There is so much I don't know about RouterOS that I'm not even sure how to frame my question to search the forums before bothering you guys.

Here is my situation, I run a WISP with about 500 subscribers. Each of my four tower sites has a a number of bridged APs, an RB450 handles the backhaul connection and a 493AH takes care of the APs. We use PPPoe for authentication. At two of my sites the CPUs on the 493AHs are running up at between 75% and 95% and it seems like we are starting to see problems with the quality of the customer experience. My question is if I should a) upgrade the 493AHs and if so, to what, and b) would it be possible to divide the routing duties for the APs between two 493AHs and thus avoid needing buy a 1U size RB1100AHx2 that I don't have space for in my enclosures?

All the heavy lifting of actually implementing whatever solution will be taken care of my a consultant, but I wanted to get the board's opinion on things before I bother him.

Thanks in advance

Jake

It seems like usually when a question on a forum isn't answered it's because it was asked in the wrong place or in a way that doesn't make sense or because it's just a stupid question. I would love to move this question to the right forum/clarify the issue/not ask a stupid question. If someone could point out what I did wrong I'll fix it, I promise!

I would do the RB1100ahx2 instead of multiple 493AHs. The setup would be less complicated and the most important part to me is you would have less points of failure. You could take the RB1100 out of its case and mount it in whatever you would like.

I would do the RB1100ahx2 instead of multiple 493AHs. The setup would be less complicated and the most important part to me is you would have less points of failure. You could take the RB1100 out of its case and mount it in whatever you would like.

Hey, man, thank you so much for getting back to me!

I see what you are saying and I totally agree with simpler being better, I do. The thing is, I already have a pair of RB493AHs sitting on my shelf already purchased so that money is already spent. Then two RB1100AHx2s would run like $1000. I guess my question is, other than limiting potential points of failure, is there a compelling reason to spend the money on the upgraded routers as opposed to dividing the work load among additional RB493AHs?

Would having three APs handled by one 493AH and three APs taken care of by another cause any potential performance problems? Right now I have an RB450 handling the connection to the backhaul.

If you don't mind - i have a frient, whose network is utilised by good 4 core pc with some cards at pci slots , connected as base stations to several points of his network, its running seamlessly at utilisation of network (about 300 home users each about 4-6 mbit/s overbooked) at about 90-120 mbit /s down and 40-60 mbit/s up eveniongs (max load), os is mikrotik routeros x86 of course

I suspect if you do not use bridging and routing instead, it will help with the CPU load.
Setup PPPOE server on each interface instead of bridge all to 1 server?
Remove bridge completely and see if it helps? Dunno, worth a try.