532 vs 532a (32mb vs 64mb)

Im ordering a bunch of routerboards for a WDS project. Does anyone know if I need the 64mb or would the 32mb 532’s be fine? I have a 532 running with 32mb and 18mb is free, but I am wondering if I will run into issues down the road in a larger installation. Nothing fancy, just plain APs in WDS mode.

Anyone see a reason not to get the 32mb version?

Thx,
Sam

While we’ve always had hardware that had 64MB or more of memory, you should be safe with 32MB as long as you are just bridging, wds, and ap related configs. Here are a couple of APs with their uptimes and memory usage. These are strictly WDS AP bridges:

WRAP.2c (3 WDS interfaces) 2.8.28:

[admin@] > sys resource pr
                     uptime: 132d25m48s
                free-memory: 42200 kB
               total-memory: 62696 kB
                        cpu: Geode
              cpu-frequency: 266 MHz
                   cpu-load: 1
             free-hdd-space: 28708 kB
            total-hdd-space: 61596 kB
    write-sect-since-reboot: 3484
           write-sect-total: 118094

WRAP.2C (Just a bridged AP - no WDS) 2.8.28:

[admin@] > sys resource pr
                     uptime: 226d5h46m46s
                free-memory: 41792 kB
               total-memory: 62700 kB
                        cpu: Geode
              cpu-frequency: 266 MHz
                   cpu-load: 3
             free-hdd-space: 27661 kB
            total-hdd-space: 60604 kB
    write-sect-since-reboot: 386
           write-sect-total: 139946

RB532a (2 CM9, 12 WDS interfaces) 2.9.18:

[admin@] > sys resource pr
           uptime: 9w1d44m1s
          version: "2.9.17"
      free-memory: 51080kB
     total-memory: 62852kB
              cpu: "MIPS 4Kc V0.10"
    cpu-frequency: 264MHz
         cpu-load: 7
   free-hdd-space: 94976kB
  total-hdd-space: 126976kB

2.9 is much better about memory than 2.8. The memory never seems to change on these, and it seems like there’s plenty of room if you’re only using 32MB to start with. I’ve checked a few more that have 100-200 days of uptime, and they’re all the same. As long as you don’t have every package enabled and disable connection tracking, you should be fine.

Nice … that’s good info to know.

Thx again