Via c3 mini-ITX - Supported by mikrotik

Hardware MikroTik hardware general
1

Hello.

We currently have roughly 20 routerboard 230’s out in the field loaded with level 5. Most have 4 5.8 atheros mini pci cards for backbone, and prism 2.4 cards for client connect. We are not getting the bandwidth that we are expecting. We were thinking of upgrading our router boards to VIA C3 mini-ITX boards as the units are mostly mounted on the towers. Would this be a good idea and is it supported by Mikrotik. Many thanks.

2

Update to my own post : We looking into using the VIA Edan ESP power for lower power consumption and fanless operation. thanks again

3

VIA make great CPUs, low power consumption and low cost
BUT we (and some other users) experienced lock-ups at high speed on all the VIA platforms we have tried.
The most likely cause is the way the peripherals use the PCI bus. We had a custom BIOS written for one platform, which solved the problem, but it’s not commercially available.

You might get away with this solution if you don’t have high traffic, but personally, I would not recommend it.

Regards

4

Oh dear, the edit button seems to have vanished …
What I meant was, you might get away with using VIA motherboards with standard BIOS, but I don’t recommend it.
BTW the problems were with Ethernet<>Atheros bridged traffic, doesn’t occur just using the on-board ethernet.

5

appeared back…

6

I’ve never used them for wireless, but they work great for wired ethernet. Sort of a bigger brother than the rb532. Especially helpful since I had trouble obtaining 532’s due to backorders and such.

http://store.yahoo.com/rackmountmart/newrmexshor1.html

7

could you get one of the RM1101s and just order routeOS on a flash card and be good to go for wired routing?

or do you need to do something special or patch the flash card?

tks! ive been looking EVERYWHERE for a faster rb532 altern.

8

I get MT routerOS on an IDE disk-module flash from wisp-router.com, plug it in and go.

9

I can’t say if the Via boards suck in bridge mode because the place we use them we route.
But, I can say that their working out very well for us. I’m running one side of a dual nstreme link with one of Eje’s thinrouters. It’s the VIA 533mhz system.
We get 45mbps full duplex. Thats 90mbps total!