Hi folks,

as Metarouter doesn't seem to be usable on RB450G in the forseable future and I therefore don't put any trust in Metarouter on MIPSBE in general, I would like to ask the community about exeriences on the above mentioned PPC based Routerboards.
The top candidate would be the RB800 as this boards fits my 19" enlosure, in which one of my RB450G at the moment is working together with an ALIX based server.
So if anyone could share his experience with Metarouter on PPC I would be very happy.
I don't want to spend more money unless I'm sure i can use the feauture on these systems.

there are no reports i can remember about ppc based metarouter

You mean error reports right? Or reports that anyone is using it?

obviously i am talking about error reports. There where some that where diagnosed and resolved, but that was when MetaROUTER was just introduced as a feature.

Janis,

what puzzles me is the fact that Metarouter seems to be most usefull on CPE devices, you even mention this in your Manual.
But according to you, the most stable Metarouter platforms are the PPC based boards which are to expensive for CPE usage.
You once even promoted the RB450G as an ideal platform for Metarouter.
But now all we have is your statement "We can reproduce the error, but whe don't have any idea what is causing it". Judging by the posts in this forum, also other MIPS-BE platforms seem to be affected, however not as bad as the RB450G but still not really stable.
So im not 100% confident in any statements which don't come from actual users by now. In my eyes you should even withdraw Metarouter support on MIPS-BE based boards, as you don't seem to be capable(why this is the case is beyond me) to deliver reliable support for them.

i would not agree with you completely and here are the reasons in no particular order:

• reports and tests show that problem can only be seen (after long wait sometimes) to manifest on RB450G
• there where problem long long time ago on all mipsbe that was debugged and resolved
• some time ago running side by side RB433AH and RB450G, first never got any problems while the latter could get freezes at some time interval that where not very stable

I am running metarouters on RB1000 and RB800 for years without the problems. mrz is doing that on RB1100 and RB1000

Of course some report on how they cope outside testing environment would be helpful

reports and tests show that problem can only be seen (after long wait sometimes) to manifest on RB450G

Sorry thats BS, as I just have written in the other thread.
ALL 3 of our brand new RB450G are useless in regards to Metarouter.
Crashes occuring from minutes two max. 2 hours.
And Yes you have suppout files from me.

reports and tests show that problem can only be seen (after long wait sometimes) to manifest on RB450G

Sorry thats BS, as I just have written in the other thread.
ALL 3 of our brand new RB450G are useless in regards to Metarouter.
Crashes occuring from minutes two max. 2 hours.
And Yes you have suppout files from me.

you should re-read what i have written here, seriously. To make it obvious - i wrote - there is instability regarding RB450G running metarouter and your respinse - BS, there is instability running metarouter on RB450G

reports and tests show that problem can only be seen (after long wait sometimes) to manifest on RB450G

Sorry thats BS, as I just have written in the other thread.
ALL 3 of our brand new RB450G are useless in regards to Metarouter.
Crashes occuring from minutes two max. 2 hours.
And Yes you have suppout files from me.

you should re-read what i have written here, seriously. To make it obvious - i wrote - there is instability regarding RB450G running metarouter and your respinse - BS, there is instability running metarouter on RB450G

My reply was related to the RB450G thread, as I have clearly written...

post in correct thread.

Agreed, and done.
So back to topic in this one.

By now no real world report from any user.
Janis, is there any feedback you could share from MUM events?

I have never been to MUM

in MUMs year 2009 - in Argentina USA and Czech republic. You can check the presentations.

I'm not sure how to judge the fact, that no community members posted any reply about real world Metarouter usage.

We are running Metarouter on RB1000 and RB433AH. The 433AH has been unstable since Install on site (metarouter running from day one). It would lock up and become unresponsive and required reboot to fix. Rebooting the metarouter usually fixes it for a few days. We have a watchdog set on the 433AH that reboots if it can't ping the metarouter. Currently reboots once or twice a week.

RB1000 appears stable(ish). Only have two units running Metarouter. One is stable, one is not - but I don't know if it is Metarouter or something else causing the instability

I also wonder if anyone is actually using MetaRouter in REAL production scenarios. I almost never hear about it here, and all of my own experiences with MetaRouter have been BAD.

It has such great potential and uses, but if it isn't stable, then it is no good.

Having used MetaRouter in production, and subsequently had to replace it with physical routers), I am pretty sure there is no production application for a product this unstable. I have trialed it on RB433AH, RB1000 and RB1100. ALL became unstable and would randomly lock up. Removing Metarouter from each of these devices returned them to stable working order, so my conclusion is that it was MetaRouter causing the issues. We have tried them with various OS versions up to 5.7 without success. The principle is fantastic and I hope to be able to use a stable version some time in the future, but for now it is not something that can be used in a production environment.

