I've just begun the process of qualifying RouterOS on X86 hardware with VT support (Core2 Duo E8400) on two RTL 8169 interfaces with a 500 Gigabytes hard drive.

I want to understand the extent to which Mikrotik users feel that such hardware can favourably take on up to which size of Cisco router...

I am thinking that if KVM works well, then we should be able to convince Mikrotik to release an X86-based routerboard with VT support...

F.

With the RTL8169 I have seen pretty bad performance with RouterOS, at least a couple months ago. Might want to do some tests - if I recall it had problems with TCP but not really UDP. I believe it is a Linux driver issue.

I think MikroTik is pretty happy with the performance of the RB1000.