What would I need for bandwidth management?

RouterOS General
1

I am trying to figure out what I should purchase for bandwidth management system.
Here is my setup
2 APs (motorola canopy)
1 Switch
1 2600 Cisco Router
1 Server

APs plugged into switch
Server plugged into switch
Router plugged into switch
3 MB bandwidth, 80+ users, would like to scale to 300 users (obviously more BW as well)
Basically a normal simple network.


I want to monitor bandwidth usage, or at least get who is using bandwidth at a certain time. All users have a public IP on the internet, so I assume I need to use bridging. I am not sure which products I should get to accomplish what I am wanting to do.

Is setting up a bridge to just do bandwidth management difficult with the product? I do not have a system that I can test with yet, but will be getting one soon.

Thanks!

2

I suggest you purchase MT RouterOS 2.9. This will come after the router giving the opportunity to monitor, limit or manage your bandwidth as you like.

I am also using it and its effective.

Paul

3

what about the routerboards? 200 or 500 series?
Are these the same as loading the os on a linux box? I need something small and suitable for outside.

4

It all depends on what you’re going to be using it for…

The RB200/500 series boards should be more than powerful enough for 80 users, but if you want to expand and add more queues, etc, then thats going to use up RAM. All in all the RB532 will suite your needs for now but it might be worth looking at like a mini-ITX solution with higher processing power and expandable RAM for more scalability and performance. However with that come additional problems for outdoor use, power, and heat to name a few. All of which can be solved by the type of enclouser and the clock speed of your processor.

It just depends on the amount of bandwidth you’re pushing through the device and if you’re going to be manipulating packets and queueing that will also add some overhead.

So you have a choice do you have the time and money to spend on developing a custom high powered solution or using a prepackaged routerboard from MT that’s relatively inexpensive..

5

max would be 10MB, maybe 200-300 users

I would like a simple solution, but don’t want to have to go in 2 months any buy something (and configure something) again