Gargoyle OpenWRT Router Management Utility Reviewed, Briefly

I stumbled across what looked to be another WRT54GL-compatible flash upgrade for routers.  Neat!  I've been looking for a new base, on which to build the minor customizations I do, for a while now.  Ever since OpenWRT went all Kamikaze and dropped NVRAM support, thus becoming valueless and useless to me, I've been in need of another source to tune.

Enter Gargoyle.  It's mainly a set of UI tools, like X-WRT, built on an OpenWRT 8.09 Kamikaze platfo--

F A I L

That was far too quick, and I'm disappointed they chose a platform that renders their product similarly valueless for me.  Its feature set looked really impressive:

• easy QoS config with sensible throttle rules (and, new, improved monitor/throttle points, it seems)
• easy monitoring of pipe drains, on a per-machine basis too
• simplified bridging setup -- which is a potential pain in the ass they've totally alleviated
• lazy?  Go buy a new router with Gargoyle installed.  Click, Buy, Sign for the Fedex.  How easy is that?

In all, to believe the (believable) brochure, it looks like a project in motion and active; just missing a market due to the reduced potential in the upstream product they're improving.  Hobbyists with 1-2 routers, probably at their own location so they're easy to reach and personally reconfigure after the upgrades render them non-routing vegetables, may find this useful.  Those of you who are either hobbyists with routers providing the routing at offsite locations, or those who have more than 1-2 routers total, may want to consider something which effectively uses the non-volatile RAM within the units to store settings in such a way that it survives the upgrade.

Unfortunately, basing their project on OpenWRT 8.09 limits their potential and cuts them out of a significant non-niche market.  SOHOs, branch offices, those who've grabbed a $50 router to use as a very capable $500 router, will find this product is not a suitable upgrade because of this early decision.  And the real pity here is that potentially a lot of work, by apparently a good and active bunch of very smart people, is rendered moot.

The Prophesy Fortells

It's funny, because I mentioned it only a few days ago.

I was ranting or whining about the service console on the the HP1810G-8 and the Netgear GS108T-100NAS being very weak and prone to bailing a lot:  the switch is fine, and keeps switching, but the SC has crashed and one can no longer change or see the configuration on the switch via the dinky web UI.

So I'm chatting with my project manager for Atlantis, and he starts talking about the bizarre setup in the Sticks project.  We start working out the options and details around some FortiGate firewall out there, and how we should replace it with something we can use a bit better for what it can do, and what's he say?

You know, I'd just love to get some OpenWRT router out there instead.

No word of a lie!  He said it!  I didn't even coerce him.

Some more chatting ensues, and some speculation.  Yep, the FortiGate router seems to be a Linux machine, based on the lawsuit a few years back where they were apparently in violation of a licensing agreement around free software and forgot to make the Linux source code available as part of the process of using the Linux kernel in their product.

So the FortiGate product uses Linux.  X ports, some routing and VPN gear, a processor of unknown arch and speed, and some RAM.  How's that different from an OpenWRT-installed router?  The processor speed?  That'd seem to be about it.  Yeah, the UI is going to be really harsh, but I'm not so sure that's a bad tradeoff for getting 32 flavours of VPN, routing, bridging, switching, vLANs and all in a pretty box.

See the box?  Ohhhhhh.

Switching in the Home

I need to bump up the switching at home.

Right now it's not all that fancy, as I'm just moving into the gigabit age at home (I know, I know).  I've got the expected gaggle of unmanaged crap switches, and they're performing well.  The planet GSD-803 performs the best of all, I think, as it doesn't need the monthly reset like the D-Link and Netgear unmanaged switches do.  But enough of that.  I want to get Gbit all the way into the home, and I need at least one managed switch.

I was looking at two cheapo switches, the HP1810G-8 and the Netgear GS108T-100NAS .  Considering the ridiculous SC problems I've been having with the HP1810G-24 I'm using for the Atlantis ESX cluster,

I mean, really, even in the lower-end enterprise space, what kind of load-testing wasn't done on this thing that let a problem like "oh, the SC freakin' bails all the time under load" get through?  Why is it not recalled or replaced by a better-tooled device?  But I know why:

... I'm still considering buying their even-lower-end 8-port model.  It does fewer vLANs, it does slower switching and it probably crashes on the SC even more often than the currently-floptastic HP1810G-24 unit.

Why would I consider buying it?  Because the Netgear apparently has the same damned problem.  Is it a perception issue, that we are somehow wrong to expect the dinky-toy management service console of this product to actually perform as designed?  Do they get a free ride on quality control in that aspect, simply because they're merely a $100 switch?

Why not just grab a Netgear 3500L router, shut off the wireless (or use it; your choice) and use its massively expended capabilities, thanks to OpenWRT (white russian fo' life) and the ability of linux to set up multiple vLANs at will.  It seems that, if I can stand the loss of the ports or foot the cost of another crap gigabit router (where I get failing hardware for 1/3 the price) it's less of a loss.