Hardware Acceleration¶
Note: Hardware Acceleration features have been renamed to Network Acceleration since v4.3.
Hardware acceleration (sometimes called hardware NAT, flow offloading, or offload) reduces CPU load by moving packet forwarding out of the CPU and into the router SoC/NIC hardware. That usually increases maximum throughput and reduces CPU utilization, but it comes iwth important trade-offs, especially for features that rely on the Linux networking stack (netfilter / iptables / nftables) or on the kernel queuing disciplines (qdisc) used by SQM (Smart Queue Management)
When hardware acceleration is enabled, the following functions will not work properly: Client Speed and Traffic Statistics, Client Speed Limit.
Supported models¶
| Router Model | Support |
|---|---|
| GL-BE3600 (Slate 7) | √ |
| GL-X2000 (Spitz Plus) | √ |
| GL-B3000 (Marble) | √ |
| GL-MT6000 (Flint2) | √ |
| GL-X3000 (Spitz AX) | √ |
| GL-XE3000 (Puli AX) | √ |
| GL-MT3000 (Beryl AX) | √ |
| GL-AXT1800 (Slate AX) | √ |
| GL-MT2500/GL-MT2500A (Brume 2) | √ |
| GL-AX1800 (Flint) | √ |
| GL-SFT1200 (Opal) | √ |
| GL-MT1300 (Beryl) | √ |
| GL-A1300 (Slate Plus) | - |
| GL-E750/E750V2 (Mudi) | - |
| GL-AR750S (Slate) | - |
| GL-XE300 (Puli) | - |
| GL-X750 (Spitz) | - |
| GL-MT300N-V2 (Mango) | - |
| GL-AR300M Series (Shadow) | - |
| GL-B1300 (Convexa-B) | - |
| GL-X300B (Collie) | - |
Setup¶
On the left side of web Admin Panel -> NETWORK -> Hardware Acceleration.
Quick summary — Hardware NAT vs Software NAT¶
-
You care most about throughput (e.g., multi-gigabit broadband) and don’t need on-router SQM or per-client shaping → enable Hardware NAT / Network Acceleration. This will give the highest throughput and lowest CPU use.
-
You care about low latency, consistent QoS, per-client limits, or you rely on SQM (cake/fq_codel) → use Software NAT (disable hardware offload). SQM and QoS require packets to traverse the kernel qdisc stack — offloaded packets bypass that path and therefore are not shaped.
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