MikroTik

I was thinking to build a ~fast PC (over i7 or AMD with 12-16 threads), nvme, etc, and maybe 2 NICs with 4 ports to use as a dedicated router running something like Routeros or pfsense/opnsense,
Yesterday I read that router boards (not just Mikrotik) are ASICS and there is no way that a PC's CPU will do the packet switching as fast as a router board does.

- Is this still the case in 2021 or was that old info ?
- The "ARM" CPUs in many Mikrotik are still ASIC ? Or ar these more like a general purpose CPU similar to the PC ones ?
- Are the ARM CPUs many times faster for packet switching than a desktop CPU ?

I think that the tile architecture of mt is definitely faster than what is built into the ccr: https://mikrotik.com/product/CCR1009-7G ... ifications

Mikrotik routers are generic CPUs like a PC would be, ASICs you will find in higher end gear like Cisco. A PC router would be faster than most Mikrotik products.

IMO ASIC isn't needed until you get into the 20gb+ line rate.

Mikrotik routers are generic CPUs like a PC would be, ASICs you will find in higher end gear like Cisco.

imho, a PC CPU is way more powerful than (lower end) MT CPUs. Hardware tricks like fast-path make up for that and this resembles ASIC

In MT world there are two types of "top end" routers (with third type emerging with ROSv7), all come with their own limitations:

• routers with large number of CPU cores (e.g. CCR1036 and CCR1072). They shine when large number of concurrent connections have to be handled. They suck if one wants high speed, low connection count throughput (typical for SOHO environment) and aren't great with CPU-intensive tasks such as BGP convergence. Their drawback is relatively weak individual CPU core, which translates also to slightly higher delay when performing more complex tasks such as firewalling further decreasing throughput of individual connections. Cumulative throughput is high though.
• routers with lower number of fast CPU cores (e.g. CCR2004) which are better at SOHO/BGP tasks, but lag behing at large number of connections (cumulative CPU power is lower than of routers from previous paragraph). Their CPU cores are still slower than those in PC world (and the number of CPU cores in current MT portfolio is limited to 4 per device) but they can be better at performance/watts ratio.
• routers with ASICs (e.g. CRS309 et.al.) which will get wirespeed routing capability in ROS v7. The drawback is that number of connections handled in ASIC is relatively low (a few thousand rules), the rest are handled by slow CPU. And ASICs don't support any of complex tasks. Which makes this type of devices great for intra-LAN (e.g. inter-VLAN) routing in small to medium sized networks. Or for larger installations with trivial (regarding routing complexity settings) routing requirements. We can hope for a router having both ASIC as well as decent CPU ...

PC-based routing can mostly overcome most of setbacks of above mentioned types of MT routers, but not entirely. E.g. it's hard to achieve 10Gbps wire-speed routing both due to uncomplete NIC driver support and due to HW architecture not being made for high IO. They are better at high-intensity tasks than the large-number-of-CPU-cores type (first paragraph) because of high-speed cores and are mostly better than low-number-high-speed-CPU-cores type of routers in second paragraph (the advantage is not that high) as well but that depends also on number and speed of cores in the PC. Large number of connections can be a burden for PCs, but should still be able to perform complex tasks (e.g. firewalling, mangling, ...) pretty well compared to routers from first paragraph.

But then PCs made for same operating environment as routers (24/7, rack-mounting, redundant power supplies) don't come cheap and could well be that at price/performance routers pass better than PCs. If one is looking for a performance monster, then both PCs and MTs are not up to the task.

I think the question you should ask is why do you need somthing so fast?

I have several datacenters, with around 100 random servers each, pulling 100 M/bit steady...each on a $500 ccr. Super fast, no complaints. CPU on the mikrotiks never breaks 50%.

So unless your doing several Gb's / sec.....i cant see the need for more.

--John

You should not mix switching and routing. Routing is mostly done with CPUs so a PC with a fast CPU will be better than a small arm or tilera CPU on a routerboard. Switching on the other hand can be done with cheap switching chips and it is a waste to spend CPU ressources on it.

Thanks for all the info, I didn't have notifications enabled and I just read all the replies :)

I don't really *need* more speed than my current Mikrotik routers but it was not clear to me if Mikrotiks CPUs are considered ASICS and if fast desktop CPUs would generally perform worse. I guess I that part is mostly sorted.

