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MikroTik RouterOS v7 stable released

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Re: MikroTik RouterOS v7 stable released

#71

Post by zajio1am »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #53
bigyellow wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PC Engines with OpenBSD or Debian Linux. 100% open source hardware, firmware and software, not this closed-source "RouterOS" which is probably bugged.

Yes, this is easily superior to most options; Debian/OpenBSD/whatever is far more trustworthy than any commercial offering (and many noncommercial options), and hostapd isn't especially hard to set up - a bit of effort up front and then you can just sit on it for years with no more maintenance than installing updates (and even that can be automated with unattended upgrades in Debian). The result is a capable little b…

I also use PC Engines Alix with Debian as home router and it is in many ways superior to commercial options, but quality of wifi drivers in Linux is long-term issue.

Also note that in unpatched hostapd channel bonding (40MHz and more channels) does not really work. There is a check whether neighboring channel is crowded (which always is due to overcrowded spectrum) that disables channel bonding. AFAIK Openwrt has patch that allows to override this check, but Debian does not.

As a result, i get consistently higher wifi speeds from commercial wifi APs than from my Alix router.

Re: MikroTik RouterOS v7 stable released

#72

Post by dont__panic »

ok_dad wrote: post #27

So, what's the best wifi gateway with extra access points for a home that I don't have to screw with and doesn't spy on me or have cloud crap? My ISP sent a Google wifi thing but I'd rather pay a few hundred than use that for 10 bucks a month to rent that thing, and I don't trust Google. Edit: Thanks for all the answers, from me and anyone else who was looking! I have some good ideas from the below comments and hopef…

Hot take: All routers completely suck right now, and most of them are built to spy on your network at worst and accidentally expose you to cyberattacks at best.

There are two choices, the way I see it:

1. Invest in a decent router (probably $150-200 at least) and throw openwrt on it. You'll need something with serious CPU beef because openwrt relies more on software than hardware, and most routers use hardware for QoS etc., hence the price tag. You'll also need to actually understand the multitude of settings offered by openwrt if you care at all about security or performance -- this is nontrivial if you aren't already a network engineer.

2. Buy a used Apple Airport router. The last generation support AC wifi, which is... basically as fast as the best things out there right now, barring wifi 6E. On the plus side: this comes with mostly sane defaults and good performance, I easily get 600+ mbps up/down on my gigabit internet. On the downside... I think you can only configure airport routers through macOS (and a mostly-dead iOS app), and they don't let you configure all the settings you might want. A fair tradeoff for good, non-footgun defaults IMO, but YMMV.

There's also the third option of creating some bespoke raspberry pi + wifi hardware solution for yourself, but that's likely to get you punched by your flatmates when it inevitably reboots incorrectly during a power outage or overheats or whatever and suddenly you need to spend 2 hours debugging problems without a working wireless connection and everyone else is pissed they can't use the internet. Unless, of course, you're a brilliant network engineer who would never make a silly mistake or have a bug in their custom router solution.

Which I guess is why most people use Google or Amazon spyware for internet in their homes.

Re: MikroTik RouterOS v7 stable released

#73

Post by iso1210 »

stingraycharles wrote: post #68
Arnt wrote: post #40

Oh neat. I wish to declare that I'm a Mikrotik fanboy. My hardware is ten years old, doesn't break, and Mikrotik supports it on the latest versions, apparently without plans to ever sunset the support. Ooh aah.

Big supporter of Mikrotik here, it’s a perfect middle ground between consumer “crap”, and $10,000 enterprise network equipment. Rolled out a 10gbit / 25gbit network at home. My biggest complaints are: * Wireless is really difficult to get “decent speeds”. I also have my ISP’s router and a Draytek at home, these easily do 500mbit, and it’s nearly impossible to get my router board to do the same. When asking support th…

You can always run routeros on X86 hardware. I think the problem with things like mangle rules run into. Had loss and a hell of a lot of reorders at just 500mbit through a CCR1036 the other week, disabled 100 or so mangle rules and it vanished, but from looking at other routers I think it's more of a limit in the linux kernel (perhaps just the 2.6 one). Maybe routeros7.1 will be better, something to test in the coming weeks.

10/25 feels like a CCR2004? Or are you just talking switching.

If routing remember it isn't full bandwidth - the 170gbit of ports is squished into 2x25 before hitting the CPU[0]. Not sure how much is offloaded to the PIPE.

