MikroTik

Our RB1000 cannot keep up anymore. 2500 subscribers is too many.

We have offloaded as many tasks as possible off the router and if we start taking more tasks away from it, it will no longer a router.

What can I use that is faster?

what kind of subscribers? and why is it slow?

We removed the RB1000 and installed one Tasos' Titan Wifi Mikronoc 2200 units. CPU is now at 35% max and everything we need is running again.

~2500 users on 5/1mbit plans with a 1gb gateway.

We could not do more than about 150-200mbit before the cpu simply could not keep up. Turning off conntrack made a surprisingly negligible difference and broke NAT for our network devices to update licenses etc.

Simple Queues still worked. Our system changes the queues via ssh every 30 seconds to adapt to network conditions and usually has 10-40 queues going at a time.

Otherwise it was doing ip accounting and not much else.

We were running DNS cache a few weeks ago and took that off back then, that made a noticeable difference but only bought us a few more weeks until we upgraded a backhaul and then the users were able to overload it again.

You need VX on your MikroTik routers downstream.

Condition the traffic for each user on the HotSpot.

Not using HotSpot ? Why not ?

Subscribers never see it (unless they have not paid) and ad-hoc users can connect and pay you too. (they get no internet unless they do)

I use it, and cannot see a downside.

3 months in Summer gets me about 8k euros in ad-hoc signups - extra money!
I still get the regular subscriber money anyway.

MikroTik + VX is what i always dreamed of - Free Money while i am in bed, and asleep.

Almost all of my phone calls are from people i like, or new (potential) subscibers.

VX?

VX?

Yeah, what is VX?

I have built hotspot systems for many companies in Canada and always have found the cost of billing(processing, clawbacks etc) is higher than the revenue. Client end problems that are blamed on the hotspot are also massive, when it is always the client's issue. And when ppl pay for it, their expectations are massive and often impossible to meet. So tons of people dispute charges on credit cards etc. Lots of headache for not much money.

I always recommend just making the wifi free (in a hotel or the like). The ones who follow my advice have had a much better experience and often save money by giving it away for free!

Also due to the way we control access to our shared medium on 2.4ghz access points, having tons of people associate at crummy RSSIs, variable rates, and high retrans would suck the efficiency right out of our APs.

Hot spot APs are used only for hotspot and WLL is used for WLL. Unfortunately there are not enough channels in 2.4 to do both in nearly all cases.

I have seen one place where charging for wifi worked. A very high end facility that hosts events. During an event they pay one of our support staff to sit in a booth on the grounds and fix people's computer issues. They charge $30 a day for access and full support. That system makes money. But the median income of their patrons is over $200,000/yr! Might also work in Dubai in 2005.

I recently got back from a series of trips to the USA and Asia. Them asians are smart. Free Wifi in all the airports. If it was a bit slow or did not work I did not sweat it. Silly LAX needed 20+ dollars for a few hours of access, it barely worked and I was frustrated by this and if it was worth my time I would have reversed the charge. For many people it is worth the effort. Besides if the Internet is not working I may have lots of time to spend on hold with VISA doing the reversal.

Maybe in Europe users are easier to deal with and do not have computers infected up the wazoo and understand that 100mbs is not the speed of the wifi and that is the ethernet port. Oh and torrenting desperate housewives season 2 is not something one really needs to do on a hotspot before dinner.

I also am finding I do not use Wifi much anymore as I have 3G which I know how to use and am already setup on. It is also faster than many wifi I have used out there. I mainly just use Wifi when I am in China, India or the USA as getting 3G there is problematic. In Hong Kong travellers get 3G so cheap I will use it even if the wifi is free. (although I do love the HK airport, I Can get 600KB/s on the wifi there pretty much everywhere). I also run the mikrtik scan at many airports and know for example that the Toronto airport runs MT at least for many of the APs. Dunno about the captive portion.

