Software router state of the art

Tue Jul 29 15:28:41 UTC 2008

Andrew D Kirch wrote:
>> Anyone have experience with RouterOS (http://www.mikrotik.com/)? 
>> Created mostly to run on these guys I think 
>> (http://www.routerboard.com/comparison.html) which generally don't 
>> get above 200k pps on the higher models.. But will RouterOS run on 
>> bigger boxen?
> Yes I do, and I'm still in therapy.  I was pushing 30mbit, and I can't 
> remember how many PPS through one, and it crashed about once a month 
> requiring onsite intervention (usually at midnight).  This was running 
> on a Compaq Deskpro I think.  It doesn't have much support for good 
> network cards.  I suspect the Realtek's were behind the crashes. 
The Realteks were almost certainly to blame. Just like any other 
"server," good hardware is well worth it. RouterOS 2.9 and 3.x support 
Intel's gigabit server NICs, which work quite well.

www.mikrotikrouter.com sells a few nice purpose-built rackmount 
appliances for this sort of thing. (Just a happy customer, don't work 
there or anything.)

If you have the budget, and need the single-purpose horsepower, you'll 
usually be happier with Cisco or Juniper or someone that makes dedicated 
routing kit. If money's tight, or you need one box to do several 
network-related jobs for whatever reason, Mikrotik's software is another 
useful tool to have.

David Smith
MVN.net
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature
Size: 4958 bytes
Desc: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
URL: <http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/attachments/20080729/057adacf/attachment.bin>