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Qotom Core i7 mini computer - too good to be true?

Hi I just purchased a miniComputer from the chinese vendor Qotom.  It seems like a pretty nice little device but I've run into a very significant problem in that the UTM ISO won't recognize more than a single NIC of the 4 available.

 

Can anyone assist?

 

Thanks,

Doug

 

SPECS:

Intel Core i7 4500U Haswell

Intel 4400 Graphics

1x HDMI   1x RS-232  1x mini-PCIe  1x mSATA 

4x Intel I211-AT Gigabit Network

  



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Parents Reply
  • It turns out I'm the victim of a very old Astaro/Sophos bug.  The OS doesn't recognize the NICs in the correct order.
    I'm seeing the following:
    Nic #1:  Eth0
    Nic #2:  Eth 2
    Nic #3:  Eth 3

    Nic #4  Eth 1

    I love the formatting here too.

    Now that I know how Sophos has scrambled the NIC's I think I can proceed.

    Thanks for the help.

Children
  • and did you succeed in resolving this problem?

     

  • Yes.
    Once I realized that Sophos OS was scrambling the order of the NIC's as reported many years ago, it was trivial to configure the device correctly.
    Thanks.

  • I don't think it's sophos that's scrambled things.  I have the same box based on a i5 5250u cpu.  Same nic issue. Similar results in windows too.  My guess is little attention was paid when they designed the circuit traces for each port to keep them in order.  I made a small table after some testing.

     

    Physical ports ---- os named ports ETHx or VMNICx, (or if the OS starts the count at 1 instead of 0), respectively.

    1 ---> 0 (1)

    2 ---> 2 (3)

    3 ---> 3 (4)

    4 ---> 1 (2)

    Wan is plugged into the first physical port, and lan into the second.  Esxi identifies as follows:

     

  • ordered the same device, are you happy with its performance on sophos utm? not sure if ill virtualize or not, was planning on baremetal for now.

    ---

    Sophos UTM 9.3 Certified Engineer

  • It seems to be fine.  The processor is a bit slow relative to others on the market which I assume is a function of choosing to manage heat. 

    I suspect the new 8th generation Intels that are coming out in the coming month will be significantly lower power and cooler which should allow much better performance.

    Having said that my CPU graph putters around 1-2% so this may not really be a factor for home use.

  • Ben said:

    ordered the same device, are you happy with its performance on sophos utm? not sure if ill virtualize or not, was planning on baremetal for now.

     

    I can't complain.  UTM runs relatively well under esxi.  Enough to get full 350mbps on downloads with all the protections enabled in the home version.  I did set the vm at 4 cores - broken down as 2 processors with 2 cores each.  Some articles I read about vm and hyperthreading cpu's suggested to not set vm's at more than the physical number of cores.  Doing this resulted in about 2/3's bandwidth on single streams (like speed tests).  With the vm configured to use 4 cores, full bandwidth was attained.  Note, this box uses the i5 5250u cpu, which is dual core w/ hyperthreading.

  • You are correct.  The BIOS configuration allows me to blink the led on each NIc and the problem is with the hardware manufacturer.
    Thanks for the information.

  •  Hey Ben,
    I'm interested in your performance.

    What I'm seeing is a minor but significant slowdown in download speeds, though I'm not seeing much of an impact with CPU usage.
    I only have a 40Mb/s and I'm seeing something like 32Mb/s when I use the UTM.  This is not a concern to me but I'm curious what others see with much larger pipes.

  • finally got my box from china;

    getting the full 500/100 here, testing vpn next.

    Performance is great, this is the best device <12Watt with 4 Intel NICs in such packets.

    ---

    Sophos UTM 9.3 Certified Engineer