Residential broadband ISP - Which equipment Mikrotik is most suitable when you have 2 ISP Links?

RouterOS General
1

Friends,

I’m putting together a diagram of a network solution, and I have several questions about which equipment would be best suited to my needs, can you help me.

Below is the information I have:

  • ISP (WAN1) Primary: Dynamic IP Link Coaxial Cable 1Gbps
  • ISP (WAN2) Secondary: Dynamic IP Fiber Link 700Gbps

I need equipment that can do the following:

  • Link aggregation delivering the sum of the speed of the 02 ISPs;
  • Load balancing;
  • Control of redundancy in the event of link failure;
  • Provide DHCP Server services.

Tks!

2

You won’t be able to aggregate the bandwidth of the two uplinks for a single connection (like a TCP session) - you can distribute the total traffic among both WANs, but every individual connection will use either one WAN or the other.

Throughput-wise, unless you expect some unusual traffic patterns, look at the worst “routing 512 byte packet” throughput on the product data sheet (example: https://mikrotik.com/product/rb5009ug_s_in#fndtn-testresults ), as it is typically close to the real life performance with mangle rules in place (most of the traffic being unidirectional TCP transmissions where large packets delivering the application payload get ACKed by small ones). The next thing is how will you connect the LAN side devices. The RB5009 from the example has an up to 10 Gbit/s SFP+ port and a 2.5 Gbit/s Ethernet port, but what comes next? A switch, a bunch of wireless APs, …?

Feature-wise, all Mikrotik devices that run RouterOS can do the same, so all of them can provide all the features/behaviors you have listed, with the limitation of the aggregation (which is nothing Mikrotik specific). The difference between the Mikrotik device models is the throughput and number/type/parameters of interfaces.

3

Hi Sindy,

Thanks for the quick response.

I understood the issue of aggregating bandwidth and transmission rate.

I believe the product in the example will serve you well.

Regarding what comes after the Router, I am planning to use 03 APs with Wifi 7 or 6E connected directly to the Router, and 01 Switch with Giga ports to connect to other IT and IoT equipment.

Thank you very so much.

4

WiFi 7 or 6E routers can deliver more than 1 Gbit/s per direction, so they are typically equipped with at least 2.5 Gbps ports, so you may need to add a corresponding switch rather than connecting them directly to the 5009. Mikrotik offers https://mikrotik.com/product/crs310_8g_2s_in but it’s a bit hungry and noisy (not suitable for living room/office) and doesn’t deliver PoE to the APs.