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HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

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Re: HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

#81

Post by BLKNSLVR »

cassianoleal wrote: post #48
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if a bit on the expensive side. chokes on coffee From my old-man, everything-is-stupidly-expensive point of view, this is my scale: cheap side | reasonable | expensive side | Deciso boxes

I'm not disagreeing but they are quite powerful and fanless, with generous networking ports and both RAM and SSD can be upgraded. I haven't been able to find many other devices that tick so many boxes. These seem to exist on a class of their own.

Yep, and I can't disagree with that either, they know their niche (and know they're niche) and are catering to it.

Having said that, mikrotik hardware running OpenWRT feels like something that might scratch one of my itches.

Re: HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

#82

Post by self_awareness »

In Poland, Play.pl sets up IPv6 by default. One phone call to ISP to disable the hidden firewall on their router gives us full IPv6 network transparency, no NATs are needed anymore. I highly recommend after installing a firewall appliance (for example OPNsense, but probably Mikrotik should have it as well). IPv6 "feels" like how networks should work since the beginning. IPv4 feels like a legacy technology.

They of course also have a DS-Lite AFTR gateways to tunnel the IPv4 traffic. In practice, everything works (for me at least).

Re: HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

#83

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

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.

>Why use someone else's non FOSS, locked down linux, when you could

All my life I have had to make do with junk I could get at Walmart or Best Buy. Got tired of it. Cheap plastic shit that would inevitably shit the bed just a month or two after the warranty expired. I'm not making the IT helpdesk wages I was making 30 years ago... fuck that. While I couldn't spend ten grand on home networking, I could finally spend a little something on hardware that's not total shit.

Got the CCR2004-16G-2S+. No stupid ONTs, either, just the SFP+ modules. Plenty of backup 1gig ports if I get a third WAN (thinking about getting Starlink on standby). Actual proper fucking APs that do seamless handoff (hell, one of them probably covers the footprint of my house, if I'm honest). And no more shitty GUI configuration pages. I just shell in and band out commands on the command line (at least three times til I get the syntax right, but who gives a fuck).

Wish they made something with 3 or 4 SFP+ ports that I didn't need a rack for.

Re: HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

#84

Post by self_awareness »

hk1337 wrote: post #54

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.

Android (phones, tv boxes) doesn't respect DHCPv6 IA_NA, but it should respect DHCPv6 IA_PD. Unless you have some other system that doesn't respect DHCP? Linuxes, Windowses, Playstation 5's support DHCPv6 IA_NA without problems.

But also, even if a device doens't support DHCPv6 IA_NA, you can always also have a DNS server in your network, and you can bind SLAAC-generated Android addresses to simple subdomains. This seems better than DHCP anyway.

Re: HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

#85

Post by cyberax »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #74
cyberax wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For things like multiple DHCP/PD servers for multiple networks, subnetting (with dynamic prefixes), firewall rules, etc.

You can actually ditch the GUI and go to the command line with OpenWrt and do custom/weird/power-user stuff to your heart's content.

Well, yes. But I can do that with a nice UI in Mikrotik.

Other things: switch port management and bridging, proxy ARP, and so on.

Re: HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

#86

Post by bdavbdav »

bombcar wrote: post #21
bdavbdav wrote: post #15

Frustratingly I couldn’t find a Mikrotik that would offer me a few SFPs, and a 2.5 or two. I wanted ideally just 3 SFPs - two WAN for LB / Failover and one up to switch. 2.5g WAN would do but would rather SFP for future use. UDM-SE it is for now.

What exactly did you need and how did https://mikrotik.com/product/crs305_1g_4s_in not do it? It says switch but it runs routerOS and can route at some speed - not 10G tho.

Caps at at 1500 routing :(

Re: HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

#87

Post by 28304283409234 »

mmis1000 wrote: post #78
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.

Plus the routeros supports exporting all settings directly as text file. so you can really export the whole system, send it to llm and ask it to edit. install the new rule. in worst case you just install the old rule back if it fuck up, no really damage can happen.

Plus, safe mode. You can enable safe mode, mess around, and with a reboot you are back to known-good state.

Re: HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

#88

Post by h4kunamata »

MikroTik is a nightmare from what I have heard, companies who invested hundreds of thousands of dollars cannot wait for the contract to expire to replace everything.

For homelab, you are far better served buying a second hand Sophos baremetal/server rack mounted, and installing OPNSense in it.

I have a 2nd hand Sophos SG210 Rev3 from eBay, replaced the Celeron CPU with an i7 one, 16GB, new SSD, dual 10G NIC, it had been running like a dream.

Re: HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

#89

Post by gorkish »

protocolture wrote: post #47
bombcar wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly did you need and how did https://mikrotik.com/product/crs305_1g_4s_in not do it? It says switch but it runs routerOS and can route at some speed - not 10G tho.

CRS is the switch product line and you would not believe how many professional network engineers do exactly as you have suggested and installed a CRS and asked why it locks up when routing.

CRS are L3 switches; they are supposed to route and run dynamic routing protocols and do ECMP and all the good stuff so long as you dont configure features like nat and firewall that require the cpu and cant be offloaded.

The one thing that it frustratingly does not support that I wish it did is stateless bgp with ipv4 prefixes. It cant offload an ipv4 packet with an ipv6 next hop.

Re: HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

#90

Post by bloqs »

h4kunamata wrote: post #88

MikroTik is a nightmare from what I have heard, companies who invested hundreds of thousands of dollars cannot wait for the contract to expire to replace everything. For homelab, you are far better served buying a second hand Sophos baremetal/server rack mounted, and installing OPNSense in it. I have a 2nd hand Sophos SG210 Rev3 from eBay, replaced the Celeron CPU with an i7 one, 16GB, new SSD, dual 10G NIC, it had b…

Power consumption?
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