[HN Gopher] Review: A Dive into Mikrotik's Weird SmartNIC (2022)
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Review: A Dive into Mikrotik's Weird SmartNIC (2022)
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 136 points
Date : 2023-12-02 07:21 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (alyx.sh)
(TXT) w3m dump (alyx.sh)
| Roritharr wrote:
| I just bought this the other day to setup a VPN to guard the IPMI
| interface in a 2U server I could cheaply house in some otherwise
| unmanaged rackspace. It's a pretty nifty piece of kit, but I
| still have to get better at understanding RouterOS.
| mrweasel wrote:
| I've been playing around with RouterOS, but it's not the
| easiest thing to get started with. There's plenty of
| documentation, but it often feels like they really want you to
| take the Mikrotik training, rather than you figuring it out for
| yourself. It's really interesting hardware though.
| cedricgle wrote:
| Does it support DPDK for fast packet processing or maybe SR-IOV
| ?. Given the price tag, I suppose it doesn't, but the
| documentation is sparse.
| naushit wrote:
| I dont think you can install your own OS on this, yet? :) ,
| in order to do 25GBPS on ARM, I am sure they are doing some
| sort of DPDK ( I mean user space networking.). I would love
| to learn more on how do they achieve 25GBPS on this little
| arm64.
| jpc0 wrote:
| Almost guarantee that they aren't doing 25GBPS on the arm
| chip but on the dedicated ASIC.
|
| I know for most of the Mikrotik platforms what gets
| offloaded to the ASIC and what gets handled by the CPU is a
| big deal in performance tuning and selecting the correct
| product for your use case.
| jdboyd wrote:
| Lack of SR-IOV is mentioned in the article.
| Krasnol wrote:
| Had a router by them for a long time. It was fantastic but it
| took me months to set it up in a way that I'd be confident to
| put it to live service. It was a nice hobby project, and it
| paid off.
|
| Now I had replaced it with a FritzBox as it's popular here in
| Germany, and my SO may be able to do something with it when I'm
| not there. As a new hobby project, I have a RB5009UG+S+IN lying
| around...waiting for me to get into the flow again...maybe
| around Christmas...
| WolanPe wrote:
| I love RouterOS and have been using it extensively for home and
| soho. And I absolutely agree: it can bee a pain to set it up.
| Every little part of it is complicated enough to spend hours
| on. Setting up networks can take long long hours. But
| documentation has improved lately and you can also watch their
| own YouTube channel, which has some useful videos. Also you
| should try using their forum, which is full of helpful guys.
| Don't let yourself get scared, if someone gets very rough with
| you, though! On the other hand you can tune it in endless ways.
| markonen wrote:
| I think the crucial flaw here for the IPMI/BMC access use case
| is the fact that the card requires the server to be powered on
| to function. So if you accidentally turn the server off it's
| game over for remote access.
| Roritharr wrote:
| Yes, but not a very deep problem in my case since I can order
| Remote Hands for this very niche scenario. A reboot doesn't
| let it loose power and that's all this is going to see for
| the forseeable future.
| ZiiS wrote:
| The only odd thing is the price:
|
| Given it is the cheapest NIC in its class it should be a mass
| market product in high demand. The fact you get a free router
| built in is a cherry on top for the few who need it. If so why is
| it in such limited supply?
|
| Alternatively it is a way to save rack space for people who need
| to squeeze in a router that doesn't fit. But if this is a niche
| marker router why is it so cheep?
| my123 wrote:
| > why is it so cheap
|
| Using a high volume Amazon chip. Sadly the software stack is
| not what this thing deserves. It's a full blown DPU used with
| something very minimalistic SW wise.
| tyingq wrote:
| > why is it in such limited supply?
|
| The article makes a pretty good case that it's because it's
| poorly described, marketed, documented, etc. It might be a
| unique gem, but nobody can figure out what it can really do,
| what it's sweet spot is, etc. So, low demand means low supply.
| zamadatix wrote:
| It never really got a chance to be in demand though. It was
| announced, received a ton of press, had a delay u til a paper
| launch, then has staid somewhere between "hard to find" and
| "not available" since. A lot of MikroTik products tend to be
| niche but they aren't usually this difficult.
| mastax wrote:
| Maybe they're only given a limited supply of basically
| overstock chips from AWS. When AWS is building out data centers
| they need all the chips. Just speculating.
|
| (Annapurna is the CPU company Amazon bought)
| benj111 wrote:
| >suggest using it in a file server and a workstation, with a
| copper DAC in between
|
| What is dac in this context? I'm guessing it isn't digital
| analogue converter.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Direct Attach Cable, ie an end-to-end copper cable.
