Whats the best current home routerboard for a gigabit ISP?

computerjlt · Tue Sep 04, 2018 1:05 am

I just moved back to an area where comcast/xfinity offer gigabit. I have it setup and tested directly connected to the modem and get almost a full gigabit. However my old RB951G can't handle it. I can't even get the same 300mbs throughput i was getting from my last ISP. CPU load is through the roof and I don't have much going on in the router. So now its time to upgrade.

Whats the best current model home type routerboard that will handle the speed? I'll only have 1-2 clients on wired and a few on wifi (wifi speed doesn't matter at all). I was looking at the RB962UiGS but it looks like most people can't get a gigabit through that thing either.

Tue Sep 04, 2018 1:34 am

i think
hap ac2

reidavidinho · Tue Sep 04, 2018 11:08 am

Depends on your budget

Steveocee · Tue Sep 04, 2018 11:32 am

Budget would be useful.

hAP AC or hAP AC2 would be towards the top of the pile.

If you can wait a short while one of these viewtopic.php?f=3&t=138613

cgrey001 · Wed Sep 05, 2018 5:27 am

I have Comcast / Xfinity Gigabit tier and I recently switch over from Ubiquiti EdgeRouters to the RB450Gx4. It easily saturates the connection. Based on the test it can handle a few rules as well. It’s essentially a hAP ac2 but with more storage and more RAM instead of wireless. You can find fully built up kits or get individual parts. I don’t have much experience with MT so I don’t have a complex setup and can’t speak to performance when you start adding rules and QoS.

computerjlt · Fri Sep 07, 2018 10:35 pm

budget isn't a great concern. ~$200 for the hap ac2 is acceptable?

is there a benefit of going with the ac2 over ac1?

i like that form factor.

i've also considered rocking a faster router and use my existing router/ap as an AP as the 1000mw 2.4ghz radio has come in handy a few times

mistry7 · Fri Sep 07, 2018 11:23 pm

Wait for this one...

https://mikrotik.com/product/rb4011igs_5hacq2hnd_in

lapsio · Sat Sep 08, 2018 2:15 am

In all seriousness I'd get hAP ac² over RB4011. Imho more versatile at waaay lower price. 4011 is not representative mikrotik as it's really targeted, single purpose device. You won't even connect 3g/lte modem to it. Nor use much of hardware switch. hAP ac² is really nice device with great switch chip, usb, dual concurrent and decent performance if you want gigabit.

If you really want to try 10G or need more ports then yeah I guess RB4011 or CCR1009-PC make sense. But keep in mind that they (realistically) don't have switch chip

mkx · Sat Sep 08, 2018 1:15 pm

hAP ac² is really nice device with great switch chip

There's as slight bug in switch chip in IPQ4xxx which bit me and MT doesn't have a solution (yet). It also runs hot and my personal experience is that it might freeze due to that (vertical position seems to help).

whatever · Sat Sep 08, 2018 2:12 pm

There's as slight bug in switch chip in IPQ4xxx which bit me and MT doesn't have a solution (yet).

What is the bug? Could you share some information?

lapsio · Sat Sep 08, 2018 2:25 pm

There's as slight bug in switch chip in IPQ4xxx which bit me and MT doesn't have a solution (yet). It also runs hot and my personal experience is that it might freeze due to that (vertical position seems to help).

I'm interested as well. I'm using switch chip in ac² quite actively (vlans for loopback for in-line packet processing by IPS and jumbo 9k support. A bit similar to this viewtopic.php?t=137463 just instead of second router IPS appliance. Lack of switch chip is deal breaker in L2 loopback scenario).

I never experienced thermal issues tbh. But you could always try downclocking a bit. hAP ac allows that (unlike CRS3xx switches for example duh)

mkx · Sat Sep 08, 2018 3:03 pm

There's as slight bug in switch chip in IPQ4xxx which bit me and MT doesn't have a solution (yet).
What is the bug? Could you share some information?

