Motherboards that work with MT & Atheros - suggestions?

RouterOS General
1

Hello,

We have just put together a combination that suffers “slow throughput”
VIA EPIA V10000 mini-ITX 1GHz CPU
Atheros mini-PCI 5212 and 5211 from MT, including their PCI<>mini-PCI adaptors
RouterOS 2.8.16 on Compact Flash.

Two of the above configured as a “point to point” lab test with antennas, short range.
PC-LAN-Router …wireless… Router-LAN-PC.
Tried most radio configurations - Nstreme on/off, bridge, WDS etc. Result is “slow throughput”, less than 9Mbps, very variable. CPU usage is low. However using the “bandwidth test” inside the router between the radio cards (not through the ethernet ports), the throughput is fine (41Mbps).

Putting the Atheros cards and RouterOS in desktop PCs instead of the Mini-ITX boards works perfectly, we measured 51Megabits/sec actual throughput using bandwidth tester through the routers from LAN-LAN
I believe this is the “VIA V series problem” mentioned by John Tully in another thread.

Anyone got a working Mini-ITX board that does run properly with Atheros?
Make/Brand/Model number?

Suggestions would be really helpful - we have users who want this solution working ASAP. Many thanks!

Stephen

2

I have had good results with the EPIA-5000 (500MHz, fanless). It is of course lower performance - I was looking at the higher-end EPIA boards, but don’t have real test results yet.

Daniel

3

As I have written, we have found that this is an issue with the EPIA V bios and probably new EPIA bios’s as well. The best idea is to see if EPIA has a newer bios for your board and test it.

This problem is how the bios sets up the pci bus and there were problems with the EPIA V bios and may still be, I have not tested.

John

4

Hi John,

Thanks for replying-
Yes we have “latest BIOS” they offer on their site.
We found reference to a “beta BIOS” update on this hidden on a VIA forum - maybe we’ll try this next.
I agree symptoms are those of the PCI bus setup.

Anyone else with comments on VIA’s that work, BIOS revs, would be very welcome - am sure lots of people would like to see a “known good” VIA solution.

Stephen