RB433 vs RB433AH

RouterOS Wireless Networking
1

Hey there,

I’m planning a hardware upgrade and having some doubts, so I’d like to ask your opinion. Currently I’m running x86 based system for wireless distribution. Everything was working perfectly until recently, mistic problems started to happen and actualy I don’t have time nor mood to investigate what’s happening because I was going to replace it with RB solution anyway. I’m going to need two routerboards with 3 miniPCI slots for wifi nics. So question rises here, because I’m wondering which one to chose of these two: RB433 or RB433AH. The difference is in amount of RAM, presence of microSD in AH, which I don’t need and most important - CPU speed.

Since current x86 system has 6 wifi cards, which produce quite large amounts of traffic over wireless, I’m worried about CPU speed of RB, will it handle it quite as good as the current system does, because when traffic increases, CPU utilization grows as well. I’m aware that CPUs used in RBs are somewhat different from the x86 and are aimed more for networking tasks.

So what could I expect from both of these routerboards when they are filled with R52Hs and pushed all to the limits?

2

if you will also want to use queues and firewall for these users, then definitely go with the RB433AH. it has quite an edge over the RB433, but the price is not that much different, especially considering you also get a better RouterOS license key

3

I just need plain transparent bridging, nothing more. I’m aware that queuing and shapping needs additional processing power. But that’s not the case. I’m wondering if this CPU will handle ~60mbps of traffic passing through all the interfaces.

4

Go with the RB433AH because you need CPU spped for 60Mbps. At 680MHz vs 300MHz of the RB433 you won’t be second guessing whether you made the right decision.

And it will be nice to look at the CPU load and see it under 50%.

Tom

5

RB433, traffic ~50mbps CPU usage under 50%