Feature request: CYD support

[Nitrowing]

This code works fine on my new CYD ESP32-2432S028 - thank you.
What I'd like is for the display to be active: Clock, WiFi Rx/Tx strength, local weather, whatever - as it seems a bit wasted in the current configuration.
I saw a huge speed drop too: 10Mbps download rather than 380Mbps - that's a huge difference! Maybe a limitation of the board though?

[Punith-G-17]

it's a hardware limitation, not a bug. The ESP32's Wi-Fi stack runs in software and the NAT routing is done entirely on the MCU, so throughput is capped roughly in the 10–15Mbps range under ideal conditions. The ESP32 simply can't keep up with gigabit-class routing.

[martin-ger]

Absolutely, the ESP32 as NAT router is not really intended to replace dedicated HW for PC and server networks, instead it is a solution for IoT setups, where bandwidth is not a real concern.

[Nitrowing]

I've used your code as it allows setting the DNS to 1.1.1.3 for my kid to have a little protection: the supplied router doesn't allow user configuration 😡 Speed isn't as important as filtering in this case.
Just seems a shame to have a blank display. Of course, if I knew what I was doing, I could add the weather station code I have. I don't, so I can't 🤦

[martin-ger]

As I don't have a CYD (yet) I cannot do any reasonable implementation efforts in that direction. However, two important considerations:

• RAM: the NAT router likes to have heap space for buffering - the more, the better for performance. So spending more than a few kB of RAM on the display isn't really helpful for its main purpose

• What to display? From the app domain it would make sense to display status and statistics of the router (essentially the same things that can already be seen on the web page or the CLI for the nerds). When mounted somewhere in the house probably other things would be nicer (weather, digital picture frame etc.), but are actually completely unrelated to the real purpose and perhaps different for any user.

So my first guess would be to use one 2-5$ plain ESP32 for routing without display in the background and use the CYD for something nicer and more appropriate?

[Nitrowing]

I verified my code and it came out with:
Sketch uses 1101032 bytes (84%) of program storage space. Maximum is 1310720 bytes. Global variables use 49360 bytes (15%) of dynamic memory, leaving 278320 bytes for local variables. Maximum is 327680 bytes.
Is that too much?

Would I be better served with the https://pt.aliexpress.com/item/1005010285358920.html ?

[martin-ger]

That's fine. No issues with that. The buffers in RAM are used during bulk transfer. Here more is better, but still normal browsing and even YT for one client should be no issue. The ESP32-C3 super mini you are referencing to has pros and cons: the antenna is a clear pro: better range and probably better data rates over the air. The con is the fact, that the C3 has initially even less RAM than any other flavor of ESP32s and a single-core CPU. So from the computational power it is clearly the weakest option. It still works fine in most settings, but I limited the NAT Router on the C3 to max. 5 WiFi clients as each active client needs about 5 KB of additional RAM (8 clients on other flavors of the ESP32). Am 12. März 2026 14:43:09 schrieb Nitrowing ***@***.***>:

…

Nitrowing left a comment (martin-ger/esp32_nat_router#218) I verified my code and it came out with: Sketch uses 1101032 bytes (84%) of program storage space. Maximum is 1310720 bytes. Global variables use 49360 bytes (15%) of dynamic memory, leaving 278320 bytes for local variables. Maximum is 327680 bytes. Is that too much?Would I be better served with the https://pt.aliexpress.com/item/1005010285358920.html ? — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe. You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>