Thank you for your input Murray,
that seems to acknowledge my theory that Metarouter isn't just unstable on MIPS boards, but has general issues lying burrowed in the software itself.
If MR would work the uses would be fantastic, I once considered suggesting a Routerboard with MR as a CPE to a big German ISP I do consulting services for. MR would be a much more (enterprise) customer friendly solution then VRF, but only if it where stable.
MT is missing big opportunities here, if they would take more care of software quality they could easily compete with RAD or Adva in the MAN CPE area. But with the software quality and support(especially for MR) they deliver, no bigger ISP would consider using their products.

Regards,
Jan

I've basically given up on this feature. There is a critical bug in there somewhere and noone seems to be interested in finding it.

while there are open tickets about MR on MIPSBE (some boards) there are no open tickets about MR on PPC. Also, there where open tickets on RB433AH, but not for last 2 years, and if where, then was resolved by configuration changes (if guest was RouterOS).

What Janis means is, please contact support with details about your problem.

What Janis means is, please contact support with details about your problem.

I've contacted the support and waiting for a solution for me.

Is there anyone who runs MetaROUTER on RB1100AH (5.X) and it runs stable without reboots?

My test now is a separate box that only runs MetaROUTERs inside, so the hosts doesn't run any routing bridging firewalling at all.
I'm running 2 guests (both ROS) with 2 static interfaces each.
One of the guests have VLAN interfaces configured on both Ether interfaces.
The other uses the plain Ether1 and Ether2 interfaces.

The host router (ROS 5.12) reboots randomly.

/Paul

Using image stock from wiki and liquid or mine build with latest openwrt trunk all resulting the same behaviour, our RB1000 and RB1100 after several second experiencing kernel panic and show debug code. need to act as fast as possible do after rebooting.

We tested extensively on ROS5.8 and even put some into production - big mistake - it might run for a day or four months - but it will eventually lock up - usually rebooting the MR only would fix the problem - we were only using ROS MRs - no third party OS involved

RB450G is really good. i have used it. i think you should go for it.

No it isn't, RB450G ist actually the worst board for MR.
There are enough threads in this subforum about this topic.

To summarize: No, it's not stable anywhere, except possibly on KVM.

I am running about 8 RB1100's and 14 RB1100AH's each with 2 metarouters

The typical config is for a remote office:

3 MB bonded T1 Internet
Cable modem

The 3m is for SIP trunking and backup internet, cable is primary internet.

the metarouters are setup to handle QOS'ing on each of the ISP links.

IE: main router handles all LAN traffic, VPN's, firewall rules, etc...
meta 1 - transparent bridge QOS rules for 3M link
meta 2 - transparent bridge QOS rules for cable modem.

This has been in service for more than a year.

We don't have stability issues, just installation issues.
To get metarouters to run on an RB1100AH is a pain in the butt.

You have to upgrade to latest release (5.16), then upgrade the boot loader, then downgrade to 5.11, create a metarouter, then upgrade back to 5.16 (Yes i have reported it, every new release I tell them it's still there. They never fix it)

Oh... also... the metarouters on the RB1100AH have debugging turned on. It can be annoying when you enter a command and it's spits out a page of debugging message. (Yes i have reported it, every new release I tell them it's still there. They never fix it)

lordzar
I am a bit puzzled, you say you have MR running stable for a year, yet you talk about ROS 5.11 and 5.16.
ROS 5.11 was released december 2011, ROS 5.16 just a few weeks ago.
Yould please go into detail about this debugging feature a little more also?
With all this workarounds, I wouldn't call MR stable though.

I have been running metarouters in RB450's and RB1100 for quite a while now on older versions of course.

The debugging issue is that when I attach to the console of a metarouter and start configuring it, every command i complete, such as adding a bridge, creates a message on the console instead of just returning to a command prompt. I get random messages about subsystems starting up or shutting down, like accounting. Nothing that affects anything operationally that i can tell.... just annoying.
and it only seems to be on the RB1100AH.

a work around to get the system functioning really has nothing to do with stability. Once the system is able to run, it is "stable", ie: runs without error"

I think we are getting into semantics.

