Which router for good mangle performance. My aging RB2011IL is crippled at 140mbps

Hello,

So a bit of background. Small company in the UK, we had a 100/100mb leased line for a years and we've recently upgraded it to 1G/1G. We are using the RB2011iL-RM at the moment, but are having issues since the upgrade in line speed.

Speed tests are capping out at about 140mbps with the CPU hitting 100%. We aren't using fasttrack, because we have mangle rules to mark incoming connections due to dual WAN.

Our mangle rules are:

add action=mark-connection chain=prerouting comment="Mark incoming connections from VM with connection mark" connection-mark=no-mark connection-state=new in-interface=WAN-VM new-connection-mark=WanVM-CM
add action=mark-connection chain=prerouting comment="Mark incoming connections from BT with connection mark" connection-mark=no-mark connection-state=new in-interface=WAN-BT new-connection-mark=WanBT-CM
add action=mark-routing chain=prerouting comment="Add routing marks to VM marked connections for LAN" connection-mark=WanVM-CM in-interface=LAN new-routing-mark=RouteVM
add action=mark-routing chain=prerouting comment="Add routing marks to BT marked connections for LAN" connection-mark=WanBT-CM in-interface=LAN new-routing-mark=RouteBT

Not sure if I'm doing something in an inefficient way above, but I'm assuming it's the packet mangling that is killing the performance. I tried using fasttrack, and it does improve speed to about 500mbps, but something weird happens with the router and it just slowly dies after about an hour with cpu pegged at 100% even when traffic is low and the connections lists on the web interface showing errors because the list is too long. It also consumes all RAM, so I guess the connection list is getting massive.

Am I doing something really stupid with mangling that is crippling performance. If I can fix performance with this router, I would prefer that as we have a few of this model so can easily setup VRRP for redundancy and have identical routers. If not... I have a spare CRS 317-1G-16S.... Dual CPU @ 800mhz instead of this single core 600mhz cpu... would I get a worthwhile increase in speed using that?

If the CRS 317-1G-16S isn't going to yield decent results, it's hard to judge what router to buy because the performance charts on mikrotik.com only show speed tests with 25 ipfilter rules, which I guess doesn't include mangle rules because the speeds I'm getting are way lower than the RB2011iL is claiming it can do.

Lastly, I'm using the latest release of RouterOS 7

Thanks

Today, to replace 2011, you need to use 5009.

Yep. The rb2011 is a lovely device and your rules could be optimized somewhat, but 1Gbps is simply not possible.

Of the current lineup, the ax2 and 3 can do roughly 1Gbps, with the ax2 being slightly under that line and the ax3 slightly above, depending on configuration.

If it's a business that actually relies on this connectivity for work. I wouldn't hesitate to go with the rb5009. This device can handle it easily.

Perfect thank you. I was guessing the upgrade path would be either the L009UiGS-RM or RB5009UG+S+IN, but given the feedback here I will go for the RB5009UG+S+IN

Only to underline this, the L009 is - for the price - a very good switch BUT a terrible router, in my usual automotive parallel, you were comparing a Fiat Panda with a BMW M3.

That's the proper choice.

Just be careful that the L009 is only a companion in form factor; in routing performance it can only do a fraction of the rb5009 and would be a disappointment in your application.

Thanks everyone, I will go for the RB5009

Excellent choice.
Also, I see in your mangle rule you explicitly identify traffic in mangles as having a connection mark of no-mark.

In this case YES you can still use the fasstrack rule like so.

add action=fasttrack-connection chain=forward comment="defconf: fasttrack" \
    connection-state=established,related connection-mark=no-mark

I know it’s a bit late. I often read about dual wan and mangle rules. today I came across dual wand and rb2011… I do have rb2011 and I get ~700mbps WAN throughput with fasttrack enabled. There is also a dual WAN just for failover and no single mangle rule. Steps you have to do:

  1. Create tables for each of your WAN interfaces to send replies thru the correct interface.
  2. Add recursion routing to check if internet is available and make a switchover.

Here is an example:

/ip route
add check-gateway=ping distance=1 gateway=172.16.0.1 routing-mark=primary
add check-gateway=ping distance=1 gateway=172.17.0.1 routing-mark=backup
add check-gateway=ping distance=4 gateway=8.8.8.8
add check-gateway=ping distance=5 gateway=8.8.4.4
add distance=1 dst-address=8.8.4.4/32 gateway=172.17.0.1 scope=10
add distance=1 dst-address=8.8.8.8/32 gateway=172.16.0.1 scope=10
add distance=10 dst-address=8.8.8.8/32 type=blackhole
add check-gateway=ping distance=1 gateway=172.16.0.1
/ip route rule
add src-address=172.16.0.2/32 table=priamry
add src-address=192.17.0.2/32 table=backup

Just a static example. It's not hard to make it even with dhcp or pppoe.