Now that it is available and I have had my hands on a new RB493G, I thought I would share…
Basically its an RB493AH with more RAM, more Flash, faster ethernet, USB, and a microSD slot on the underside for only $30 more.
Features
Atheros AR7161 680MHz CPU (MIPS 24K Big Endian architecture)
256MB RAM
128MB Flash (the data sheet incorrectly says 64MB)
9 10/100/1000 auto-MDI/X ethernet ports
3 MiniPCI slots for radio cards
1 USB 2.0 slot (not sourcing 5vdc)
1 microSD slot
accurate voltage and temperature monitoring (awesome!)
RouterOS Level 5 license (ships with version 4.12)
MT made the ethernet Gigabit by adding two Atheros AR8316 ICs. The good news is a fast and proven switch chip. The bad news is, as with the RB1100, the ports are not all on the same switch chip so you can’t slave a port in one switch group to a master port in another group. Not really a big deal for most people. You can always bridge between them or plan around them.
The ports are mapped to two groups. For clarity we’ll call them A and B.
Group A has ports 1, 6, 7, 8, 9
Group B has ports 2, 3, 4, 5
All in all, at $30 more than the RB493AH, the RB493G is a great value.
I had been using RB493AH boards at all of my wPOPs. I think I’ll be switching to this new board. The temperature and voltage monitoring alone make it worthwhile.
No I have not used the SR71-A. But I do have a customer that is using them with the RB433AH and he is pretty happy with the performance.
Yes, the SR71-A will fit inside the indoor case. But the indoor case now only has two antenna mounting holes and one square hole for a USB cable to pass through. So you have to be creative when putting an antenna in the square hole.
Thank you for the info Tom.
Personally I do prefer using R52Hn because of the newer and supposedly improved chipset but one of my clients insists that 3x3 MIMO can improve the performance significantly. I don’t agree but you know the old saying that the “customer is always right”…
I only tested one board for voltage and it was within .1 volt of my fluke VOM. And I am not sure I can probe exactly where they are checking voltage. I didn’t cross check the temperature setting against anything but I did see that it was working. I checked a cold board and then checked several times as it warmed up.
The RB/192 had the same separate switch groups. The RB493 replaced it and had a single switch chip. I am guessing that MT didn’t want to wait for a 9 port Gigabit ethernet switch chip that is affordable.
It’s really too bad that these switch chips don’t have a really high speed bus that allows you to gang them together.
While I’m at it… and hot blonds don’t go for geeky network guys.
I cant speak for price, but I know they exist… Just not Atheros… 2 separate gigabit switch groups is about as worthless as a 2 pec… Wonder if that CPU can keep up with bridging 120meg/second of data. Its really just throwing ports on there for the heck of it. The only real use it would be is if you needed to have 2 separate networks anyways. 493AH is still my choice at this point.
While I’m at it… and hot blonds don’t go for geeky network guys. >
Yes, of course you can can always bridge them together. That is always a work around but does take CPU cycles. So I would use bridging for my lower traffic links and use the main 4 or 5 for the highest traffic.
I don’t want to put a negative spin on this product. I still plan to use this at my WPOPs.
The RB493G is relatively low cost and has the most Gigabit ethernet ports of any RouterBoard along with miniPCI slots for radios.
The wildly sought after RB1100 costs a bunch more, has two blocks of 5 Gigabit ethernet ports (same switch chips) along with three independent ports but no radio card slots.
Hi,
just a quick question, Tom.
Would it be possible to use a patchcable (1m, 0,5 m) and put it in switchgroup one with one end, switchgroup two with second end? that way you would have at least 7 GBit ports left, with a “Backplane” of only 1 Gbit/s FD, but that could suffice for many things…
I, too, don’t actually consider this twin chip implementation as some serious limitation. I’d definitely use RB493G even if it was a single AR8316 - five port unit. Also, the freedom of having both bridged and switched ports is something really interesting.
That’s what I was considering actually. I don’t see any reason why this might not be working.
Sure, nice kludge but as you pointed out, you lose two ports. If you are using it only for a switch then yes, you have a 7 port gigabit switch. But if you need some wan or routed ports, then the benefit is quickly lost.
Hmmm… That just reminded me of a similar kludge that Cisco did with their HWIC-4ESW (4 x 10/100) ethernet cards. A few years ago I tried using two of these cards with a Cisco 1841 router but found out in the docs that you lose two ports when you do this and end up with 6 usable ports. They must have connected two of the ports together internally to bond the cards together in a similar way. Just no external cable was used.
Any suggestions on where i can get a hold of this unit ? I’ve been holding out since it was announced but have no idea who is stocking them. I’m located in Aus so generally i have to order from overseas anyway…
Edit: Also does anyone have any info on power consumption of these units ?
Just got one of these babies but I haven’t yet checked in detail the current consumption. It doesn’t seem to exceed the specs, though (3-5W on idle - no cards).
Something I liked is that it doesn’t run as hot as other routerboards. Actually, it runs pretty cold (< 15 degrees C above environmental temp) even when closed in the indoor case with two R52Hn cards fitted.
A few things I really hate so far are, the same useless microSD slot that failed to recognize any memory card I tried, and the unpowered USB connector (I wonder who thought that up and what they were smoking at the time). Despite these imperfections and questionable design decisions, I think RB493G is a great board.
