MikroTik router?

My RT-AC87R, which has served me well since the day it hit the market, has finally died on me. Since I bought this router, I haven't kept up with the newest models so I'm now asking for a little advice. My home network has about 40 clients, half are wireless and half are hardwired, but none of them are ever active at the same time. I have 2 managed switches in 2 locations, each has CAT6 wiring running to where my cable modem is and where I keep my router. Before the RT-AC87R, I was using an AC66U, so I've always been happy with the Asus routers, and I've always had them flashed with Merlin's firmware.

I've been looking through some 2015 router buying guides, and I usually see the same brands available. I'm curious, has anyone ever heard of or used a MikroTik router? I've seen this brand mentioned more than a few times, but I can't find much information about this brand of router. Can anyone fill me in on this brand of router, and maybe give some advice on alternatives? A friend of mine had someone come out to his house to install his Control4 automation system, run the cabling all over the property, setup all his AV equipment, and one thing I noticed is that they installed a lot of Ubiquiti Access Points, which I also wasn't familiar with at the time. So, I'm curious to know a little more about these MikroTik routers, I'm wondering if these might be a high end niche router or a cheap piece of junk that no one wants to sell. After all, those Ubiquiti APs worked well and I don't ever see them on the shelves anywhere. Can someone fill me in on these, point me in the direction where I can find out more about them, or just let me know if I should just replace my dead router with another RT-AC87R? Let me also add that I also don't have any want or desire to buy any high end equipment that I would need to take a class to learn how to use it.

Thanks!

I have been researching a proper edge router and MikroTik has quite a following. Their routers are inexpensive too ($30-70 on amazon). Their devices are one of the better platforms for OpenWRT, because MikroTik uses quality hardware.

and there is also Ubiquiti's EdgeRouter Lite for $90.

and you can always get some mini-itx SoC kit and put any OS you want on it.



Too many choices!

roldogg said:

My RT-AC87R, which has served me well since the day it hit the market, has finally died on me. Since I bought this router, I haven't kept up with the newest models so I'm now asking for a little advice. My home network has about 40 clients, half are wireless and half are hardwired, but none of them are ever active at the same time. I have 2 managed switches in 2 locations, each has CAT6 wiring running to where my cable modem is and where I keep my router. Before the RT-AC87R, I was using an AC66U, so I've always been happy with the Asus routers, and I've always had them flashed with Merlin's firmware.

I've been looking through some 2015 router buying guides, and I usually see the same brands available. I'm curious, has anyone ever heard of or used a MikroTik router? I've seen this brand mentioned more than a few times, but I can't find much information about this brand of router. Can anyone fill me in on this brand of router, and maybe give some advice on alternatives? A friend of mine had someone come out to his house to install his Control4 automation system, run the cabling all over the property, setup all his AV equipment, and one thing I noticed is that they installed a lot of Ubiquiti Access Points, which I also wasn't familiar with at the time. So, I'm curious to know a little more about these MikroTik routers, I'm wondering if these might be a high end niche router or a cheap piece of junk that no one wants to sell. After all, those Ubiquiti APs worked well and I don't ever see them on the shelves anywhere. Can someone fill me in on these, point me in the direction where I can find out more about them, or just let me know if I should just replace my dead router with another RT-AC87R? Let me also add that I also don't have any want or desire to buy any high end equipment that I would need to take a class to learn how to use it.

Thanks!

Click to expand...

Microtik, Pfsense, Ubiquiti, others, all have a large User Communities. Typically, the information on these devices, how to config, etc, is found on their respective forums. These devices are considered prosumer and the assumption is, that you have a good grasp on networking theory / configuration, and can manouver a bit through Command Line Interface (CLI) with some Linux know how. The GUI's for these devices are getting better, and do have a config wizard for starting off.

I might get an older model Asus, hopefully can find a refurb, to put in place for the time being, and buy one of these others so I can start to familiarize myself with them. One thing I can say it that he has a 12,000 square foot home and no matter where I was in the house, in the yard, by the pool, in the guesthouse, wherever, I always had a full Wifi signal. The company who does all the IT work for his company, he convinced them to start doing Audio/Video/Home Automation stuff too, so in a 10x10 room, 3 walls are covered with rackmount equipment, but none of his network equipment I had ever seen or heard of before. I think he had either 7 or 8 Ubiquiti APs spread out, all with the same SSID, so as you walk around, one drops you as the stronger signal picks you up. I've never even heard him complaining about any network problems, maybe something about turning on the pool heater from his phone app, but the network was rock solid.

I was just looking at some Asus AC68U routers to get my network up and running until I can familiarize myself with this other equipment, but I saw where Asus has an RT-AC68P router. I know the U and the R routers are identical, but what's up with the P router? Does anyone know what makes the RT-AC68P better than the R and the U versions? It's about $100 more!

here's the SNB review on the 68P. It should describe the differences..

