My ERL melted itself. Again. Time for a replacement. I went with a Protectli FW4A. It’s a small industrial enclosure, fanless, with four ethernet ports.

The backstory is that one day the internet stopped working. Try to ssh into the ERL but no response. Perhaps it crashed. Reboot, no luck. Reboot with serial, kernel loads, but stops before getting into rc. Betting the flash drive failed. As it turns out, the internet was gone because of a billing hiccup, so I’m not sure when the failure occurred. The ERL can still route packets in a living dead state. Nevertheless, I was now in search of working hardware.

There’s not too much to say about the Protectli FW4A. The CPU is a fairly old Atom that’s still in production because it’s part of Intel’s extended life industrial line. It has four cores, but interestingly, no hyperthreading. A win? I haven’t tested it, but it also has the VMX extensions necessary to support vmm. That may be useful in some setups. It’s more than 5x faster than the ERL, which is perhaps less relevant for simple routing but makes it useful for heavier proxying work as well.

Four Intel gigabit ports supported by em. Some USB ports. An RJ45 serial port with support for BIOS redirection. VGA supported by inteldrm. Plus meltdown for good measure.

The system runs at a comfortable temperature. It hasn’t been long, but hopefully I get a few more years of life out of this system. At a minimum, it feels solid. Very well put together.

This versus some sort of APU system probably comes down to availability. Curiously, the old router I had some time ago appears to be still available quite cheaply.

