Request: Mikrotik in industrial applications with media redundancy?

RouterOS General
1

Hi
Can we please have support for industrial use cases where a redundant ring topology is needed? For example using MRP, very common in industrial applications/networks)
Support for MRP was added in linux 5.8
https://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_5.8#bridge:_Add_support_for_Media_Redundancy_Protocol_.28MRP.29
https://lwn.net/Articles/817989/

MRP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Redundancy_Protocol allows a ring to be created just like with (R)STP but reacts much faster on topology changes, within a few ms which is required to not upset industrial protocols for distributed I/Os which are operating at near real time speeds. MRP is the IEC standardized successor to the well proven but proprietary HiPER-ring protocol by Hirschmann/Belden (manufacturer of industrial networking equipment).

2

Hello!
Any input here, mikrotik?

Kind regards
David

3

Mikrotik will most probably not comment a forum post. If you want a comment from them, have a large reseller ask them (it’s been a few times when MT staff explained that voices of resellers are heard more clearly than voices of anonymous crowds).

My comment: MT has a decently sized backlog of features to implement and is not very likely to see implemented a feature that appeared in linux kernel only recently.

4

Thank you for your answer mkx.
Unfortunately MT isn’t very big in my country so no big resellers :frowning: Most I know of just sells MT, don’t know much about them so I don’t think they have any direct lanes into MT either. They are mostly Cisco, Aruba bound ones so I don’t think they care to pass my requests to MT, just sells MT to customers that specifically asks for them… There are a few mostly one man MT certified consultants but don’t think they care to help here either when I don’t have any other business with them…

True, just thought this was a new market for them not controlled by the common big network equipment companies so there is definitely a slot to fill here but MT might not be interested in the industrial market at all :frowning:
MRP could have been implemented before too without built in kernel support, it is not a advanced protocol. The industrial switches and routers I already use have also have linux kernels but still has MRP support. It only got even easier to implement now I guess…