2022 Update on Itus Firmware

For anyone who still monitors this site:

The Itus Shield has been updated on OpenWrt to support the 5.10 LTS kernel.  I am currently running the OpenWrt master branch on the Linux 5.15 kernel.
While OpenWrt only supports the (R)outer slot, my personal repo has re-enabled the (B)ridge and (G)ateway slots.  If anyone wants a custom image for those slots, or the commit to re-enable those slots for their own build, feel free to ask.

Other notables:

I have a working rust-lang implementation that I'm working to incorporate into OpenWrt's build system.  This allows for rust-lang packages, including Suricata 6, to be used.  

I have incorporated RAM Swap in my images along with zstd compression, which significantly increases the usable RAM footprint.

root@OpenWrt:/# uname -a
Linux OpenWrt 5.15.31 #0 SMP Sun Apr 3 05:52:36 2022 mips64 GNU/Linux
root@OpenWrt:/# free
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:         965972       45860      889788        1224       30324      879788
Swap:        652028           0      652028
root@OpenWrt:/#

Additionally, OpenWrt master branch has moved to Firewall4, and can I can demonstrate full throughput through the WAN ports.  This is (surprisingly) the case even through Suricata 6, with almost no loss of speed even though it is inspecting the packets. This in through my local network BUT out the WAN port.

[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr  Cwnd
[  5]   0.00-1.00   sec   113 MBytes   951 Mbits/sec   31    234 KBytes
[  5]   1.00-2.00   sec   110 MBytes   919 Mbits/sec   44    208 KBytes
[  5]   2.00-3.00   sec   108 MBytes   902 Mbits/sec    0    208 KBytes
[  5]   3.00-4.00   sec   111 MBytes   927 Mbits/sec    0    212 KBytes
[  5]   4.00-5.00   sec   112 MBytes   937 Mbits/sec   94    224 KBytes
[  5]   5.00-6.00   sec   110 MBytes   923 Mbits/sec    0    224 KBytes
[  5]   6.00-7.00   sec   110 MBytes   920 Mbits/sec    0    224 KBytes
[  5]   7.00-8.00   sec   112 MBytes   940 Mbits/sec   32    235 KBytes
[  5]   8.00-9.00   sec   113 MBytes   947 Mbits/sec   29    234 KBytes
[  5]   9.00-10.00  sec   108 MBytes   909 Mbits/sec    0    234 KBytes
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec  1.08 GBytes   928 Mbits/sec  230             sender
[  5]   0.00-10.00  sec  1.08 GBytes   927 Mbits/sec                  receiver

It isn't dead yet! :)

Thanks for keeping this alive Grommish, glad to hear this device is still relevant, in fact getting better! Cheers

Regardless of what failings Itus Network's had, the hardware wasn't one of them.

This is still one of the most powerful non-commercial devices out there (even in 2022, though the gap has closed) for hardware specs.  I did just have the wall-wart die on me, so I had to replace it, but other than that, they have been solid (and nearly unbrickable provided you have a console cable).

Just as a follow-up.  For those who still own the hardware, but don't actively use it as a router, I got bored enough to sit down and turn one of my Itus boxes into a L2 managed Switch.  In theory, you could setup VLANs, but I didn't bother.

Eth0/Eth1/Eth2 are all bridged

With Suricata 6.0.4 running on the device.  Not the fastest I've gotten on the box, but it is will Suricata looking at everything that comes through against whatever the public Rule-sets available are.  I should also mention that my device I'm running this Speedtest from goes thru 4 routers/switches just to get outside my LAN, so I'm sure I could get more performance if I cut some of that out.  So, if you have a Shield and don't need a router, but might be able to use a VLAN-Aware switch, well, there's hope yet!

Grommish wrote

4/6/2022 -- 02:48:01 - <Info> - 2 rule files processed. 26274 rules successfully loaded, 0 rules failed
4/6/2022 -- 02:48:01 - <Info> - Threshold config parsed: 0 rule(s) found
4/6/2022 -- 02:48:05 - <Info> - 26277 signatures processed. 1278 are IP-only rules, 4155 are inspecting packet payload, 20640 inspect application layer, 108 are decoder event only

Very nice work!!

Did you find that kernel memory leak issue you mentioned previously?

Nevermind, found this:

https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/pull/4610

Thanks for your help with it!