RouterOS does have a L7 firewall but what it can do is mainly what the firewall can do with something. To use L7 you must add the hash to it, it doesnt have pre-recognised L7 but you can for example add the skype hash and prevent skype file transfers but it would require scripts to check each http request from L7 to implement adblock.If you want layer 7 tools you should be looking at UTM firewalls. They are much superior to routers for layer 7. Routers were really designed for layer 3. Some perform more.
RouterOS does have a L7 firewall but what it can do is mainly what the firewall can do with something. To use L7 you must add the hash to it, it doesnt have pre-recognised L7 but you can for example add the skype hash and prevent skype file transfers but it would require scripts to check each http request from L7 to implement adblock.
I am contributing a review in a months time or 2, I just need to get back to my CCR and start making tutorials, pictures and such. I've already told thiggins that as well.
My review will cover the Mikrotik CCR1036, CRS226 and RB450G. The CCR is also faster than a PC based router. Comparing the CCR1036 and a computer at that speed, you would need expensive network cards just to match the port capacity of the CCR1036.
/opinion
small audience here for such an exotic beast.
That company (w/80 employees) is on my forever black list for nonchalantly shipping products with beau coup bugs, leaving me at a customer's field site in nowhere-land with no hope. Tinker-things, not products.
/endopinion
http://www.mikrotik.com/aboutus
Consumer router are now lagging internet speeds for home use. If you want to fully utilize the fastest home internet connections we need faster routers. Right now you have few selections, mainly PC based.
While on holiday in Indonesia this summer, I noticed that each and every hotel was using ubiquiti or Mikrotik access points, all with Mikrotik routers. Performance was impressive, better than most hotels here in Europe.
We're hitting design limitations of the current architectures - mostly inspired by the Linksys WRT54G and the GPL dump from it... more CPU/RAM and faster ports/WiFi, but generally not much different across any and all vendors...
I don't think it's vendor related - but mostly on design and integration - Last year I did a tour in Japan, and the hotel WiFi was amazing, and the wired Ethernet drops were even better... and that was Cisco and Aruba gear for the most part (and one place was Huawei based).
Not much free WiFi over there, but they've got insanely fast bandwidth throughout all the major cities (I was in Yokohama, Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Kyoto, Miyazaki, and Kagoshima)..
Heck - Asia in general is well beyond what we expect in the US... residential or hotspots...
Worst hotel WiFi in the past year - Doubletree in Overland Park, KS (just outside of the Sprint headquarters) - 11g, but very unstable and almost useless - 5 Mbps at best - I was better off using the hotspot mode in my 4G smartphone... again, Cisco...
The proxy server on routerOS is a bit buggy. When the cache fills up you cant empty it (really sucks if you used ram) which slows it down and apparently for it to function properly anyone can access it. For some reason it doesnt follow the access list and i had bots trying to use it as a way to get money by browsing ads so i defeated the bots using the tarpit rule and decided to use 3s whitelists only to IPs requested by the proxy/LAN clients. Doesnt help with proxy use because many websites that used redirects and such didnt load.
I really hope they fix it soon or this is going in the review.
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