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HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

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Re: HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

#51

Post by byhemechi »

esseph wrote: post #10
hendry wrote: post #7

Switched to Ubiquiti, I'm quite happy except for their lack of a sane MCP.

Ubiquiti unifi has struggled to integrate routing as reliably and as well as the wireless and switching piece. Mikrotik router and unifi everything else has kind of been my go-to for at least 10 or 12y now.

I can't speak for the more "entreprise-y" unifi stuff but the routing on the ubiquiti gear i've used is actually just FRR and if you SSH in you can do a whole lot more than is surfaced through the UI - for example, I have VXLAN running on my UDR7 right now.

It's not something I've tried but I imagine you could actually expose FRR directly and configure through that

Re: HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

#52

Post by denkmoon »

Just use linux! Why use someone else's non FOSS, locked down linux, when you could truly own your router?

It's a great educational experience I would recommend to anyone interested in networking. Grab debian, grab a system with 2 NICs, make it your router/firewall/gateway.

Re: HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

#53

Post by esseph »

byhemechi wrote: post #51
esseph wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubiquiti unifi has struggled to integrate routing as reliably and as well as the wireless and switching piece. Mikrotik router and unifi everything else has kind of been my go-to for at least 10 or 12y now.

I can't speak for the more "entreprise-y" unifi stuff but the routing on the ubiquiti gear i've used is actually just FRR and if you SSH in you can do a whole lot more than is surfaced through the UI - for example, I have VXLAN running on my UDR7 right now. It's not something I've tried but I imagine you could actually expose FRR directly and configure through that

For a long time if you made any changes through the web UI it would overwrite the config. Then you could make changes and it would save. Then they removed it. Then they added it back but it didn't always work. Not sure the current state.

I have like a ~15y history of working with their stuff.

Re: HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

#54

Post by hk1337 »

I am glad, I am 99% sure it's the case, that I don't have to do CGNAT with ATT. Sounds like a pain.

I like ipv6 but I have been thinking of disabling it lately because i cannot technically setup static leases with ipv6 like i can with ipv4, so technically the ipv6 for one of the services in my homelab could change and cause problems.

Re: HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

#55

Post by hk1337 »

zulux wrote: post #3

For me, the era of MikroTik is sort of... now. Don't get me wrong, they make powerful and feature-complete stuff, but their UI sort of assumes you really know what you're doing. I don't know what I'm doing. But my LLM does. I've been able to set up site-to-site VPNs with Mikrotik in fifteen minutes now, rather than the day-long exercise of googling and praying.

I used claude to manage an ansible playbook for managing the mikrotik router. That way I can see the changes being done.

Re: HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

#56

Post by d3Xt3r »

denkmoon wrote: post #52

Just use linux! Why use someone else's non FOSS, locked down linux, when you could truly own your router? It's a great educational experience I would recommend to anyone interested in networking. Grab debian, grab a system with 2 NICs, make it your router/firewall/gateway.

> Grab debian, grab a system with 2 NICs, make it your router/firewall/gateway.

The problem with this (assuming you meant a generic (x86?) system) is that you won't get wire speed processing (no hardware offloading), so network performance will suffer. Unless you buy a dedicated router board (which is typically ARM), like say something like the Banana Pi BPI-R4. But installing/configuring a standard distro line Debian for such a board would be a PITA (if you want to do it right and set it up optimally), so you're better off using a dedicated router distro like OpenWRT.

Re: HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

#57

Post by briHass »

cassianoleal wrote: post #34
cyberax wrote: post #4

Mikrotik is really a sweet spot for routers. It's feature-rich and it has a nice Web UI (or WinBox that is now cross-platform). And Mikrotik as a company is just amazing; they still support hardware that is almost 15 years old. Other routers: 1. OpenWRT is a bit too basic, and updates are hit-and-miss. 2. Ubiquity is a bit too Apple-like, with its reliance on apps and integration. 3. Cisco is WAY too expensive, and t…

In which way is OpenWRT basic?

I was thinking the same thing. I switched from Mikrotik to OWRT because I wanted actual Linux, not a nerfed version of it that made scripting miserable.

Re: HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

#58

Post by kogir »

d3Xt3r wrote: post #56
denkmoon wrote: post #52

Just use linux! Why use someone else's non FOSS, locked down linux, when you could truly own your router? It's a great educational experience I would recommend to anyone interested in networking. Grab debian, grab a system with 2 NICs, make it your router/firewall/gateway.

> Grab debian, grab a system with 2 NICs, make it your router/firewall/gateway. The problem with this (assuming you meant a generic (x86?) system) is that you won't get wire speed processing (no hardware offloading), so network performance will suffer. Unless you buy a dedicated router board (which is typically ARM), like say something like the Banana Pi BPI-R4. But installing/configuring a standard distro line Debia…

I’ve not tried with 10gbps or faster links, but since we’re talking home use my success with 2.5 gbps links on standard amd64 hardware would suggest you’re wrong.

Modern CPUs are quite capable. The problem isn’t performance, but power use.

Re: HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

#59

Post by rpcope1 »

d3Xt3r wrote: post #56
denkmoon wrote: post #52

Just use linux! Why use someone else's non FOSS, locked down linux, when you could truly own your router? It's a great educational experience I would recommend to anyone interested in networking. Grab debian, grab a system with 2 NICs, make it your router/firewall/gateway.

> Grab debian, grab a system with 2 NICs, make it your router/firewall/gateway. The problem with this (assuming you meant a generic (x86?) system) is that you won't get wire speed processing (no hardware offloading), so network performance will suffer. Unless you buy a dedicated router board (which is typically ARM), like say something like the Banana Pi BPI-R4. But installing/configuring a standard distro line Debia…

That's bogus unless you're talking above 10G, in which case the only things typically doing wire level performance are expensive and sold by vendors like Cisco, Juniper or Arista (and maybe it's higher than 10G now). Frankly, the vast majority of ARM based routers, unless you go out of your way, are garbage. Any x86 built in the last 15+ years with a NIC that's also not trash _will_ push at least 1G routed with a non-trivial firewall on a modern Linux kernel no problem. I've still got half a dozen PC Engines APU2 boards that unequivocally will get right at 1G on Debian Trixie; newer ewaste like Dell Wyse thin clients or Optiplexes would absolutely smoke those boards on performance.

Setting up a router with Debian is really kind of overstated in terms of difficulty, and frankly half of everything wraps Debian anyways (looking at you Ubiquiti/Vyatta), so why learn someone else's half cooked configuration language when you can just do the real thing.

Re: HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

#60

Post by SlavikCA »

d3Xt3r wrote: post #56
denkmoon wrote: post #52

Just use linux! Why use someone else's non FOSS, locked down linux, when you could truly own your router? It's a great educational experience I would recommend to anyone interested in networking. Grab debian, grab a system with 2 NICs, make it your router/firewall/gateway.

> Grab debian, grab a system with 2 NICs, make it your router/firewall/gateway. The problem with this (assuming you meant a generic (x86?) system) is that you won't get wire speed processing (no hardware offloading), so network performance will suffer. Unless you buy a dedicated router board (which is typically ARM), like say something like the Banana Pi BPI-R4. But installing/configuring a standard distro line Debia…

from my brief search:

real-world OPNsense (yea, that's not Debian) benchmarks show that even low-power Xeon-D (Skylake-D SoC) with 10G SFP+ NICs:

pushed 9.40 Gbps in plain router mode

7 Gbps with packet filtering and no rules

7 Gbps in NAT mode

5.5 Gbps with a default ruleset

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