|
| https://www.servethehome.com/what-is-a-direct-attach-copper-...
| buildbot wrote:
| Direct attached cables - vs. an optics module with fiber that
| you then plug into it, or an rj45 module you plug a cat 5/6/7
| cable into.
| benj111 wrote:
| Ok, my only other guess was digital audio cable.
|
| TLAs (three letter acronyms) are hard.
| consp wrote:
| In the network world context it's quite obvious and I guess
| that is what it is written for. For those not in that
| context I guess it's quite understandably confusing.
| buildbot wrote:
| Also either network people get it wrong, or the optics
| modules really are DACs? Now I am confused too haha :
| https://serverlabs.blogspot.com/2019/10/a-study-about-
| sfp-mo...
|
| Tangentially... you could build a SFP module that uses a
| digital to analog converter, outputting the data as a
| range of voltages vs 1/0s. Hook it up to a speaker for
| terrible audio. Then listen to it with a microphone
| hooked up to an Analog to digital converter sfp module on
| the other end!
| flumpcakes wrote:
| 99% of the time when someone is talking about 'DAC' in a
| physical networking context it will be direct attached
| cable.
|
| These types of cables are literally just copper wire
| connecting pins at either end. In comparison to fibre
| optics which require transceivers with their own logic
| and encoding circuitry within the SFP modules themselves.
|
| Edit: I think this article is actually pretty harmful, I
| don't think people would normally think of networking as
| DAC/ADC...
|
| > When it comes to copper cable communications, digital
| signals are converted as electric signals (analog
| signals).
|
| The signal is still digital, it's not "analog" at all. Is
| data being read from your hard drive over a SATA cable
| "analog"?
|
| You would call the chip that does the encoding for the
| physical medium the 'PHY' chip - not an DAC/ADC.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Fully agree. Thinking of network transceivers as digital
| to analog converters (DACs) is just as conflating as
| thinking of pulse width modulation (PWM) controllers as
| DACs. Analog to digital converters (ADCs) and DACs are
| referring to the fact the actual analog signal you
| input/output is the ground truth value of the data not
| that the digitally encoded signal is being sent in the
| real world on a wire. The difference is if the signal is
| distorted on the way to the other end of the cable it's
| still (within tolerances) decoded back to the same
| digital value despite the changes in the physical signal.
| buildbot wrote:
| Yeah I totally agree with this as well.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| She has an addendum here https://alyx.sh/posts/deploying-the-
| ccr2004-1g-2xs-pcie/
| qwertox wrote:
| Link to the product site which also includes an embedded video:
| https://mikrotik.com/product/ccr2004_1g_2xs_pcie
| WolanPe wrote:
| It's got an AL32400. At least my exemplar, I have removed the
| heatsink once. Also you normally don't have to worry about the
| lifecycle of a Mikrotik product. Almost everything they released
| since they were founded is still usable and you can install a
| currently supported RouterOS version on it.
| WolanPe wrote:
| One more addition, as I've just seen the addendum of the review
| mentions that there is almost nothing in the user manual: the
| Manuals in the Mikrotik world only describe HW specific quirks.
| You have to go to: help.mikrotik.com Then study it for a few
| hours, days...
|
| Here is the description for passthrough:
| https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/display/ROS/Ethernet#:~:text=...
| CobaltFire wrote:
| Just got one of these in for my home lab. Haven't tossed it in to
| play with it yet, but this is one of the few reviews out there
| for it. Fits my use case perfectly.
| teleforce wrote:
| It seems that Jeff already has this SmartNIC tested with CM4 but
| not the latest RPi 5 new PCIe [1].
|
| RPi 5 set up will make a poor man's high speed multi-port router
| with in-network computing capability, nice!
|
| [1] Raspberry Pi PCIe Database: MikroTik CCR2004-1G-2XS-PCIe:
|
| https://pipci.jeffgeerling.com/cards_network/mikrotik-ccr200...
| ron0c wrote:
| While a cool experiment. I don't understand why you'd use this
| on a RPi unless your poor-man's server was already the RPi.
| Isn't that the beauty of this device is it's a router/firewall
| on a board that takes up 0-U space?
| graton wrote:
| Looks like these are now in stock at Getic for $160 each.
|
| https://www.getic.com/product/mikrotik-ccr2004-1g-2xs-pcie
|
| I've bought Mikrotik gear from them before. They ship to the USA.
| CobaltFire wrote:
| This is where I got mine, came in last week. Zero issues.
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(page generated 2023-12-02 23:01 UTC)