On Nov 20, 2021: 17:38, Łukasz Moskała wrote:
W dniu 20.11.2021 o 16:34, Heppler, J. Scott pisze:
I live in a rural area with poor broadband. T-mobile is introducing a
cellular based home internet plan and if the speeds are 1/3 of what they
tout, my bandwidth will increase 20x.
This would be stationary and I would build to that goal.
I found there is usb support for the Quectel EC25 but a list search did
not show pci-e.
https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=162106996807242&w=2
This chipset is available in a pci-express card and there is a base hat
for the Rasberry Pi's 40-pin connector.
https://sixfab.com/product/raspberry-pi-base-hat-3g-4g-lte-minipcie-cards/
I'd prefer a Gigybyte ethernet port on the arm64; Rasberry
Pi4/M3/BPI-M2, Banana Pi, Nano Pi. These appear to be Realtek or
Broadcom.
Questions:
Is there pci-e interface support for the Quectel EC25?
Broadcom (bge) vs Realtek (re) NIC's; is one better supported than
the other?
Hi,
Raspberry pi does not have neither PCIe or USB lines on GPIO header.
Description of that hat says "Both UART and USB communication with
modules are available on the shield". I assume that to get USB
communication (since UART will limit you to 115200 bits/second) you
will have to connect it with usb cable anyway.
At this point you could just go with USB modem, and don't spend the
$40 on hat that will give you essentially nothing, except maybe more
compact form factor.
If you really want to connect modem with PCIe, there is rockpro64,
that has PCIe slot. Or some amd64 thin clients, like fujitsu futro
s920.
As for second question, a lot of people does not recommend using
realtek NICs with freebsd, I'd avoid them if possible, in case you
will want to switch OS in the future. I had problems with them on
freebsd, but I didn't use them with openbsd so maybe someone else can
say more.
I didn't have problems with broadcom nics.
If I were you, I'd go with raspberry pi 4 and USB modem, since rpi4
also has built in wifi, which IIRC is supported in AP mode on openbsd.
Kind regards
--
Łukasz Moskała
Using the usb interface would ensure OpenBSD compatibility from what
I've been able to gleen so far. Pci-e is more attractive for my use
case but it's unclear the Vendor ID's are in OpenBSD for anything other
thatn usb.
There are pci-e <-> usb adapter or LTE modules on usb cards
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/10000267232403.html
Some of the supported boards have usb connectors along another board
edge to prevent obstruction the ethernet port:
https://www.pine64.org/devices/single-board-computers/pine-a64-lts/
Also found male usb2 <-> male usb2 connectors/angle adapters
https://www.ebay.com/itm/224698400405?mkevt=1&mkcid=1&mkrid=711-53200-19255-0&campid=5338722076&toolid=10001
This board has a usb3 on the opposite edge and pci-e on the underside:
https://wiki.radxa.com/RockpiN10/hardware/rockpiN10
I like the heat sink. The dwge(4) ethernet appears to be fully
supported. Has a 27 week lead time in the US or out-of-stock
https://man.openbsd.org/arm64/dwge.4
--
J. Scott Heppler
Penguin Innovations
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