Is there any plans on label switching MPLS (P not necessarily PE roles) for CRS3xxx series?
Also; Are there any CCR’s that might be able to do something in this area (hw offloaded) in the future?
There are plans on implementing MPLS hardware offloading at least for Marvell 98DX8xxx switch chip series (CRS317, CRS309, etc.) and CCR2116. However, please don’t expect that soon - we have to finish IPv6 offloading first.
It is unfortunate that Mikrotik does not prioritize MPLS hardware offload! 
They are prioritizing it. It’s just behind other things like fixing the usability bugs in RouterOS v7.1 and delivering MPLS as well as IPv6 FastPath modules, and for good reason!
Would you know if, when eventually available, it would be able to offload as both P and PE? Or would it be limited like the ROSv6 implementation where it could only offload when label switching as P?
If the former, would you know if it would be able to also L3HW VPLS?
any hope for this featureset to materialize?
It would be great to have that functionality.
It’s a bit strange to begin with IPv4&6 HW offload, and not MPLS. All major providers use MPLS for carrying internal traffic between core nodes.
IPv4/6 offloading only work with plain forwarding, and people except to be able to use complicated firewall rules, nat, tracking, pppoe, tunnels and other stuff that will break it. It will basically only work for “inter VLAN routing” with some simple ACLs.
Around 99.99 (add a few nines behind) percent of users use plain routing (either static routes or OSPF/BGP) and only small number of users use MPLS. Even fewer of those users are currently Mikrotik customers. Only telecoms and some really large corporations use MPLS inside own networks, inter-VLAN routing is pretty common though.
So while the request for MPLS HW offloading is certainly a legitimate one, I guess it’s pretty low on ToDo list of MT devels.
The most cases of inter-VLAN routing have some kind of firewalling in mind, and that most likley will break the HW acceleration. The hardware can never fit a full real-life Internet BGP-table either.
MPLS is used by many smaller WISP/ISP for VPLS services customers and VPN VRFs.
As explained in L3HW thread, fasttrack is being HW offloaded. Which means that most of traffic can be offloaded. The only big problem for such offliad would be handling a DDOS attack which would hit main CPU pretty hard.
Please explain how MPLS switching compares to routing (which by your words includes firewalling)? I don’t think that ISPs firewall traffic between their customers even if they don’t use MPLS and only route (in which case a L3HW device would do pretty well). Also most of ISPs don’t configure CPEs as MPLS edge routers, my impression is that edge routers are often one layer closer to ISP’s core network.
this escalated quickly…
Here is the reasoning: ROS v6 already supported MPLS in Hardware on the CRS317 platform.
This feature was removed (for now) in v7 https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/display/ROS/CRS3xx%2C+CRS5xx%2C+CCR2116%2C+CCR2216+switch+chip+features#CRS3xx,CRS5xx,CCR2116,CCR2216switchchipfeatures-MPLShardwareoffloading
For those using this feature - upgrading to v7 is off the table, although probably L3HW upgrades would be nice.
The thing is if you got MPLS using v6 on these boxes, then you already have some sort of hardware-forwarding, but of course for labels only.
so - imho - those v6 users having mpls in hardware would simply like to see the feature parity in v7 for this, especially for migration-purposes.
Doing routing and other stuff is not exactly new as there were lots of so called Layer3 switches before the 98DX Marvell chipsets, yet MPLS in hardware is not so easy to come by - therefore I hope for the best and a v7 implementation in the not so far future 
keep in mind RouterOS 6 MPLS hardware support was only for CRS 317/309 switch, and Only for P router role, was a very limited scope and not a complete hardware offloaded MPLS solution, with PE role router still on software
It’s not strange at all. LDP requires IPv4 or IPv6 + an IGP to build the forwarding table of label bindings so ensuring that IP forwarding is working correctly with offload is foundational work to enable MPLS and offload.
It’s also the one of the hardest protocols to get right when developing for an ASIC so tackling easier protocols first is understandable.
I can’t wait for MPLS hw offload - it’s going to solve a ton of problems for ISPs and DCs that use MikroTik
primary use-case is VPLS VPNs for customers.
EoIP works great and all but adds tons of overhead and has performance issues at high speeds. would be awesome if we could replace all our EoIP with VPLS.
I’n my view it should be the simpliest. The MPLS FIB is basically Label in & out and swap or pop.
HW NAT and/or HW IPv6 sounds like a logical nightmare.
yes but it runs on top of conventional routing, so not only do you need MPLS to work right, but everything it runs on top of as well.
No. The CPU does the FIB calculation, then the forwarding is done in hardware.
If are there some news about MPLS offload?
I have some pop’s using the CRS305-1G-4S+ who use the Marvell 98DX3236. In the next couple of months, I was planning config MPLS in these equipments.
I’d like to know how would it manage the config?
Looks like MPLS Fast-Path is scheduled for ROS 7.10
https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/display/ROS/Routing+Protocol+Overview
