Hi there,
We currently have 25+ towers that currently are on 3 physical segments (3 sets of subnets). Because of broadcasts, worms, etc. etc., we want to put each tower on its own subnet and place a router at each one.
I am looking to find some real world experiences with the various routers out in the field. I have seen some people talk about Microtik PC style routers. Are there other benefits and/or features in these remote routers that I should be thinking about?
Paul
Cisco. My primary reason for this reccomendation is routing protocols. While 25 routers wouldn’t be too much hassle to staticlly populate all tables, I personally would use EIGRP. I’m guessing the Mikrotik uses OSPF, which is ok, but has more overhead and slower convergence.
We use a Cisco 2620 to service about 120 clients, and the router utilization never goes over 20%
Interesting. FYI, Microtek uses OSPF as a subset (based on my perceptions of their doc) of their ECMP protocol (Equal Cost Multi-Path protocol).
EIGRP looks quite intersting as though it would take a lot of the thinking out of the configuaration. Have you used that in a WISP environment such as I have described?
Paul
our WISP is small (only one tower and router), so I have only used EIGRP in a lab.
we are planning on implementing this in our network. Could someone give me an example of how this would be done, given that you have a setup as below:
3 towers–>3 backhauls–>main tower–>fibre to office
In office:
proxy, mail servers etc all on 10.x.x.x
How would i have to change my network, bearing in mind that all client traffic ends up at our office on 10.x.x.x then goes through our bandwidth manager.
tlsarles wrote: I'm guessing the Mikrotik uses OSPF, which is ok, but has more overhead and slower convergence.
Yes sir, you are guessing. I'll take a Mikrotik over a Cisco any day.
Mikrotik talks RIP (v1 and v2), OSPF, BGP and many other protocols. For a small fraction of the cost.
ONE of the nice things about Mikrotik is you can install/run it on a PC. Need a kick@SS router? Build a mini-ITX or micro-ATX dual-LAN PC with a modern CPU and plenty of RAM ... vLAN to your hearts content, or, purchase a (or several) 4-port ethernet PCI card(s) and have physical ports out the waaazzooo.....
I don't think there's a single necessary thing the Mikrotik software won't do. In other words, use Cisco only if you just want to/have to.
We have several hundred users and 3 towers… would not use a cisco… try the Image Stream routers from IS they are great and easy to use. We found the thru put to be MUCH better than the Cisco’s