We plan to build a bunch of Mikrotik servers that will function as wired multiport ethernet routers at our network core. Our plan is to purchase good-quality motherboards with at least three (3) PCI slots and two (2) PCI express slots. The 3 PCI slots will be used to host 3 Routerboard 44s. While the express slots for Gigabit Intel network cards. Hence each Mikrotik box will carry 14 ports.
There are numerous posts here narrating users experience with compatibility problems between the motherboard, RouterOS and RB44. Some users indicated problems where not all RB44 cards are recognized by RouterOS. Other users indicated motherboards where only 3 out of 4 RB44 ports are recognized. There seem to be a significantly high incidence of these type of problems.
It would be greatly appreciated if someone can recommend a current production motherboard that has been tested to work well with multiple RB44s. Thanks much.
Normis, any chance you can find out the model of that motherboard - is it using the newer Intel 900 series chipset? There are a whole bunch of MSI intel motherboards to choose from. Thanks.
it should work in any system. this test system was some old intel 815 based msi device. it works on all PCs, we don’t know of any incompatibility issues.
Normis, i checked around here for issues related to this and found the posts below that talk about problems with certain motherboards where RouterOS is unable to either recognize multiple RB44s or only able to recognize 3 out of the 4 RB44 ports:
These posts are old (2004) so the issue may have been resolved by now (if so great). Is there a preferred motherboard chipset that would minimize the risk of us running into this sort of problem while building 5 Mikrotik servers each hosting 3 RB44s?
Any recommendation from users would be greatly appreciated.