I’m running a hotspot that often has 1200+ users logged in at a time. I notice that each user login pegs the proc to 100% for a brief period of time. Overall CPU utilization across a one hour period of time is 75%. This is causing a constant 1 to 2 percent packet loss during peak times. I’m already running a Pentium 4 dual core at 3Ghz. Is there anything faster to run v.2.9 on?
Rb1000 is a very fast machine if you don’t need wireless.
Normis,
Will this be faster than a 3Ghz P4? Will it run ROS v.2.9? I thought it would only run V3.
Thanks.
why do you need specifically 2.9? yes, it should be faster.
Specifically I need 2.9 because it is operating stable now for us in a production environment. Upgrading for the sake of upgrading is a quick route to trouble. V3 hotpost has bug issues with proxy and other features as has been reported in this forum.
won’t changing hardware get you in the same issues? you will have to reconfigure etc.
In the past my experience with changing hardware has been that it goes very easily. My experience with upgrading ROS has not been the same. But, because I am a sucker, I gave it a shot. I upgraded to v3.10. The hotspot started out fine with about 10% lower cpu util than before on 2.9. However, after 8 minutes the box completely locked up and did not recover itself. I restarted it and disabled hotspot. It ran fine without hotspot on for about 15 minutes. I then turned hotspot on and it crashed after about 10. At that point I downgraded back to to 2.9.51 and everything is fine again.
So I ask again, what is the fastest machine for running 2.9?
Also what is it about hotspot that uses so much CPU? With hotspot off and pushing about 14mbps through the box with lots of mangle rules, etc… util is only 10%. As soon as I turn on hotspot it jumps to 50% and stays around there.
fastest routerboard would be RB532, otherwise - some X86 rackmountable. A xeon or P4
We have our PowerRouter 732s. These will run 2.9 without an issue.
Dennis,
I’m running a 732 now. It’s still not enough CPU. I can’t be the only guy with a hotspot that has 1200 active logins?
Bump to 3.10, you will get quite a bit more CPU as then you can use both cores! Plus there are speed gains with that by itself. We have over 2000 users on one right now!
if you’re using a OLD dual core P4, then a C2D like the E8400 series would be MUCH MUCH faster(it’s integer performance is on the roof compared to the shitty netburst arch).
dunno is 2.9.15 takes full advantage of the C2D, but even if it doesn’t, a 2.4G E8400~ is much much faster than a 3GHz P4 dual core (doesn’t matters if it’s DDR2 or DDR3)
Hai frens,
we love our Cetralized AAA with Dell PIII-500 512SDRAM,IDE-HDD[ROS 6 Level], and wirelessly with RB511 and RB532A
so we are stable all in v2.9.49. Thanks Mikrotik and Team
we are enough with it to our rural connection for. 
regards
Hasbullah.com
Go to dell.com and build yourself a machine with dual quad core xeon’s
Thanks.
maybe you need to optimize your config. it’s not normal that such powerful machine is not enough.
yech. . . . nices
Our Centralized AAA action as: Routing, PPTP Server, Hotspot Enabled, Dynamic Line, PPPoE and 2 Public Interfaces [symetric FO and 3G lines] to supply our clients with different subnets. also very very limted rules firewall. and userman [Radius Server] with same machine.
Our Networks is Roaming and transparant for war war away. and our Centralized AAA [CPU] is very low resource consumption.
I like ‘Dell’ Machine, good coller and power supply.
again, thanks mikrotik & team
regards
Hasbullah.com
Dennis,
Read above. V3.10 locks up for me. Maybe I need to start with a clean config instead of doing an upgrade but that is not an option for me.
Yes, I agree. However I think the rest of the config is fine. Whenever I turn off hotspot (no interuption in user traffic), the CPU utilization immediately drops to around 20%. It’s only with hotspot running that the CPU utilization is so high. I don’t have any simple queues set for the hotspot users and transparent proxy is turned off. Any ideas?