MikroTik – RouterOS v7 – BGP performance testing for full tables

MikroTik has come a long way since the first release of RouterOS v7 beta.

One of the long-awaited features is improved BGP performance and the ability to leverage multiple CPU cores.

Testing BGP performance is a long process of lab and prod evaluation, so we decided to run some quick and basic tests to get a baseline.

When the CCR2216-1G-12XS-2XQ was released and MikroTik entered the world of 100G, we ordered some right away to test and just got them in the lab a few days ago – the results are below.

Hope this is helpful and look for more BGP perf tests in the coming months!

The BGP testing lab

TLDR; 2.1 million routes learned and forwarding in 46 seconds and withdrawn in 44 seconds. This was tested under a 25 Gbps load on both routers with a cpu load of 12%.

Lab overview: The lab consists of (2) CCR2216 routers running ROSv7.2 stable connected to a ProxMox hypervisor that runs (4) Linux route generators and MikroTik CHRs (also on 7.2) acting as border routers. The specific connectivity is in the overview drawing below.

IPv6: We are currently developing a route generator that will inject IPv4 and IPv6 routes into the test route but it’s not out of development yet. We will include full table perf tests for IPv4 and IPv6 in the future.

PDF is here



RouterOS v7 100G development lab

This lab is part of a larger effort to test all areas of MikroTik RouterOS v7 on a variety of different hardware. We’ve been putting together this lab for a while and here is the topology so far.

PDF is here

ISP Design Guide: Separation of network functions – introduction and overview

PDF link is here


A reference guide for new & existing ISPs that need to understand network functions and separation.

“How do I add redundancy?”
“How do I scale?”
“How do I reduce downtime and operational costs?”

These are questions that I get asked practically every day as a consulting network architect that designs and builds ISPs.

In most cases the answer is the same whether the ISP uses fixed wireless broadband, copper or fiber to deliver the last mile – separation of network functions.

This illustrated guide is intended to define the topic and create visual context for each function using a network drawing. It’s the first in a new series on this subject.

A new series of content

This topic is deep and there is a lot to unpack so this will be the first segment in a series of blog posts and videos covering function separation.

Large ISPs typically already embrace the philosophy of separating network functions, so the focus of this series will be to help new or growing regional ISPs understand the design intent and the challenges/costs of running networks that don’t separate network functions.