CRS504 hw accell performance?

Hardware MikroTik hardware general
1

I’m looking at the CRS504 as a hw router. no firewalling on the forwarding chain, just routing. running OSPFv3/iBGP for route distribution.

The charts for the hardware show CPU routing or switching. no chart on hw routing. I don’t want to just assume that the switching performance is the same as the hw routing… but is it?

Frankly, the ~300Gbps on 64kb packets shown for switching is PLENTY so even if the device would do a fraction of it I’d be happy. However, If it’s only able to do 20Gbps hw routed then it’s a no go. my target is 100Gbps one way between buildings but 100Gbps full duplex would be perfect.

Anyone know or put these to the test?

2

Fundamentally CRS 504 is a switch

The fact it can do HW L3 forwarding do not makes it a replacement for a Proper Router in all situations

What are the fundamental difference between L3 Switch and a Router? = Control Plane Performance

If you need CPU demanding features you need a router with big CPU, even when you will be using L3 HW forwarding

3

I’m not needing any ‘router’ features. Just L3 switch w/ routing. like I said, no firewall on forwarding plane. Firewall in input just to secure the device. No NAT etc.

I’m just not able to find routing performance for the hardware and mikrotik’s spec sheet is just showing the CPU routing performance which I’m not interested in using.

4

L3 HW offload works at wire-speed at forwarding

L3 Hw Offload Support for specific device

https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/display/ROS/L3+Hardware+Offloading#L3HardwareOffloading-CRS3xx,CRS5xx:SwitchDX8000andDX4000Series

5

No where that I can see does it actually say that hw routing is at wire speed, or that it matches the ‘switching’ performance. I don’t want to operate on an assumption here.

6

https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/display/ROS/L3+Hardware+Offloading#L3HardwareOffloading-Introduction

Layer 3 Hardware Offloading (L3HW, otherwise known as IP switching or HW routing) allows to offload some router features onto the switch chip. > This allows reaching wire speeds when routing packets> , which simply would not be possible with the CPU.

7

now i see where you doubt is founded

switches product page do not have L3 HW offload performance numbers

Only CCR2116 and CCR2216 have that data

8

that’s exactly the problem. thanks for the link.