Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

MikroTik RouterOS v7 stable released

mikrotik.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 188 posts

Re: MikroTik RouterOS v7 stable released

#11

Post by InTheArena »

I would really like to see a open source alternative that can interface with all sorts of different hardware to manage my infrastructure with a single pane of glass. Sorta Ubiquti - but leveraging things like the Unifi API & the new REST api on Microtek to get me out of vendor lock in.

I don't think I have ever seen anything along those lines out there.

Im actually happy with my unifi setup - but there are some things (like multiple load balanced WAN ports) that should be easy to do, but instead are impossible.

Re: MikroTik RouterOS v7 stable released

#12

Post by dcow »

detaro wrote: post #9
ericcholis wrote: post #8

Does MikroTik live in the same prosumer space that made ubiquiti products so popular early on?

On the nerdier side of that. More exotic features, lot less nice UI, lots of (cheap) lower-performance options and sometimes obscure product variations. I.e. among people where I know what kind of stuff they have, anybody vaguely technical might have an Ubiquiti AP for their WiFi, whereas the people that love to tinker with networking stuff have some mikrotik device somewhere to play with.

I landed on MikroTik for a recent build because you simply can’t get Ubiquity right now. And I’m glad I did, what a great product. Checkout their newest RB5000 and CCR2000 series. Very powerful arm cores with sfp+ options at an incredibly reasonable price.

Re: MikroTik RouterOS v7 stable released

#13

Post by brightball »

detaro wrote: post #9
ericcholis wrote: post #8

Does MikroTik live in the same prosumer space that made ubiquiti products so popular early on?

On the nerdier side of that. More exotic features, lot less nice UI, lots of (cheap) lower-performance options and sometimes obscure product variations. I.e. among people where I know what kind of stuff they have, anybody vaguely technical might have an Ubiquiti AP for their WiFi, whereas the people that love to tinker with networking stuff have some mikrotik device somewhere to play with.

This is also my experience. Best technical person I know recommended it.

Re: MikroTik RouterOS v7 stable released

#14

Post by dcow »

28304283409234 wrote: post #7
beebeepka wrote: post #3

I've been thinking about going with Mikrotik at least twice but never pulled the trigger because I am sort of a chicken shit. Is it easy for a noob to setup things like port forwarding and vlans on a router/ap box?

I would suggest looking at their wiki and screenshots or youtube of their UI. I've managed cisco amd juniper routers. And I can't make heads nor tails of it. As soon as you wonder off the default track, you're expected to understand deep level networking terminology abstracted in a UI tailored for experts.

To setup port forwarding you have to understand how to configure the firewall, yes. This is both a drawback for simple use cases but a boon for more advanced ones. It cuts both ways. Personally I think it’s rather unfair to call the UI unintelligible. If you don't like it just ssh to it and configure it that way. Everything you can do is packaged up in a nice command structure.

Re: MikroTik RouterOS v7 stable released

#15

Post by jedahan »

InTheArena wrote: post #11

I would really like to see a open source alternative that can interface with all sorts of different hardware to manage my infrastructure with a single pane of glass. Sorta Ubiquti - but leveraging things like the Unifi API & the new REST api on Microtek to get me out of vendor lock in. I don't think I have ever seen anything along those lines out there. Im actually happy with my unifi setup - but there are some thing…

OpenWISP looks to be the furthest along, though right now I think it only supports OpenWRT https://openwisp.io/docs/index.html

Re: MikroTik RouterOS v7 stable released

#17

Post by dcow »

vorpalhex wrote: post #2

Exciting! This should include native wireguard support..

Yep! I’ve been using the beta and it’s awesome. What other vendors include native WG support? Historically the concept of a performant VPN router pushed you into the realm of enterprise level expensive hardware. Now you can do it on cheap arm cores. It’s game changing.

Re: MikroTik RouterOS v7 stable released

#18

Post by mindslight »

beebeepka wrote: post #3

I've been thinking about going with Mikrotik at least twice but never pulled the trigger because I am sort of a chicken shit. Is it easy for a noob to setup things like port forwarding and vlans on a router/ap box?

I've got a few Mikrotik devices (CRS328, CSS326). Maybe I just haven't gotten it, but I find their RouterOS WebUI extremely confusing. Like go into three separate top-level tabs to assign a VLAN to a port. The CLI is okay, once you get stuff working and just need to duplicate/modify lines.

Mikrotik's SwOS is alright and has most of the options you'd expect from a switch, but is missing the ability to have a human readable text config. I've got a Netgear switch as well, and I'd label its obtuseness on par with RouterOS. At the end of the day it seems every network vendor has their own bespoke proprietary UI that you have to suffer through.

In general I'm much more at home with Linux's iproute2/bridge-utils/nft. What I really want is some low power switches that can run OpenFlow or the like so I can centralize all the config back to my Linux router. On a home network, most devices shouldn't be talking directly among themselves anyway!

Another thing I really want is for network switches to have an RGB LED on each port that can indicate what VLAN it's configured for.

Re: MikroTik RouterOS v7 stable released

#19

Post by oriettaxx »

vorpalhex wrote: post #2

Exciting! This should include native wireguard support..

Yes, exactly!!

Wireguard is a must for us now! I've been using professionally on MikroTik, too, almost everything worked as expected!

(only some issue with being able to export settings... I hope it's solved now)

Re: MikroTik RouterOS v7 stable released

#20

Post by sandGorgon »

beebeepka wrote: post #3

I've been thinking about going with Mikrotik at least twice but never pulled the trigger because I am sort of a chicken shit. Is it easy for a noob to setup things like port forwarding and vlans on a router/ap box?

yes. but more importantly, they are extremely popular - big ecosystem of freelancers.

you can go on fiverr and upwork and get someone to remotely configure/manage it for you.

Post reply on HN