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...-band-wireless-ac1900-gigabit-router-reviewed

mikrotik, ubiquiti, pfsense and cisco (excluding cisco RV) are all catogarised as enterprise and are made with the assumption that whoever is using or buying it will know or have someone who will know how to configure it. If you know a lot of networking getting one of these routers can be rewarding with the amount of control you can have. For example you can use the layer 7 firewall on mikrotik to filter skype messages in as biased a way as you like (you could for example prevent skype communication between 2 people via their IPs). Aside from that their hardware and software are much better than the best consumer router you will find. Mikrotik also uses dynamic routing which means you can route things any way you like, use any port or interface the way you like or even create a virtual interface and they are usually classed as a Cisco alternative (they have cisco features but they perform cisco functions slower than cisco).

If you compare software NAT performance mikrotik routerOS is faster on the same MIPS CPU than a consumer router equivalent (you can compare the RB450G NAT performance to asus N/AC66U).

If you want to try it out, go with a cheap one that uses routerOS, not swOS. Some of their hardware have miniPCIe that you can upgrade or improve wifi on them though you do need the antennas and the right antenna cables if you plan on doing that while their higher end boards have upgradeable ram using standard laptop ram.

you can also install it on a PC or VM but their routerboards can be cheaper than the OS itself for x86

UBNT/MT gear is quite appealing in conversation and yes, their gear smokes the pants of most consumer stuff for many use-case scenarios, but they have to be configured PROPERLY to do so, and it is very easy to screw things up, especially with MikroTik, if you don't know what you're doing or are unfamiliar with the platform(s).

If I were you, I would just grab whatever Asus fits the bill for the time being -- if it's a 68-model, then the "U" variant will be fine (the P isn't worth the small CPU upgrade, especially for that price difference). Then, as time allows, by all means tinker around with an UBNT or MikroTik box, but I wouldn't put one straight into production before you get competent with the way each does things, as well as becoming familiar with a broad grounding in networking principals.

Trip said:

UBNT/MT gear is quite appealing in conversation and yes, their gear smokes the pants of most consumer stuff for many use-case scenarios, but they have to be configured PROPERLY to do so, and it is very easy to screw things up, especially with MikroTik, if you don't know what you're doing or are unfamiliar with the platform(s).

If I were you, I would just grab whatever Asus fits the bill for the time being -- if it's a 68-model, then the "U" variant will be fine (the P isn't worth the small CPU upgrade, especially for that price difference). Then, as time allows, by all means tinker around with an UBNT or MikroTik box, but I wouldn't put one straight into production before you get competent with the way each does things, as well as becoming familiar with a broad grounding in networking principals.

Click to expand...

I have been running the UBNT PoE-5 for a couple of months now. Can certainly see the performance improvement. I have relegated an R7000 I am using to AP duty. It's good to tinker...

Indeed it is -- I just want to make sure the OP avoids as many unnecessary headaches as possible in transition. At least the Asus stuff works for the time being, even if prosumer gear is ultimately in his future.

Yea, no way I'm going ttothrow myself to the wolves and put a piece of enterprise equipment in place when I have no idea how to work it. My friend, who has all this equipment at his house, has his own personal IT department, which I don't have. I went ahead and bought the new Asus RT-AC3200. It'll be here tomorrow.

Comparing the MikroTik router with an Ubiquity AP, I'm sure the AP will be much easier to learn that the MikroTik router, and besides, being an AP, I could use a couple around the house anyway.

I was at my buddy's house the other day and his Vudu Box (yes, he has an actual box made by Vudu) kept buffering so I went into his equipment room to see if I could get the info to login to his switch and find out if everything was running ok (it's odd because from his cable modem, the line runs into a Cisco Switch, the only port used on the switch, and then goes to a 26 port Cisco rack mount switch (I'm guessing 26 but probably more) and about 80% of the ports were empty), but once I got the information off so I could login, it was a totally unfamiliar interface. Looked like it was a firewall too. I just clicked on logout and said I don't know what the hell you have hooked up so I'm not messing with it.

mikrotik has APs too just like ubiquiti but they have indoor APs that are way cheaper and have POE in, SFP and some have miniPCIE.

Wow, thanks for all the info. I guess I'll get by with my consumer grade Asus router, but maybe find an old MikroTik or something on eBay to play with and learn a little more about them.

Sent from my SM-T800 using Tapatalk

That's probably the best approach. Moving forward, the beauty with gear like UBNT/MT is that you get the full-blown OS on even their most intro-level stuff, ie. a $50 EdgeRouter X or RB750 series... so you don't need to go spending hundreds or thousands to get exposure to 90+% of the feature sets, and take your sweet time in learning them.

