2

I'm working at ISP and we provide internet over PPPoE. Our servers are running on FreeBSD and we are considering some improvement to enhance the administration of the server. We've thought of moving to MikroTik router OS. Each of our servers handle about 500 users at time.

Is it a good idea to replace our FreeBSD PPPoE servers with MikroTik or you can suggest something better?

Uko
  • 121
  • 4

2 Answers2

2

The MikroTik RouteOS is very capable, but definitely designed for smaller installations. They're really aiming at hot-spots and small multi-tenant buildings. FreeBSD is going to be a significantly more capable, configurable, and able to provide greater capacity.

What exact pain points are you experiencing with your FreeBSD servers? You say you want to "enhance the administration of the server", but that really doesn't mean anything.

Chris S
  • 77,337
  • 11
  • 120
  • 212
  • I'm wondering what makes you think RouterOS is "definitely designed for smaller installations". – dschulz May 21 '12 at 04:04
  • @dschulz Things have changed, apparently. RouterOS was originally setup to run on small/embedded systems; so the design constraints of that environment forced a certain set of capabilities. Since then I see they've released a PC version. It's based on Linux, so any limitations of the OS will primarily be what MicroTik has imposed. – Chris S May 21 '12 at 12:44
0

Depends. If you are using Routerboard than it worth the effort. No HDD, passive cooling, you can make it faul-tolerant with two boards. So it's more green, easy to configure and no need to mess with a BSD.

Gabor Vincze
  • 554
  • 1
  • 4
  • 11
  • I doubt a single MikroTik has the capacity for that many connections, two is probably still very short, perhaps with a dozen or so. I don't think RouterOS has address redundancy protocols built in either, so 3rd party hardware load balancer. Servers don't need HDDs either. May not need BSD, but needs RouterOS, still an OS to configure and maintain. Try again. – Chris S Feb 20 '12 at 19:02
  • @ChrisS Sure, it has VRRP. No idea on the performance, but certainly it would depend on what kind of traffic each user is pushing... I don't think there's enough info to render judgement on the viability either way, but certainly some of their gear is aimed at the small-ISP market. – Shane Madden Feb 20 '12 at 22:16
  • 1
    I used a Mikrotik RB1000 with BGP, 3 uplinks and about 1Gigz dedicated downstream, so I am pretty sure it can handle the traffic. If you choose Routerboard, there are several options. Also, VRRP is implemented in RouterOS for a long time. Also, administration tools for Mikrotik are very easy to use and sophisticated, you do not have to learn another OS. – Gabor Vincze Feb 27 '12 at 17:21