Darren, We've got in excess of 40 various flavours of Mikrotik router throughout our ISP network. Lockups are very few and far between, compared to a few years ago. I've traced lots of previous lockups to faulty RAM which is an easy fix. I do agree with your points about the software being the limiting factor here, Mikrotik could do well with making their software truly mulithreaded and not just relying on a CPU to do a task and then allocate the next task to the next CPU in line.
Adrian. ________________________________________ From: uknof [[email protected]] on behalf of Darren Brown [[email protected]] Sent: 16 May 2016 21:04 To: Marek Isalski Cc: [email protected]; Administrator Subject: Re: [uknof] Mikrotik as Service Provider Router On 16 May 2016, at 20:32, Marek Isalski <[email protected]> wrote: >> On 16 May 2016, at 20:19, Adrian Bolster <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> Oure whole core is Mikrotik, no Juniper or Brocade in sight! We're running 3 >> IPv4 and 2 IPv6 eBGP sessions over 2 Mikrotik Routerboards, 2 1gibt/s point >> to point and 1 10gbit/s to a different provider, each with a full routing >> table and they don't even break a sweat. > > Similarly our AS's network edge is mostly MikroTik CCRs, but with a couple of > Linux/Bird boxes for vendor/etc diversity. The CCRs push nearly all the > packets, and for a lot less power usage. I worked with a few other ASs in a > similar situation (some multi-vendor, some all MT). > > While there's a certain crowd who will look upon the cheap Latvian entry into > the routing market with upturned noses, if you're prepared to deal with the > few caveats (and smaller ecosystem for support), their price/performance > can't really be beaten. For every bug I've encountered with the MikroTiks > over the last year, I've encountered just as many with any other vendor > deployment - be it at a client, a customer, or a supplier. And rather than > worry about "advanced replacement" for parts, the entire router is affordable > enough for you to have spares in stock. > > Marek Isalski > Technical Director, Faelix Limited, http://faelix.net/ > > We have recently migrated away from CCR’s in our core, although great for the price, they do have their downsides, they do crash, you do need to reboot once in a while as well. The biggest issue is convergence with OSPF and BGP, they take an age. It is not because of the hardware but the fact that BGP for example only uses one core out of a 36 or 72 core CPU. If they could fix their software to multithread i think they would be onto a winner as they do shift packets fairly well. All in all, they are great for customer routers and cost in well, in a core, they work but you have to be prepared for a wait if a link goes down and they need to re calculate their routes. Spontaneous reboots is also an unexpected feature. Regards Darren
