To boot into text mode:
sudo systemctl set-default multi-user.target
or to boot into GUI mode:
sudo systemctl set-default graphical.target
Reboot the system
Reviews of products I like, plus whatever comes to my mind...
To boot into text mode:
sudo systemctl set-default multi-user.target
or to boot into GUI mode:
sudo systemctl set-default graphical.target
Reboot the system
I have been using OpenVPN on my home router for the last 10 years or so, and I finally got around to trying WireGuard tunneling. From what I heard, I was expecting WireGuard to be much faster, as I have seen a huge performance increase when I switched from OpenVPN to WireGuard on my Private Internet Access VPN.
To my surprise, as it turns out OpenVPN is still significantly faster (and better) on my Intel Alder Lake N100 router.
Here are the specs used for the benchmark:
and here's the result:
Un-encrypted | OpenVPN | WireGuard | |
---|---|---|---|
Ping | 1ms | 1ms | 1ms |
Latency (Down) | 16ms | 29ms | 15ms |
Latency (Up) | 22ms | 38ms | 26ms |
Download Speed | 912.40Mbps | 914.35Mbps | 636.50Mbps |
Download CPU usage | 10% | 10% | 21% |
Upload Speed | 945.48Mbps | 944.01Mbps | 658.27Mbps |
Upload CPU usage | 63% | 69% | 89% |
OpenVPN relies on the underlying OpenSSL library, which provides hardware acceleration for AES instructions. Intel Alder Lake N100 processor is AES-NI enabled, and my pfSense dashboard showed that it's enabled. WireGuard on the other hand, uses ChaCha20-Poly1305 algorithm, which takes advantage of SIMD instructions, which exists on virtually all non-embedded CPUs.
So it appears that the AES hardware acceleration provides significant boost over using SIMD instructions, at least in Intel N100 processor.
For Intel N100 processor based pfSense routers, OpenVPN provides over 43% VPN throughput performance over WireGuard. In fact, the AES-NI acceleration is so effective such that it achieves near 100% ISP throughput with no additional CPU overhead (for 1Gbps connection).
What is really interesting, is that the WireGuard connection works at 50 to 68% lower latency than OpenVPN. As such, WireGuard may be better suited for activities such as gaming and remote desktop access.
In conclusion, for those using Intel Alder Lake N100 for a pfSense router, OpenVPN should be used if your primary goal is to obtain highest throughput with the clients. If your client application is more sensitive to network latency, WireGuard should be used instead.
I ran into a really odd error on a PC today. Basically you get an error from Outlook:
This account is not supported in Outlook for Windows due to the license provided by your work or school
when trying to set up an email hosted by Microsoft (custom domain).
As it turns out, the issue is that new Outlook does not allow Basic Microsoft 365 Business plan accounts to be added, due to licensing restrictions! So when I disabled the "New Look" and went back to the "old" version of Outlook, it worked just fine.
A nice summary of the issue is found here, by a detailed user feedback to Microsoft:
https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/2f7925cb-3a80-ee11-a81c-000d3ae46fcb
Append the following in the /etc/sysctl.conf file:
net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6 = 1
net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6 = 1
net.ipv6.conf.lo.disable_ipv6 = 1
net.ipv6.conf.tun0.disable_ipv6 = 1
and run:
sudo sysctl -p
and reboot
Edit /etc/pihole/pihole-FTL.conf
Change RATE_LIMIT line to:
RATE_LIMIT=0/0
then restart pi-hole:
sudo service pihole-FTL restart
You won't see random DNS resolution issues again!
Recently I had to resize a rather large 4k H.265 video file to 1080p H.265 file. This is what I used. SO much faster than using the CPU for decoding!
ffmpeg.exe -vsync 0 -hwaccel cuda -hwaccel_output_format cuda -i <input file> -resize 1920x1080 -c:v hevc_nvenc -preset fast -rc vbr -acodec copy <output file>