Th3 Core

I keep bringing this up in threads that are really about Starlink or RPi supply chain issues. Here's why I'm actually interested in RPi all of the sudden.

The goal is to bond two crappy ISP connections into one more stable connection

First, get two internet connections in and one out from the RPi
WAN
1 wifi connection to ISP 1, or possibly an ethernet connection via wireless bridge from router 1 (Starlink) to router 2 (cabled into RPi)
1 ethernet connection to ISP 2

LAN
1 wifi hotspot to broadcast the signal (either a USB wifi adapter for RPi or a USB ethernet adapter to a hotspot router/switch)

The setup will depend a bit on how I can get the best range. I'm not sure if  the on-board wifi for the RPi or a USB wifi adapter will have the power and range of a large, power-hungry router.

Then add Speedify channel bonding
Speedify with DNS ad blocking which
 - bonds the two connections with near-instant failover (based on reviews). This is key - IP does not change when you switch connections.
 - provides a VPN
 - provides rules-based VPN bypass for streaming services (apparently Netflix, Hulu, et cetera block VPNs). This saves you from having to disconnect from your VPN just to stream something.
 - provides DNS-level ad-blocking (think Pi-Hole)

I am not sure whether I should just install the command-line Raspberry Pi OS Lite, or the desktop version, or possibly Ubuntu. Speedify has some fancy GUI stuff you can use for config that might simplify my life.

Once set up and running, I don't imagine doing anything with the RPi as it will be in a location that would be a fairly unpleasant place to work. I'm also not expecting to have a keyboard and monitor attached to it except for setup.

This person is doing almost the same (bonding his home connection to the restaurant next door who is, no doubt, thrilled).
https://speedify.com/blog/better-internet-anywhere/best-pi-hole-alternative-bonded-internet-ad-blocking-dns/

He is using onboard ethernet for the main ISP connection, on-board wifi for the client connections and USB wifi to poach the restaurant's connection

Other docs/marketing stuff

Hardware
USB ethernet
https://www.amazon.com/UGREEN-Ethernet-Internet-Compatible-Raspberry/dp/B091TL1VQ4

USB wifi. Something like this I suppose
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FCN6WGX


High-level overview of RPi + Speedify
https://speedify.com/blog/how-to/raspberry-pi-vpn-router/

RPi + Speedify Install overview
https://speedify.com/blog/how-to/install-speedify-raspberry-pi/
https://support.speedify.com/article/562-install-speedify-linux

Managing connections (i.e. setting the priority for multiple connections)
https://support.speedify.com/article/236-connection-settings

Speedify for Linux overview
https://speedify.com/linux-vpn/

Ah. Thanks! That's perfect.

I should have plenty of room on the SD card for anything I want so no problem there, but as you say, no reason to use up all that RAM if I won't typically have a monitor attached.

I'm kind of excited. It's been a while since I've done a new tech thing. I always find it stimulating as long as there is no hard deadline, and in this case there is not.

Unless there's a deadline that you are failing to meet, in which case they make you feel like an incompetent fool with a high resting heart rate :-)

My wife used to work with a guy (great guy, very funny and still a friend) who would figure something out and say, "I'm a genius!" and then realize that there was a wrinkle he hadn't understood and would say, "I'm an idiot!" Some days she would hear him say both of those several times if he was making progress on a hard problem. I think that pretty much sums it up.

You can now get Starink for RV. Get Starlink plus a couple of 4G/5g routers for when you're on the move (Starlink for RVs does not work if you're in motion), RPi with 4-5 network cards and Speedify and you could roll like a star.

Got the Raspberry Pi on Friday, but realized I need the HDMI to micro HDMI adapter to connect a monitor and really get started. That comes on Tuesday.

Halfway there.

I am posting this from my RPi connected to Speedify. Since I do not have the additional wireless card, I'm just using the RPi as a computer, not a router/hotspot yet. I think that will be the challenging part.

Typical linux project - some mucking around on the command line, lots of apt install and apt upgrade and working through error messages (turns out that something in the pipe does not like the fact that my random password generator uses "&" in passwords) and such things.

Also, not nearly as hot running outside the case. I think I will put it in some much much larger case to give it room to breathe. I suspect that running a monitor is probably adding to the heat a lot, and that won't be typical.

We'll see how it works. I may also switch out the onboard wifi card for a USB ethernet card. That would potentially reduce interference with the USB wifi card which I'll use for the hotspot since it has better range.

I was thinking that ethernet would draw less power and generate less heat than wifi, but apparently with modern cards that is not generally true. And one guy says that doing this because of heat is like emptying your ashtray and expecting your car to faster :-)
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/ethernet-card-vs-wifi-power-consumption.2384201/

Yes, just the plastic case. I looked up "best cases" for RPi and the Argon got kudos for cooling. Might have to spring for one of those. I'm mostly worried about dust and spiders as its final location will be a rather dirty storage area, but space isn't an issue. So it could just go bare in a large cardboard non-flammable metal box, at least during the testing phase.

At the very least, I could probably way underclock the gpu_freq. When it's running Speedify, I probably won't have a monitor attached at all and Speedify shouldn't be running any big calcs on the GPU.

We'll see. Turns out the USB wifi adapter doesn't come until tomorrow (don't know why I thought it was coming yesterday). So still on hold maybe until next week as the next several days are fairly busy.

>Satan and God are having an argument (see Book of Job)

Supernatural causes are the easiest to deal with most of the time.