Hello all.
Please some expert, i allways have a doubt on which device is the best for me ( I don’t want to kill an ant with a canon)
Which proceses or which functions require CPU and which RAM
I want to say Firewall and QoS. Both these processes have to monitor connections/packets as they zip through your hardware and perform a task with them.
If you’re looking for a hardware choice for your home, I think almost anything will do.
State your particular application here and I think you can get a more fine tuned answer…
It is general because i allways desiging networks.
In some places clients will use lot of vlan, other queue (simple or tree) other could be using routing protocols, etc.
The best answer will be.
example:
queue tree: 80% CPU 10% ram
BGP protocol: 90% Ram 10% CPU
or things like this.
For most RouterBoard devices: RAM is enough (if you do not use MetaROUTER, and all RouterBoard with multi-core CPU do not have this feature), CPU performance is poor.
Queues and firewall rules consume most CPU. Also any netwatch and scheduler scripts you may have might consume a lot of CPU if they’re executed very frequently (like, less than 1m), even if they’re otherwise very simple and efficient.
I can’t think of anything other than MetaRouter that would consume any significant RAM, which is probably why most RouterBOARD devices don’t have too much on them.
The exact CPU load you’ll experience depends not only on the amount of rules, but also the amount of devices actively using the network. A single firewall rule will be a negligible penalty for hundreds, if not thousands of clients, but a dozen or so will gradually start to lower the number of active devices that can be served before the CPU starts peaking.
SNMP is quite cpu consuming also.