0f:06:07

Device-2: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter

driver: ath10k_pci

IF: wlp3s0 state: up mac: 70:c9:4e:b7:84:77

Device-3: Realtek USB 10/100/1G/2.5G LAN type: USB driver: cdc_ncm

IF: enx1cbfced40321 state: up speed: 2500 Mbps duplex: half

mac: 1c:bf:ce:d4:03:21

jaufranc@cnx-laptop-4:~$ uname -a

Linux cnx-laptop-4 5.14.0-1022-oem #24-Ubuntu SMP Mon Jan 31 16:00:31 UTC 2022 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

But then I thought I may have to use udev rules to prevent loading the cdc_ncm driver, and there’s indeed 50-usb-realtek-net.rules in r8152 driver to do just that. So I copied the file in /etc/udev/rules.d/ folder. Since I […]