A slightly complicated scenario: xDSL connection with modem in bridge mode. VLANs all over, so modem connected to hybrid port (untagged, which is used for PPPoE, gets tagged to e.g VLAN ID = 2 on ingress, tagged VLAN, which is used to carry IPTV multicasts, remains tagged), ether port member of common bridge, vlan interface with vlan id=2 created on top of bridge, pppoe client on top of vlan device.

Result: ppoe client never connects.

Answer from MT:

... we are working on a fix though, but we are not sure when will a fix be available. This is only specific to devices using the IPQ4000 CPU.

The problem is that PPPoE discovery stage packets don't get tagged as soon as they are sent to the VLAN interface, it is only this very specific packet (EtherType=0x8863).

Sadly there is no workaround for this issue for now other than using bridge VLAN filtering instead.

Proposed workaround solves the issue however it means no HW offload.

I'm not really sure if the wording of MT is correct. It seems to imply that the problem lies in tagging of packets on vlan interface (the SW one). My workaround is to use another VLAN switch to host the hybrid port for connection towards xDSL modem and get VLAN with ID 2 to hAP ac2 device via trunk. As my workaround works it indicates that the problem problem lies in untagging of particular packets on egress from IPQ4xxx switch (which is the step my workaround ... works around).

mkx · Sat Sep 08, 2018 3:17 pm

I never experienced thermal issues tbh. But you could always try downclocking a bit. hAP ac allows that (unlike CRS3xx switches for example duh)

I'm not sure about this issue yet. It happened twice in less than 24 hours, everytime during heaviest use (not bps-wise, but number of connections-wise). It stopped passing traffic, I could not connect to it neither via ssh, webfig nor winbox. The only cure was to remove power. Nothing in logs afterwards (no surprise here). While it happened, it was in horizontal position and it did feel quite hot (probably 50+ deg C) on the bottom side. After it happened the second time, I turned it to vertical position and didn't freeze ever after (it's been 4 days since). It feels cooler on all sides as well.

lapsio · Sat Sep 08, 2018 3:21 pm

It stopped passing traffic, I could not connect to it neither via ssh, webfig nor winbox. The only cure was to remove power. Nothing in logs afterwards (no surprise here).

I'd recommend using watchdog. It should handle such incident in matter of seconds.

https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:System/Watchdog

I know it won't be suitable for everyone but in devices without serial I always leave eth5 as management port and set up watchdog to ip of that management port. This way it seems to have less false positives caused by simple overload.

But you can use any ip for watchdog.

MobiusBand · Wed Mar 13, 2019 1:56 pm

I found it too late

...

A slightly complicated scenario: xDSL connection with modem in bridge mode. VLANs all over, so modem connected to hybrid port (untagged, which is used for PPPoE, gets tagged to e.g VLAN ID = 2 on ingress, tagged VLAN, which is used to carry IPTV multicasts, remains tagged), ether port member of common bridge, vlan interface with vlan id=2 created on top of bridge, pppoe client on top of vlan device.

Result: ppoe client never connects.

Answer from MT:
... we are working on a fix though, but we are not sure when will a fix be available. This is only specific to devices using the IPQ4000 CPU.

The problem is that PPPoE discovery stage packets don't get tagged as soon as they are sent to the VLAN interface, it is only this very specific packet (EtherType=0x8863).

Sadly there is no workaround for this issue for now other than using bridge VLAN filtering instead.
Proposed workaround solves the issue however it means no HW offload.

I'm not really sure if the wording of MT is correct. It seems to imply that the problem lies in tagging of packets on vlan interface (the SW one). My workaround is to use another VLAN switch to host the hybrid port for connection towards xDSL modem and get VLAN with ID 2 to hAP ac2 device via trunk. As my workaround works it indicates that the problem problem lies in untagging of particular packets on egress from IPQ4xxx switch (which is the step my workaround ... works around).

