Hi all, I've been hearing great things about Mikrotik routers for some time now and Its time i stepped up to the next level and routed my network.

I currently have a wireless network (mostly ubiquiti) with about 15 repeater towers. everything is bridged (layer 2) at the moment.
I think what i need now is OSPF, and Mikrotik looks like the way to go.

first question, what routers should I get for use at my repeater towers? Will the routerboard 450 work? low power consumption is key as many of my sites are solar.
I know very little about OSPF and other advanced routing, so any help is greatly appreciated.
I'm just looking to be pointed in the right direction so i can get this up and running asap and with very little downtime.



Thanks

what you can do is gradually exchange routers or add new ones in your current network and then start by creating backbone network while the rest of the network is still bridged and then gradually change over to routed OSPF network. Thus you would not have any downtime.

Also, check what bandwidth you are talking about and give us numbers how much traffic you have to pass. That would help a lot.

you can check wiki:
http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:Routing

there a lot of articles about different routing protocols (examples, case studies and reference manual with some simple examples)

Thanks Janisk,

I have read through that Wiki but I'm a bit novice when it comes to routing so much of it is over my head at this point.

Currently I have around 35 mbps total throughput during peak hours, although as we are growing this number has been steadily rising. I'd like to build with room to grow as much much as reasonably possible.
most towers have peak throughput no more than 10mbps peak to users connected directly to them, and i don't have any backhauls capable of more than about 25mbps each (tcp) throughput at this time.

We also have a fair amount of VoIOP users so ping and jitter are important factors as well

What are the bandwidth limits of the little RB 750's? Do they do OSPF well? perhaps I can use them on the edge of the network, and have more powerful units more towards the core?

As someone having deeply commercial interests here... it's difficult to comment without suggesting all I want is your money, but I'll do it anyway!

As you are so far down the steep learning curve of routing and networks, I suggest you go on some Mikrotik training courses or pay for an MT consultant to help you through this or pay for one-to-one tuition as he takes you through the network design process, helping you with the hardware purchase decisions, teaching you how to implement your desired network correctly. Someone with skills in Mikrotik and Ubiquiti might also be wise.

The topic of routing on a WISP based network is not Mikrotik specific, but diving straight into OSPF routing without an understanding of what you are doing is asking for a wasted and stressful time as you battle with a system you can't control as you don't really understand what you are doing. You will then start to wish you had never started, or worse still, blame Mikrotik for a non-functioning network, with your customers getting upset with you more and more until you (or they) eventually give up, unless you are lucky that you can learn as your customers suffer from your mistakes?

Adding OSPF to a working L2 bridged network and converting it to a fully routed solution is trivial for someone used to doing it. But have you got the time and will you get everything you need to know by asking ever more and more questions on a forum, when you really need that time to run your network and actually buy in help on a one to one basis to teach you what to do for yourself so that when it's all up and running, you know how to continue to maintain your 'new' network as you will have been shown how to, using your own network?

Might also be wise to buy a few routerboards (450g?) and connecting them up as a test network, so any trials you perform, while you learn routing, are done on a network that is sat on the bench and it does not matter when it all falls over.

good points nest

if that is not an option - start with something minimal, like, set up static routing. See how that works out. path from static to OSPF is completely painless. OSPF will add dynamic routes and then just remove static ones. Just have to understand underlying process.

Also, good step towards routed network - new customers are added with routed configuration, that is when you have sufficient knowledge how routing works.

There are different tutorials about IP networking and routing around the web but how nest that will take longer.

Go to www.mikrotikuniversity.com and watch the videos on routing and OSPF. That video taught me how to switch my network from bridged to routed.

Thanks for all the good advice guys.

And those videos are exactly what i was looking for!