Hi, I am experiencing a very strange situation with a X86 server running Mikrotik, at the hours that we have more customers connected the throughput is seriously affected at a point that a connection that in the mornig can pass 15mb only can pass 1mb or less and the strange thing is that my CPU usage shows around 40% free memory 430mb and I have enough bandwith available. So I don't understand what can be causing this. The computer is an IBM server with a P3 HT at 3ghz and 500mb in ram, it is handling around 400 customers with 1mb accounts in hotspot when the problem occurs, 80 filter rules and 130 mangle rules for load balancing 5 wans. When the problem is worst it is handling around 9,500 connections and 55mb of internet traffic.

I think that the problem is because this is too much for the server but why it's only showing 40% cpu load? Any ideas?

Thanks.

Is any wireless involved?

If not, you might print some configs here in the forum so the more skilled guys can take a look at them if they want.
Like now there is not enough information in your post to see what might be a possible cause for this.

Hi, yes there is wireless involved but when I test directly without the Mikrotik the bandwidth is ok, the problem seems to be on the Mikrotik. I don't know if it could have to do with the packets per second but I guess if that would be the case then the Cpu should be showing 100%, I'm really confused.

Regards.

Many things can cause this. What version of ROS are you running and what hardware is it running on? Do you have ANY 100mbit switches in the path? What brand / Model?

Hi, I'm running 5.7 on an IBM X Server Pentium 3HT 3ghz with 512mb in ram, it has 3 4 port ethernet cards and Ubiquiti Airmax APs connected directly to it.

AH!

What are the 4port ethernet cards?

3 Matrox with 82551IT intel chipset and one RB44 with via VT610 chipset.

We have seen a very similar situation with poor performing cards; and IRQ conflicts.

Do you need to have so many 4 port cards in your router?

Yes I have 5 wans, 5 APs and 1 Link to a remote site with 1 RB1100AH and another 5 APs.

Ah, well i think; you should get a switch and Vlan back to one or two 1G eths on your router that way you can have redundancy + performance. So any NICS on one router (x86 for sure) will perform poorly. Atleast in my experience

Right now that router is handling the load balancing, radius server and 5 hotspots. I was thinking to buy a RB1200 (Since I can't get a RB1100AH since they are sold out) and move the 5 hotspots there, what do you think about that?

i would try to move as much load away from the router as possible; via a managed switch. This is how we've decided to operate and we have no throughput issues; we can push 4/500 mbit without much issue