You have to upgrade to latest release (5.16), then upgrade the boot loader, then downgrade to 5.11, create a metarouter, then upgrade back to 5.16

Yeah, there was another thread somewhere about this...as I recall, it has something to do with the change in flash size between the 1100AH "mark I" and the 1100AH "mark II" (from 512MB to 64MB), as the problem only happens on the "mark II" model. It's like something gets confused about the available amount of free disk space or something. But I thought that although you had to downgrade and re-upgrade (which somehow triggers a change?), you didn't have to create the MRs while it was downgraded...I'm pretty sure that you could immediately re-upgrade after the downgrade and then create MRs to your heart's content while running the latest version. (I don't have any "mark II" routers at my disposal for testing, otherwise I'd experiment with this.)

-- Nathan

EDIT: Found it: http://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php ... 99#p305199; I was wrong: doesn't have to do with the NAND size. Apparently the problem is that in certain situations RouterOS on the 1100AH is accidentally configured to load the multi-CPU kernel meant for the 1100AHx2, and the latter device does not support MetaROUTER. So running that kernel disables MetaROUTER support even on devices that it is officially supported on. I guess downgrading to some older version and then upgrading back to the current release again somehow causes this to get fixed.

I wonder what would happen if you simply re-installed the latest version with NetInstall, instead of doing the downgrade/upgrade dance? Might be easier/faster if it works.

doesn't have to do with the NAND size. Apparently the problem is that in certain situations RouterOS on the 1100AH is accidentally configured to load the multi-CPU kernel meant for the 1100AHx2

This was solved in newer version of RouterBOOT. Upgrade RouterOS to v5.16 and run "/system routerboard upgrade" command

Hi, I've heard a lot of the metarouter instability on a routerboard 1100AH. We have the same model with two partners using individual metarouters on it. They are using it to maintain L2TP/IPsec and PPTP VPN connections, as well as basic firewalling, so nothing special.

The host routerboard reboots randomly on a daily basis. We're doing remote logging now to debug what's the real cause, but the logs did not say a word, only the usual line on the metarouters:

"system,error,critical router was rebooted without proper shutdown"

There is enough memory and disk space, so not low on resources. What can be the cause? The configuration is simple. Every metarouter have two static interfaces and one dynamic bridge to be able to communicate with each other. Nothing fancy.

we are aware of the problems regarding MetaROUTER stability on these boards it is being worked on.

we are aware of the problems regarding MetaROUTER stability on these boards it is being worked on.

oh, I see. Do you have an approximate date on the final fix? I don't want to rush you in any way, just curiois, as we have to find another solution until then.

insect,

You might read through the other forum thread listed immediately below this. I realize it is a long one and difficult to navigate, and that it is mostly occupied with discussion about the RB450G, but it aims to cover MetaROUTER issues across all board models.

janisk posted a download link to a prerelease RouterOS 5.21 (5.21rc1) in that thread, including one for the RB1100AH. I have only had time to test the RB450G version and have found it to still have issues; however, although it hasn't been explicitly confirmed by MikroTik, it is believed/suspected that the root cause for MetaROUTER crashes between the MIPS boards and the PPC boards are entirely different, so having someone test this version out on a router that repeatedly crashes in a production environment such as yours would be invaluable.

So I would recommend that you go to that thread and download 5.21rc1 yourself, try it out on your RB1100AH that crashes daily, and report your findings back here.

-- Nathan

thanks, I'll give it a try, if no final solution will be available in one or two days. I've already read the other topic, was just confused about which is the right one


thanks!

Ugh... I hate necro-posting, but it's related...

RB1100AH ROS 5.18. Have a metarouter running for testing certain network functions (not doing any real work). Have had 3 lockups in the last 6 months or so. Several other RB1100 and RB1100AH running without a hiccup.

Ethernet interfaces are still up (at least every connected switch shows the interfaces up), but not passing traffic.

Set a watchdog address, but this doesn't help. What's the point of watchdog if it doesn't work?

-Troy

For mor uptodate info please refer to: http://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=60746
Metarouter isn't really stable, neither on MIPS-BE nor on PPC.

un PPC routers supporting metarouter there is an issue that router will reboot from time to time. frequency of reboots depend on the load, low load, reboots will happen less frequently.

MIPSBE metarouter still have issue of freezing from time to time, but should not crash the host or cause reboots of either host or guest.

We are aware of these problems, if you see something new, please contact support@mikrotik.com with latest RouterOS (think changes where done in 5.19 or 5.20 for ppc and 5.22 for mipsbe)

We are aware of these problems

Are you going to fix it? Are you trying at all?

yes, of course we are working on these issues. Unfortunately MetaROUTER feature is neither simple to debug or simple to fix issues found.

Maybe we can help you somehow?

@payday please also refer to http://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=60746
This is the place where you can provide help, we consolidated all the threads to this one.
Right now it's MTs turn.

@MT
Is it possible to lock down this thread, while pointing to the consolidated one?

further discussion should go here:
http://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=60746