Network offloading in OpenWrt (2018) [pdf]
This topic of hardware offloading is interesting, and, for some people's requirements, is there an open source consideration to keep in mind: are you offloading to effectively "closed source"?<p>I'm a long-time OpenWrt user on various reflashed SOHO WiFi router SoC boxes, and I recently want to move my home router(s) to somewhat more open PC hardware (with Pfsense, OpenWrt, or DIY atop a GNU/Linux distro), and obtained some Intel gigabit NICs for this purpose.<p>Since I want to use fanless PC hardware (although even the first Intel card alone runs quite warm at idle), I'm wondering how the performance will be, running all packets through Linux+CPU+I/O, compared to whatever hardware optimizations OpenWrt is doing on the SoC boxes.  If the performance on PC hardware falls short, offloading could make the difference, but that would be starting to look more like the closed SoC I was going to a lot of effort to move away from.<p>(Ultimately, I would want to do this on a fully-open RISC-V board, with open hardware NICs, open hardware AES, etc., but I don't know that will ever be viable.  For now, PC hardware, as open and trustworthy as I can get it, might be closest.)