Just to let you know that when you pick a mikrotik router to play with, try to pick one with at least 400Mhz MIPS CPU and 64MB of ram and with a microSD/SD slot (for storing graphs, logs and other things). If you can find faster with more ram and CPU that would be great such as the RB 450G since there is metarouter for single core routerboards. Metarouter is basically a virtual machine for routers so you could for example easily install openwrt within the routerboard running as a virtual OS which you can create virtual interfaces for and bridge to real interfaces. There are routerboards better than the RB 450G that use single core CPU and have more ram such as the RB1100AH (single core). It mainly depends on how much you want to spend to learn and perhaps if you want use it after you've learnt it. When buying a routerboard with miniPCIE, only the wifi modules on their website are compatible so getting one that has wifi integrated is cheaper than buying the module seperately.

Some routerboards are sold as board only where you have to buy the case and PSU seperately which i suggest choosing a Plug that outputs the lowest acceptable voltage in specs (usually this is 12V for MIPS) and with the output that is higher than the rated wattage especially if you are going to overclock them(which only some can). Using the lowest stable voltage within the voltage range helps your routerboard to last a lot longer.

Once you've learnt how to use mikrotik, you can plug it into your network if you want to add a RADIUS server and some other functionality in their tools and system section such as DNS cache, NTP server, watchdog, wake on LAN with scripts. They also have proxy with cache but they dont support the NTFS file system(despite requests) so you'd need a routerboard with usb, hard drive with FAT32 file system although pfsense proxy is a lot better. You could use a very big SD card or flash drive as cache though since it wont be overwritten much.

System Error Message said:

mikrotik, ubiquiti, pfsense and cisco (excluding cisco RV) are all catogarised as enterprise

Click to expand...

At the risk of offending, with the exception of Cisco, the vendors/platforms you mention are not considered Enterprise or Carrier Grade equipment...

Cisco and Aruba - that's enterprise level gear... Juniper and Brocade are right behind them. The Chinese large telco vendors (ZTE and Huawei) are closing in quick behind them.

There's some decent enterprise class AP's out there - Ruckus, Xirrus, Meru come to mind, and they can be easily integrated into the larger enterprise scope of things.

I'm not trying to put down MicroTik and PFSense, along with UBNT - being honest however, these don't scale to a 10,000 seat or larger enterprise, much less a carrier grade deployment.

sfx2000 said:

At the risk of offending, with the exception of Cisco, the vendors/platforms you mention are not considered Enterprise or Carrier Grade equipment...

Cisco and Aruba - that's enterprise level gear... Juniper and Brocade are right behind them. The Chinese large telco vendors (ZTE and Huawei) are closing in quick behind them.

There's some decent enterprise class AP's out there - Ruckus, Xirrus, Meru come to mind, and they can be easily integrated into the larger enterprise scope of things.

I'm not trying to put down MicroTik and PFSense, along with UBNT - being honest however, these don't scale to a 10,000 seat or larger enterprise, much less a carrier grade deployment.

Click to expand...

I agree. I find the MicroTik and PFSense, along with UBNT fun to play with at home. Although, I might be tempted to run a small shop, maybe on UBNT. I get my fill of the Enterprise stuff at work.

The microtik CCRs are a competitor to the cisco edge routers so i dont see how they arent carrier grade or enterprise when some use them as PPPOE servers and some use them in their core networks.

Just compare their specs and functionality.

The Mikrotik routers are hobbyist routers. I've never seen them in the SMMB space (where Fortinet, Sonicwall, and Cradlepoint dominate) or in the enterprise (where it's Cisco, Juniper, and not much else). I've been doing network consulting for 20 years and have never seen a Mikrotik router in the field.

Thats because they've only recently gone into the high end in the last 3 years.

I'll jump on that band-wagon. After using pfSense at home, I cannot imagine that many uber-pro net-admins run it at the enterprise level. I'll say it is fun, as is the forum, but rock-solid... not for me. Though, my "test it in production" attitude is surely a large part of my reliability problems.


I just randomly picked up my first _real_ Cisco, an 877. I am kinda blown away by how capable the thing is... the amount of documentation on every single protocol, encapsulation, etc is staggering. For $30, it is an undeniable upgrade over my previous ADSL modem/router. I am hoping I can do PPPoE(LAN)PPPoE->Cisco 877->PPPoA(WAN)PPPoA to get a efficiency boost with PPPoA's 1500 vs PPPoE's 1492. iirc, PPPoA can fit a single TCP ACK into a single ATM cell (48 byte payload), while PPPoE can only fit an ACK into 2 ATM cells.