I also find the captive portion een on free systems breaks a large number of things. I sometimes travel with wifi capable devices that have no ability to browse the web. They do not work so well unless I play games with spoofed mac addresses.

I think paid Wifi in general will experience a decline in favour of ubiquitous 3G and free wifi. It has also reached a certain threshold of adoption. I saw a local WISP try to basically just provide paid wifi in a small town as the main way to get online. They did not last long. Coverage was a massive challenge with tiny antennas in most devices and constant issues with trying to go through walls and windows. They called me in to consult. We spent a few weeks trying all sorts of options and ended up telling them to install rooftop antennas on each clients house. The owner was afraid of heights and that kind of ended it. Last I heard he now works as a server admin.

There are companies that run the hotspot service for you. All you do is put up the AP and it tunnels back to them and they do the rest paying you a small % residual. VX may be one of these? I have read about about a few but not tried it out. Our sites still have lots of 2.4ghz WLL users so we have not looked that closely at wifi as our spectrum is pretty full and we make far better returns on (fixed Wireless Local Loop) WLL users.

Great post, Skaught. But I can guarantee you, that you could just optimize your setup, and save money on hardware upgrades.

The Mikronoc was $1000. The RB1000 is $600. The Mikronoc is at least 4-6 times faster. $400 is not even a big enough number to appear in my monthly cash flow reports.

I am now doing PCQ over several thousand users and the Mikronoc CPU load barely changed. I am still at an average of 25% cpu doing way more than the RB1000 did when the RB1000 was at 100% CPU.

I suspect it is because the RB1000 processor is not as optimized for conntrack and mangle and queues like an x86 is. But it is more than that. Even simple routing is way faster on the Mikronoc. It is not RB hardware but it is still MT software so MT makes money on it (perhaps more as the license is full price).

It fills a niche for large enterprises like ours who have outgrown the RB line of hardware and are not interested in massive Cisco routers. Our core router is now faster than our upstream's huge cisco and about 1/100th the price.

The only downside to it we have found out about so far is that the backplane is not the full 7 Gigbit, it is closer to 4. But that still beats the RB1000 and we do not need that much.

The RB1000 served us well until about 2300 users. Very impressive really. But the Mikronoc should last us to 10,000.

It also feels like the gear came from a russian tank. Built strong and very stable. It has not needed a reboot since the day we installed it.

I am still going to sell RB1000 to some of our enterprise commercial clients as edge firewalls and VPN appliances. I have a chain of grocery stores that is going to use them to connect all their locations as RB450s are not fast enough for their 20mbit VPNs.

I just look at the mikronoc as a RB2200. Not better per say, just the next model in the series. I have nothing but great things to say about the mikronoc 2200. I also have nothing bad to say about the RB1000. One is just faster and more money than the other much as a RB1000 is faster than a RB433.

None of the other ISPs we work with are big enough to need a Mikronoc 2200 so we have sold them RB1000s to use as core routers. The biggest one is 500 clients and the RB1000 handles it effortlessly. Our own network is the only one I have seen that is big enough to need the extra power. I am very glad we went this route over a quad core i7. Last time we ran MT on a PC in our core, drivers, fan failures, space, power and chipsets were a huge headache. The 2200 just works. If I did not know better I would think that MT designed it.

I still buy RB1000 and will likely be buying a dozen or two in the coming weeks, the VPN acceleration is a huge advantage.

We need a "bigger" solution than the RB1000 and are looking at the "PoweRouter 2200 Series" and have just come across "Mikronoc 2000". Are there any other alternatives?

Can anyone give details of how I can get more information about the Mikronoc 2000 as information and where to buy from are limited? Any advice about either platform would be appreciated.

see here:
http://www.mikrotik.com/mfm.php
http://www.mikrotik.com/mfm.php?category=1

these are companies who are making hardware specifically for the use with RouterOS, they have tested it, and can assure that it's 100% compatible.