Mikrotik ...... and other routers and AP's?

[490808]

I have a bit of a thing for Mikrotik atm, so thought I'd start a thread. As Mikrotik make routers then it could just as easily be a general thread for chatting about routers but I'll stick with Mikrotik to start off.

I mentioned in another thread that this



can be a cheap way to get hold of a Mikrotik router to play around with (they are often under a tenner including delivery if you have prime). I've certainly found two of them handy for creating a small lab. The only downside to that particular router is its speed. I thought the 2.4GHz radios in them would be poor but they have massively exceeded my expectations and I've used them for a link across my yard out to a shed. Twenty quid for a wireless link can't be bad.

In the same vein I noticed that Liberty Shield also sell another Mikrotik router



which is of course configured to use Liberty Shields service. Now its possible to buy that router for around the same money except all the places I've looked want to charge me for delivery which makes the Amazon deal very favourable provided you can follow a few instructions for getting rid of the Liberty Shield software. This device is Gigabit on every port and has 2.4GHz and 5GHz radios. If anyone locally wants me to do a home network for them it will be on my recommended list.

Talking of recommendations. Anyone looking after a largish office network up to say 50 PC's (probably more?) might find Mikrotiks free the Dude software loaded on a MicroSD card (or USB key) on a RouterBoard hEX useful



What the Dude software gives you is the almost instant gratification of a diagram of your network setup (if you try it you need to use an older version as I couldn't get the latest version of the client to work on windows 10 or 11 - hopefully that will be fixed soon)



However it does far more than that I have that router and I'm not even using it for routing. Its just plugged into my network on a subnet on its own and it can still find all the stuff I have plugged into my network, including one AP I'd forgotten all about I like this particular router because it can take an micro SD Card which is tidier than having a USB device sticking out the side of it. The Dude seems to work on any Mikrotik router that has a USB and or micro SD card port.

Now the learning curve for Mikrotik gear can be rather steep however I feel anyone that knows what an IP address is can set one up and use their preconfigured scripts to have a working router very quickly.

[PogMoThoin]

I'm in the same boat I have a house full of Mikrotik gear, a CRS rack mount router with VPN server, 3x Vlans and use Capsman with 2x wAPs and an RB951. Capsman is similar to Ubiquiti Unifi more functional but without the bells and whistles, the controller runs on the CRS router. I've configured Ubiquiti Unifi commercially in warehouses, hotels, guest houses etc so I went with Capsman at home to mess about and get an understanding for it.

I've a good bit of experience with point to point and point to multi point, I've used both Ubiquiti and Mikrotik, Mikrotik is better. You can set it to their own protocols instead of 802.11 and get better speeds. Just lately I've started using Airspan Mimosa for work and it's the dogs gonads!

I'm well impressed with HP Aruba also, I've not configured it but seen the setup, it looks great, it's something I'd love to mess with