OpenBSD 6.4 (GENERIC.MP) #0: Sat Nov 17 22:15:46 CET 2018
    root@syspatch-64-amd64.openbsd.org:/usr/src/sys/arch/amd64/compile/GENERIC.MP
real mem = 4164988928 (3972MB)
avail mem = 4029485056 (3842MB)
mpath0 at root
scsibus0 at mpath0: 256 targets
mainbus0 at root
bios0 at mainbus0: SMBIOS rev. 3.0 @ 0xecd50 (51 entries)
bios0: vendor American Megatrends Inc. version "5.6.5" date 08/03/2018
bios0: Protectli FW4A
acpi0 at bios0: rev 2
acpi0: sleep states S0 S5
acpi0: tables DSDT FACP APIC FPDT FIDT LPIT MCFG HPET SSDT SSDT SSDT UEFI CSRT SPCR
acpi0: wakeup devices XHC1(S4) PXSX(S4) RP01(S4) PXSX(S4) RP02(S4) PXSX(S4) RP03(S4) PXSX(S4) RP04(S4)
acpitimer0 at acpi0: 3579545 Hz, 24 bits
acpimadt0 at acpi0 addr 0xfee00000: PC-AT compat
cpu0 at mainbus0: apid 0 (boot processor)
cpu0: Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU E3845 @ 1.91GHz, 1917.09 MHz, 06-37-09
cpu0: FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CFLUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE,SSE3,PCLMUL,DTES64,MWAIT,DS-CPL,VMX,EST,TM2,SSSE3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,SSE4.1,SSE4.2,MOVBE,POPCNT,DEADLINE,AES,RDRAND,NXE,RDTSCP,LONG,LAHF,3DNOWP,PERF,ITSC,SMEP,ERMS,IBRS,IBPB,STIBP,SENSOR,ARAT,MELTDOWN
cpu0: 1MB 64b/line 16-way L2 cache
cpu0: smt 0, core 0, package 0
mtrr: Pentium Pro MTRR support, 8 var ranges, 88 fixed ranges
cpu0: apic clock running at 83MHz
cpu0: mwait min=64, max=64, C-substates=0.2.0.0.0.0.3, IBE
cpu1 at mainbus0: apid 2 (application processor)
cpu1: Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU E3845 @ 1.91GHz, 1916.68 MHz, 06-37-09
cpu1: FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CFLUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE,SSE3,PCLMUL,DTES64,MWAIT,DS-CPL,VMX,EST,TM2,SSSE3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,SSE4.1,SSE4.2,MOVBE,POPCNT,DEADLINE,AES,RDRAND,NXE,RDTSCP,LONG,LAHF,3DNOWP,PERF,ITSC,SMEP,ERMS,IBRS,IBPB,STIBP,SENSOR,ARAT,MELTDOWN
cpu1: 1MB 64b/line 16-way L2 cache
cpu1: smt 0, core 1, package 0
cpu2 at mainbus0: apid 4 (application processor)
cpu2: Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU E3845 @ 1.91GHz, 1916.68 MHz, 06-37-09
cpu2: FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CFLUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE,SSE3,PCLMUL,DTES64,MWAIT,DS-CPL,VMX,EST,TM2,SSSE3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,SSE4.1,SSE4.2,MOVBE,POPCNT,DEADLINE,AES,RDRAND,NXE,RDTSCP,LONG,LAHF,3DNOWP,PERF,ITSC,SMEP,ERMS,IBRS,IBPB,STIBP,SENSOR,ARAT,MELTDOWN
cpu2: 1MB 64b/line 16-way L2 cache
cpu2: smt 0, core 2, package 0
cpu3 at mainbus0: apid 6 (application processor)
cpu3: Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU E3845 @ 1.91GHz, 1916.68 MHz, 06-37-09
cpu3: FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CFLUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE,SSE3,PCLMUL,DTES64,MWAIT,DS-CPL,VMX,EST,TM2,SSSE3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,SSE4.1,SSE4.2,MOVBE,POPCNT,DEADLINE,AES,RDRAND,NXE,RDTSCP,LONG,LAHF,3DNOWP,PERF,ITSC,SMEP,ERMS,IBRS,IBPB,STIBP,SENSOR,ARAT,MELTDOWN
cpu3: 1MB 64b/line 16-way L2 cache
cpu3: smt 0, core 3, package 0
ioapic0 at mainbus0: apid 1 pa 0xfec00000, version 20, 87 pins
acpimcfg0 at acpi0
acpimcfg0: addr 0xe0000000, bus 0-255
acpihpet0 at acpi0: 14318179 Hz
acpiprt0 at acpi0: bus 0 (PCI0)
acpiprt1 at acpi0: bus 1 (RP01)
acpiprt2 at acpi0: bus 2 (RP02)
acpiprt3 at acpi0: bus 3 (RP03)
acpiprt4 at acpi0: bus 4 (RP04)
acpiec0 at acpi0: not present
acpicpu0 at acpi0: C3(10@1500 mwait.1@0x52), C2(10@500 mwait.1@0x51), C1(1000@1 mwait.1), PSS
acpicpu1 at acpi0: C3(10@1500 mwait.1@0x52), C2(10@500 mwait.1@0x51), C1(1000@1 mwait.1), PSS
acpicpu2 at acpi0: C3(10@1500 mwait.1@0x52), C2(10@500 mwait.1@0x51), C1(1000@1 mwait.1), PSS
acpicpu3 at acpi0: C3(10@1500 mwait.1@0x52), C2(10@500 mwait.1@0x51), C1(1000@1 mwait.1), PSS
acpipwrres0 at acpi0: PLPE
acpipwrres1 at acpi0: PLPE
acpipwrres2 at acpi0: USBC, resource for EHC1, OTG1
acpicmos0 at acpi0
"DMA0F28" at acpi0 not configured
acpibtn0 at acpi0: SLPB
"INT33BD" at acpi0 not configured
acpivideo0 at acpi0: GFX0
acpivout0 at acpivideo0: DD1F
cpu0: Enhanced SpeedStep 1917 MHz: speeds: 1909, 1743, 1577, 1411, 1245, 1079, 913, 747, 498 MHz
pci0 at mainbus0 bus 0
pchb0 at pci0 dev 0 function 0 "Intel Bay Trail Host" rev 0x11
inteldrm0 at pci0 dev 2 function 0 "Intel Bay Trail Video" rev 0x11
drm0 at inteldrm0
inteldrm0: msi
inteldrm0: 1024x768, 32bpp
wsdisplay0 at inteldrm0 mux 1: console (std, vt100 emulation)
wsdisplay0: screen 1-5 added (std, vt100 emulation)
ahci0 at pci0 dev 19 function 0 "Intel Bay Trail AHCI" rev 0x11: msi, AHCI 1.3
ahci0: port 0: 3.0Gb/s
scsibus1 at ahci0: 32 targets
sd0 at scsibus1 targ 0 lun 0: <ATA, TS32GMSA370, P122> SCSI3 0/direct fixed naa.57c354814c160c7b
sd0: 30533MB, 512 bytes/sector, 62533296 sectors, thin
xhci0 at pci0 dev 20 function 0 "Intel Bay Trail xHCI" rev 0x11: msi, xHCI 1.0
usb0 at xhci0: USB revision 3.0
uhub0 at usb0 configuration 1 interface 0 "Intel xHCI root hub" rev 3.00/1.00 addr 1
"Intel Bay Trail TXE" rev 0x11 at pci0 dev 26 function 0 not configured
ppb0 at pci0 dev 28 function 0 "Intel Bay Trail PCIE" rev 0x11: msi
pci1 at ppb0 bus 1
em0 at pci1 dev 0 function 0 "Intel 82583V" rev 0x00: msi, address 00:e0:67:0f:48:9c
ppb1 at pci0 dev 28 function 1 "Intel Bay Trail PCIE" rev 0x11: msi
pci2 at ppb1 bus 2
em1 at pci2 dev 0 function 0 "Intel 82583V" rev 0x00: msi, address 00:e0:67:0f:48:9d
ppb2 at pci0 dev 28 function 2 "Intel Bay Trail PCIE" rev 0x11: msi
pci3 at ppb2 bus 3
em2 at pci3 dev 0 function 0 "Intel 82583V" rev 0x00: msi, address 00:e0:67:0f:48:9e
ppb3 at pci0 dev 28 function 3 "Intel Bay Trail PCIE" rev 0x11: msi
pci4 at ppb3 bus 4
em3 at pci4 dev 0 function 0 "Intel 82583V" rev 0x00: msi, address 00:e0:67:0f:48:9f
pcib0 at pci0 dev 31 function 0 "Intel Bay Trail LPC" rev 0x11
ichiic0 at pci0 dev 31 function 3 "Intel Bay Trail SMBus" rev 0x11: apic 1 int 18
iic0 at ichiic0
spdmem0 at iic0 addr 0x50: 4GB DDR3 SDRAM PC3-12800 SO-DIMM
isa0 at pcib0
isadma0 at isa0
com0 at isa0 port 0x3f8/8 irq 4: ns16550a, 16 byte fifo
pcppi0 at isa0 port 0x61
spkr0 at pcppi0
it0 at isa0 port 0x2e/2: IT8772F rev 1, EC port 0x290
vmm0 at mainbus0: VMX/EPT (using slow L1TF mitigation)
vscsi0 at root
scsibus2 at vscsi0: 256 targets
softraid0 at root
scsibus3 at softraid0: 256 targets
root on sd0a (74f6aca1c00a0d7e.a) swap on sd0b dump on sd0b

Nothing too remarkable.