Re: RouterOS performance?

2008-08-19 Thread Paul Vixie
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Robert E. Seastrom) writes:

 Joel Jaeggli [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 I actually use freebsd as a router on soekris, but I do need a general
 purpose os on the system as well.

 Speaking of Soekris (and the PCEngines ALIX by extension, of which I
 have several):

 Does anyone know of a comparable small SBC that doesn't have crummy
 NICs?  Not a big fan of those VT6105M chips.  Extra points for the
 ability to do baby jumbo frames.

http://www.plathome.com/products/microserver/obs/
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Paul Vixie

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Re: RouterOS performance?

2008-08-19 Thread Robert E. Seastrom

Nathan Ward [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 On 19/08/2008, at 11:32 PM, Robert E. Seastrom wrote:
 Also, from time to time I have to reflash these to repurpose them
 (NanoBSD vs. pfSense vs. AskoziaPBX).  It's a complete pain to
 disassemble their enclosures so I can get at the CF cards.  I've often
 thought that if someone had whipped up a memory-resident image of
 something (anything, linux/bsd/whatever) that I could pxeboot, then I
 could just dd the new image in over the net.  Haven't gotten around to
 doing that yet.  Has anyone else?

 My thing is memory resident, the kernel and root fs are all in one
 file. That's not exactly hard to do.
 Not quite what you're looking for though, as config (including passwd
 etc.) isn't.
 Wouldn't be difficult to change though.

 Having said that, I strongly recommend getting your stuff to the point
 where it's a FAT formatted CF card, with a couple of files - 1 kernel,
 1 filesystem image. Filesystem images are good.
 That way, you can mount your CF card somewhere, and 'reflash' from a
 live system. Just like, for example, a Cisco router. Upgrades are
 easy, just copy a new root FS+kernel on there.

I already have filesystem images (both from other people and of my own
manufacture).  I'm not sure I'm down with the fat32 cf card concept
though I can see where it could be useful.

What I want to do is have a minimal functionality netbootable image
that is sufficient to set up network interfaces and then do:

  ftp get pfsense.img | dd of=/dev/ad0

and completely blow away what's on the flash and replace it with
something new (even via serial console over a networked console server
from my desk, without getting up and going to my lab where I have a
small herd of these puppies as packet pushers), but particularly
without having to break out a screwdriver and a nut driver and pull
four sheet metal screws, four machine screws, and two rs232 retaining
screw standoffs.

There is pxe in the bios on the ALIX... perhaps you know of something
that's already pxebootable that will do this?

---rob




Re: RouterOS performance?

2008-08-19 Thread Stefan Bethke

Am 19.08.2008 um 16:28 schrieb Robert E. Seastrom:


What I want to do is have a minimal functionality netbootable image
that is sufficient to set up network interfaces and then do:

 ftp get pfsense.img | dd of=/dev/ad0

and completely blow away what's on the flash and replace it with
something new[...]

There is pxe in the bios on the ALIX... perhaps you know of something
that's already pxebootable that will do this?


FreeBSD (or alike) will happily boot from PXE, either with NFS root or  
with an in-kernel RAM disk image.  Booting a kernel directly (instead  
of via loader(8)) is not officially supported anymore, but the last  
time I tried (around 6.2) it was still working.



Stefan

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Re: RouterOS performance?

2008-08-17 Thread Joel Jaeggli

William Pitcock wrote:

Hi,

We're looking at using Mikrotik's RouterOS for some some sort of
software routing solution as part of our network in combination with
supervised layer3 switching doing most likely some sort of limited BGP.

Does anyone else here run it? Is it any good? Is it better than e.g.
vyatta?


vyatta has some issues, but it's ok for a router optimizied linux distro...


If RouterOS and Vyatta both suck, is there any decent software routing
solution? Our network is small (4 /24s) and we only need to push roughly
1-2gbit at the moment.

Experiences with both would be appreciated. Thanks!


haven't used routeros in a while but at the time it was inoffensive, 
it's not derived from a general purpose system so it's not something you 
bolt additional bits on if you need them.


I actually use freebsd as a router on soekris, but I do need a general 
purpose os on the system as well.


William 








Re: RouterOS performance?

2008-08-17 Thread Scott Francis
On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 9:45 PM, Nathan Ward [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 On 18/08/2008, at 12:16 PM, Joel Jaeggli wrote:

 haven't used routeros in a while but at the time it was inoffensive, it's
 not derived from a general purpose system so it's not something you bolt
 additional bits on if you need them.

 RouterOS is Linux based.
 You're correct though, you can't bolt extra stuff on to it, though I'm
 pretty sure they do their own 'packages', so maybe 3rd parties can bolt
 stuff on that way? I dunno.

 I actually use freebsd as a router on soekris, but I do need a general
 purpose os on the system as well.


 I do this as well, works fantastically.

 I've got some build scripts that build NET4x01 images. Kernel and root
 filesystem in a single file, boot off a FAT32 formatted compact flash card
 with GRUB installed on it. Config in a single file (a filesystem image that
 gets mounted at boot time). IPv6 support.
[snip]

sounds a lot like Chris Cappuccio's flashdist[0], although that's
OpenBSD-specific.

(worth noting that I'm partial to OpenBSD here, for both the security
track record and tools like pf(4), carp(4), OpenBGPD, etc.)

[0]http://www.nmedia.net/flashdist/
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Re: RouterOS performance?

2008-08-17 Thread Nathan Ward

On 18/08/2008, at 5:20 PM, Scott Francis wrote:


sounds a lot like Chris Cappuccio's flashdist[0], although that's
OpenBSD-specific.

(worth noting that I'm partial to OpenBSD here, for both the security
track record and tools like pf(4), carp(4), OpenBGPD, etc.)



Yep, but no 6to4, which I needed.

Also OpenBGPd/OpenOSPFd are a bit weird because OpenBGPd can't use the  
IGP metric in the path selection algorithm, as the kernel doesn't  
support metrics on routes. Quagga can do this obviously, as it is a  
single thing (well, all the kernel interface goes through zebrad).


I also had some weird problem with how it would resolve recursive next  
hops, but I was using 6to4 addresses as next-hops, so I think that was  
part of the problem. Again, worked perfectly on Quagga. Oh yeah, it  
was trying to be too smart and resolve the recursive next-hop before  
installing the route in to the kernel, instead of installing the route  
and letting the kernel resolve it as it was forwarding packets.
That broke because of how 6to4 and the routing table works in FreeBSD.  
Anyway, long story short, quagga did the job.


Fine if you're doing vanilla BGP on a border router or something  
though, but doesn't work for me in a complex network.
One cool thing about OpenBGPd is bgpctl irrfilter, which pulls in RPSL  
and does the business with it, and stuffs it in to your live BGP daemon.


--
Nathan Ward