I’ve hit into an issue with flash size on hAP AC lite.
After installing latest firmware + wireless-rep - router can’t upgrade automatically anymore, because it just can’t fit next version onto flash. Only 16MBytes flash… In new routers… WHY??? Does it really make router much cheaper?
Besides lower price it makes a lot of of pain now to upgrade router.
Why not to install 64Mbytes ?
RB951G had 128MB flash - and this is excellent
RB962G now have 16MB flash and this is huge step back
Is it possible to increase it some new hw releases?
I hope that in near future, when upgrading to newer RouterOS, we won’t have to decide between package A and package B, because they won’t fit both. “To have IPv6 or PPP, that is the question!”
Out of curiosity, how expensive is this flash? What would be the price difference between current tiny 16MB, more future-proof 32MB, nice 64MB or almost generous 128MB? Not knowing much about hardware, I can’t even guess. I can just assume it’s not the same kind of flash that I can buy in form of USB drive, thousand times bigger for few dolars.
Upgrades don’t need flash space, they happen via RAM drive. Small flash space could only affect you if you need big hotspot files, proxy or logs to persist after reboot.
Not sure which flash memory chips are used in Mtk routers (and how much they pay for it), but 128 Mbit flash chips cost about $1,5 (in volumes of thousands, http://eu.mouser.com/Semiconductors/Memory/Flash-Memory/_/N-488w1?P=1z0y15iZ1z0sr05). So using two of such you can add 32 MBytes of flash for $3. That is more than feasible in device priced above $100, but may pose a problem if trying to sell router for $22. And I understand why Hex Lite or Hex Lite Classic have 16 MB, but can’t undertsand the same for hap AC.
Clearly, MikroTik does not want you to use advanced stuff like partitions or MetaROUTER with home devices. Which is probably ok, as most home users won’t ever miss such things at all. But every time I see those menu items on my mAP, I just want to… ok, just kidding.
Anyway, even if we skip these extras, available space seems to be a little small. Default factory install on my mAP occupied 11.something MB, I assume it’s same for hAPs. It does not leave much space for future new stuff. It’s probably good for few years of system upgrades, but what if they wanted to add some new big killer features? I like to think they want to.
Anything you can imagine and OpenWRT can run. Most likely not on mAP, its one ethernet and one wireless interface make it a limited use device, that’s unlikely to end up handling whole network on its own. But on hAP, why not? Sure, it’s marketed as AP, which implies there will be other devices in network, more suitable for such things. But it’s not necessarily true. For example, here the usual internet speeds are way under 100Mbit, more like in 10-40Mbit range, so hAP is perfectly capable of handling that, in fact it’s almost overpowered for such task. So it will often end up as the main router and the only always on device to play with.
But for the record, I’m not pushing for bigger flash to allow home users to use MetaROUTER. It was just an example and not the best one.
Yes, I think the mAP devices are the only ones were less than 48MB could be acceptable. I guess wAP too. What about wired-only devices? 32MB for all of those (backup)? I guess not at least for the latter if OpenWRT is so important.
Current release is located on flash and being used during bootup. There is no possibility to delete existing firmware prior downloading new.
When downloading new release - it must be downloaded to flash and router should be rebooted to install.
During bootup it will replace old firmware with new one. Old one will be automatically removed from flash.
Technically it will obviously go through RAM, but both firmware versions are stored in flash. And device must have enough flash space to store at least two versions of firmware, including all possible modules for both versions.
So why many people me including had problems with the not enough storage error during update? Yes I am able to update all my hap lites by download and install regularly now, but each device needed to be manually reinstalled by individual packages in two steps (as I suggest) at least once.