My test config:

# RouterOS 6.44
# model = RBD52G-5HacD2HnD
/interface bridge
add admin-mac=00:00:5E:FF:FF:01 auto-mac=no fast-forward=no name=bridge1 protocol-mode=none
/interface ethernet
set [ find default-name=ether1 ] name=ether1-isp
set [ find default-name=ether5 ] name=ether5-mng
/interface vlan
add interface=bridge1 name=vlan10-wan vlan-id=10
add interface=bridge1 name=vlan30-mng vlan-id=30
/interface ethernet switch port
set 0 default-vlan-id=10 vlan-header=always-strip vlan-mode=secure
set 4 default-vlan-id=30 vlan-header=always-strip vlan-mode=secure
set 5 vlan-mode=secure
/interface bridge port
add bridge=bridge1 interface=ether1-isp
add bridge=bridge1 interface=ether2
add bridge=bridge1 interface=ether3
add bridge=bridge1 interface=ether4
add bridge=bridge1 interface=ether5-mng
/interface ethernet switch vlan
add independent-learning=yes ports=ether1-isp,switch1-cpu switch=switch1 vlan-id=10
add independent-learning=yes ports=ether5-mng,switch1-cpu switch=switch1 vlan-id=30
/ip dhcp-client
add dhcp-options=hostname,clientid disabled=no interface=vlan10-wan
/interface pppoe-client
add add-default-route=yes disabled=no interface=vlan10-wan name=pppoe-out1 user=ppp1

DHCP Client over switch VLAN - OK
PPPoE Client over switch VLAN - BAD (never connects)

Now I have hAP ac2 3pcs, and my home network plan is now unclear...

I want something like this (VLAN on switch chip with "wired" speed):

ISP:WAN,IPTV----[hAP ac2 #1]----Trunk:IPTV,LAN----[hAP ac2 #2]----Trunk:IPTV,LAN----[hAP ac2 #3]
                :    |    |                       :    |    |                        :    | | |
     WLAN Clients   NAS   PC           WLAN Clients   STB   MediaPlayer   WLAN Clients    MediaPlayer4k/Streaming Devices

Use an extra device (hEX S as router / firewall / "soft" VLAN )?

ISP:WAN,IPTV----[hEX S]----Trunk:IPTV,LAN----[hAP ac2 #1]----Trunk:IPTV,LAN...

mkx · Wed Mar 13, 2019 5:45 pm

Apart from the PPPoE/VLAN bug I've had another issue with my RBD52G: stability. Being desparate I switched over from HW-based VLAN setup to the new bridge vlan-filtering setup. Which bypasses the PPPoE/VLAN bug ... probably also fixed the stability issue (one fellow forum member reported ether ports locking while abusing switch chip with different setup).

My tests showed that RBD52G is perfectly capable of wire-speed "switching" and the switch-chip--CPU interconnect at 2Gbps is enough that device wouldn't choke under higher loads ...

cvoiculescu · Wed Feb 15, 2023 10:27 am

Actually I use RB962UiGS-5HacT2HnTm (hap AC) which is quite a powerful 5 ports Gb + Wifi2.4 + Wifi5
https://mikrotik.com/product/RB962UiGS-5HacT2HnT

This, from my understanding is much better than hap AC2

Moba · Wed Feb 22, 2023 2:10 pm

Why revive a thread after 4 years as a first post ? And your understanding is mostly misleading and wrong. The current options in 2023 are the hAP ax2, hAP ax3 or RB5009 with an AP.

mada3k · Fri Feb 24, 2023 6:41 pm

RB5009 + AP

Phillip · Sat Feb 25, 2023 3:52 am

I have Comcast Gigabit Pro and my setup is this....
Arris S33 Modem connected @ 2.5Gb through a S+RJ10 SFP+, plugged into a RB4011. I also have two CAP AC AP's powered by two RBGPOE power injectors. The setup runs without issues, and I even have IPV6 working as well with Comcast.

I have two wired Ethernet lines run from the RB4011 too two RB260GS switches connected through S-RJ01 SFP's.

My home network is 100% MikroTik.

Sat Feb 25, 2023 8:52 am

RB5009 + AP

i agree

Whats the best current home routerboard for a gigabit ISP?

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