[0] https://i.mt.lv/cdn/product_files/CCR2004-1G-12Splus2XS_2004...

Re: MikroTik RouterOS v7 stable released

#75

Post by _joel »

core-utility wrote: post #67
bigyellow wrote: post #37

Sincere question: why would someone trust a closed source OS for their router?

Any ISP-provided gateway will be closed source. Cisco products are closed source. Netgear products are closed source. TP-Link products are closed source. Aruba products are closed source. To my knowledge, the only viable open-source project is that one Linksys router/AP combo, and that doesn't necessarily fit the features someone might be looking for. While it's nice to think everything could be open source, in the h…

I've flashed a number of devices with OpenWRT, for a number of vendors.

Re: MikroTik RouterOS v7 stable released

#76

Post by ok_dad »

dont__panic wrote: post #72
ok_dad wrote: post #27

So, what's the best wifi gateway with extra access points for a home that I don't have to screw with and doesn't spy on me or have cloud crap? My ISP sent a Google wifi thing but I'd rather pay a few hundred than use that for 10 bucks a month to rent that thing, and I don't trust Google. Edit: Thanks for all the answers, from me and anyone else who was looking! I have some good ideas from the below comments and hopef…

Hot take: All routers completely suck right now, and most of them are built to spy on your network at worst and accidentally expose you to cyberattacks at best. There are two choices, the way I see it: 1. Invest in a decent router (probably $150-200 at least) and throw openwrt on it. You'll need something with serious CPU beef because openwrt relies more on software than hardware, and most routers use hardware for Qo…

Thanks for that, it is what I figured. I have a really old, nice, router running one of the WRT-like OSes and I really, really don't want to do that anymore. I have a small family and do not want to mess with this stuff. I might just bite the bullet and hook up a few more of the Google routers. I hate using Google, and don't trust them, but I probably trust them more than most other brands in this space. Also, I can't argue that I don't get good performance from their stuff. The only problem is, if I turn off the cloud features with this thing, I can't even do port forwarding or anything! Who the F puts that behind a cloud? Anyways, thanks for the answer.

Re: MikroTik RouterOS v7 stable released

#78

Post by ok_dad »

dprice1 wrote: post #43
ok_dad wrote: post #27

So, what's the best wifi gateway with extra access points for a home that I don't have to screw with and doesn't spy on me or have cloud crap? My ISP sent a Google wifi thing but I'd rather pay a few hundred than use that for 10 bucks a month to rent that thing, and I don't trust Google. Edit: Thanks for all the answers, from me and anyone else who was looking! I have some good ideas from the below comments and hopef…

I used to work on a product for secure small-biz Wifi, and so dogfooded my own product in my house. When that was over and I took that out of my house, I had my eyes on Ubiquiti, and it is an impressive ecosystem. But as others have said, it's out of stock all the time, and Ubiqiti are teasing people right now with their next-gen product which is available but also unobtainable. Eventually I picked the Asus ZenWifi s…

This sounds like a good plan for me, thanks for the information, I will put this on my list of things to research more.

Re: MikroTik RouterOS v7 stable released

#79

Post by wcfields »

willis936 wrote: post #41
ok_dad wrote: post #27

So, what's the best wifi gateway with extra access points for a home that I don't have to screw with and doesn't spy on me or have cloud crap? My ISP sent a Google wifi thing but I'd rather pay a few hundred than use that for 10 bucks a month to rent that thing, and I don't trust Google. Edit: Thanks for all the answers, from me and anyone else who was looking! I have some good ideas from the below comments and hopef…

I bought a used Ruckus R610 on ebay for a modest $160 (not including power adapter). I am extremely happy with the hardware performance and the stability and options of the Unleashed firmware. It says it supports a gateway mode, but as a power user I want a bit more control than what I would expect a WAP to offer. I use an EdgeRouter-4 running whatever the latest official release is. Having separate boxes grants me f…

Before Ubiquiti turned into a garbage fire my go to recommendation for power/performance/budget was used Ruckus APs and pfSense router.

Re: MikroTik RouterOS v7 stable released

#80

Post by ctoth »

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…

I know that the Asuswrt integration with Home-assistant lets me manage devices which is kind of cool, but I too would love a little deeper access via a 3rd party app. Most of these things use web scraping or ssh to the device though, not an actual API as very few routers give access to one.
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