We are intending to build the following box and install RouterOS or IPCop (what we are familiar with) on it. What RouterBoard rackmount unit is comparable?
Usage:
15mb down 5mb up internet service with 50 PC’s and 50 VoIP phones. Actually, there are only 10, but we want the hardware for future and sudden growth. Why do RouterBoard have so many ports, only need two, correct? We will be traffic shaping and port forwarding to a IP PBX box.
Depending on firewall rules, queues, etc. A 450g, 2011, 493 can handle 15/5 without issue. If your going to have a lot of rules/queues then a 1100hx2 or ccr(bit overkill)
It depends on what you want to do with it. Do you just want it to be a firewall/router/NAT router? If so, any of the current RouterBoards are sufficient for such a small network. The 951G would be more than fast enough if that is all you want to do. It costs less than the proposed case for your x86 box. It would also allow you to have a DMZ for your servers. You could also have a separate network for any customer/public WiFi you want to provide to give guests Internet access and keep them off your business LAN. You don’t have to use all of the ports on the RouterBoards.
If you want per IP rate limits, web proxy services, VPN for 50 simultaneous users, IDS, HotSpot, … we may have to limit your RouterBoard choices. But with the 15/5 Internet connection, we might not. Reserving enough bandwidth for the PBX is not likely to be a significant load on something like the 951G or the 2011UAS-RM.
I have 2011UAS units at the bottom of towers routing 10 - 20 Mbps of traffic to 100+ users of APs on that tower with per user bandwidth limits and passing through another 25 - 40Mbps to other towers. CPU utilization hits around 50% during peak hours. We use about 64MB of RAM. No NAT. 13 firewall rules, 61 Mangle rules, 84 queue tree entries. There are currently 39188 entries in the connection tracking table.
The current generation mipbe RouterBoards probably have more horsepower than your last generation IPCop P3/P4 machines. The only real limits on the smaller units are disk space and RAM.
lambert,
Thank you so much for your help. I’m looking at these three models now.
$???.00 RB1100AH: PowerPC 1066MHz CPU
$395.00 RB1100Hx2: PowerPC 1066MHz Dual Core CPU
$119.00 RB2011UAS-RM: Atheros 600MHz 74K MIPS
I don’t think we need hardware encryption (none of these models have it) because at the most we might have two VPN clients. Also we are not bridging two WAN links.
I don’t know how Atheros AR9344 and PowerPC processors compare to Intel i3. I assume they must be tuned to router tasks and are fast. My main concern is to prevent the router from introducing any latency. Therefore with the following real world scenarios, which do you recommend?
Real world usage:
10 simultaneous PC’s streaming YouTube
10 simultaneous VoIP calls
Real world router tasks:
Two VPN sessions
IPv4 NAT
Five IPv4 forwarded ports to internal servers
Range of ports for RTP for an PBX server
Qos and traffic shaping for an internal PBX server
Connected to a HP 1810-24G v2 switch
I would recommend the biggest device you can afford to allow for future growth. I would not be afraid of using the small one for that scenario, but spending the extra may guarantee success and allow for a lot more growth.