I am thinking to create a dedicated PC for routing and firewalling, but that is because I need some kind of WAF similar to what Cloudflare offers.

I crated this separate topic, so that I keep this^ one just about desktop CPU vs Mikrotik CPU performance.

Thanks for all the info, I didn't have notifications enabled and I just read all the replies :)

I don't really *need* more speed than my current Mikrotik routers but it was not clear to me if Mikrotiks CPUs are considered ASICS and if fast desktop CPUs would generally perform worse. I guess I that part is mostly sorted.

I am thinking to create a dedicated PC for routing and firewalling, but that is because I need some kind of WAF similar to what Cloudflare offers.

I crated this separate topic, so that I keep this^ one just about desktop CPU vs Mikrotik CPU performance.

In fact, not a "desktop cpu" but you can get refurbished servers quite cheap nowdays.
My pick is a HP DL360Gen8 for 1U, with 2 addon NICs plus the onboard mezzanine.
The new prices of NICs what I use have the same price of CCR1009 (or even more expensive), and i believe, they had a reason for it.

You can run that server with single CPU or dual CPUs. Higher the CPU freq is the better.
You can balance your budget with low freq/lot lot of cores, high freq, less cores, or the most expensive high freq, high number of cores.
You can go up to something like 3.5GHz/core (3.9GHz maxturbo) with maybe 16cores 32 threads. Per socket!

What is a big advantage agains CCR, is those NICs has multiqueue support, what means, every frame needs an IRQ, and multiqueue allow to have mutliple IRQs for a single NIC port, even can be per direction - varies by NICs and their drivers.

For example, on my router running 2 dualSFP+ cards, one card have 24 IRQs per port, and another card have 16 IRQs per port.
This server costed like 5-600USD, including the NICs, and happily passes 10G traffic between ports without a drop of sweat.

Yes, the only "ASIC-Mikrotik" is the CRS3xx-series with it's (limited) MPLS-switching and IPv4-routing features.

PC/x86 generally starts to having issues with approaching 10G speeds, this it not CPU- or PCIe-related but to the fact of the software/kernel that has to handle all the IRQs and threads, and the general IP-stack of many operating systems is not designed to handle massive amount of packet flows (DPDK and VPP tries to solve that)

Netflix, as example, uses a custom and optimized FreeBSD kernel to reach 100G rates. A stock kernel would never allow for that.

This is why I'm going full x64 Zen3 in the near future with VyOS as my network OS choice. Slap some 10G NICs and it'll outperform RouterOS like eating a piece of cake.

In fact, not a "desktop cpu" but you can get refurbished servers quite cheap nowdays.
My pick is a HP DL360Gen8 for 1U, with 2 addon NICs plus the onboard mezzanine.

Dedicated servers are reliable and have some advantages.
I got a Dell 710 and is nice, 2 CPU, 16 threads, 6 caddy, dedicated card with flash, Intel NIC with 4 ports, for ~250 GBP
But this is kind of SOHO environment, I can't have the noise of the servers around :)) It is a 2U, I don't even want to imagine how a 1U sounds like :D

This is why I'm going full x64 Zen3 in the near future with VyOS as my network OS choice...

Does VyOS have any WAF features ? I am thinking to use PFSense, OpnSense or Sophos UTM.

I don't even want to imagine how a 1U sounds like :D

Like a small jet plane taking off (the large jets are louder, but their noise is more bearable for me).

When talking about servers in SOHO environments, one should not forget about power consumption. A decent server has idle power consumption well in tens of watts and can peak at over 150W (with single CPU package) or more. CCR1009 is rated at 35W peak power consumption. Depending on load average power consumption difference can be at least 50W which sums up to around 36kWh monthly. Take kWh price you're paying and see how this translates into currency figures. Doesn't sound a lot, but it adds up in device lifetime. So one has to have a reason to go that way.

Can you address me into the choice of right routers?

I want to use:

CCR2004 as BGP gateway connected under it a CCR1036 as PPPOE server and under CCR1036 another CCR1036 for routing, MPLS, VPLS.

It makes sense?