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GL.iNet Releases Flint2 AX6000 Router: High-Speed WireGuard VPN Support with MediaTek MT7986 SoC and 2.5 GbE

GL.iNet has released the Flint2 (also known as GL-MT6000), a new AX6000 router based on the MediaTek MT7986 (Filogic 830) ARM SoC. This router supports VPN speeds of up to 900 Mbps using WireGuard and 190 Mbps with OpenVPN. Compared to previous GL.iNet routers like the Spitz AX and the Beryl AX, which were based on the Filogic 820 (MT7981B) CPU with transfer rates of up to 300 Mbps using WireGuard, the Flint2 is expected to triple the VPN performance.

The GL.iNet Flint2 router comes with the following specifications:

  • SoC – MediaTek MT7986 (Filogic 830) quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor @ 2.0 GHz with hardware acceleration engines for Wi-Fi offloading and networking
  • System Memory – 1GB DDR4
  • Storage – 8GB eMMC flash
  • Networking:
    • 2x 2.5 Gbps Ethernet ports
    • 4x Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports
    • 802.11b/g/n/ac/ax WiFi 6 with 4x external Wi-Fi antennas
      • Up to 1,148 Mbps @ 2.4 GHz
      • Up to 4,804 Mbps @ 5 GHz
      • DFS (Dynamic Frequency Selection) support
    • VPN – OpenVPN server/client tested up to 190 Mbps, and WireGuard server/client tested up to 900 Mbps (tests over Ethernet in client mode)
  • USB – 1x USB 3.0 Type-A port
  • Dimensions – 233 x 137 x 57mm

The GL.iNet Flint2 router comes pre-installed with OpenWrt 23.05 (or a fork) with Linux 5.15 and the GL.Inet Admin Panel, which is common to all GL.iNet routers. It supports four different network modes: router, access point, extender, and WDS. The router also includes features such as AdGuard Home, parental controls, and Cloud remote management.

The significant improvement in WireGuard performance, tripling the previous model’s speed, is noteworthy. While the upgrade from a 1.3 GHz dual-core Arm Cortex-A53 CPU to a 2.0 GHz quad-core Cortex-A53 CPU partially explains the increase, the main reason is likely the switch from Linux 5.4 to Linux 5.15. The Filogic 830-based router benefits from in-kernel WireGuard support introduced in Linux 5.6. As a point of comparison, the first Flint router achieves speeds of up to 500 Mbps with WireGuard.

The Filogic 830 SoC used in the Flint2 is also found in other devices, such as the Banana Pi BPI-R3 and BPI-R3 Mini router SBCs.

Source: CNX Software – Embedded Systems News.

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