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HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

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Re: HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

#11

Post by esseph »

m463 wrote: post #6
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…

on the other hand i got a mikrotik a while back and while setting it up it was silently phoning home. I installed openwrt and then installed it on many mikrotik routers over the years. to be honest, not so much traditional routers (wifi+4-5 ports) but on ~10 port mikrotik switches for my infra. i've since been switching to zyxel gs1900-* switches (up to 48 ports with openwrt)

> on the other hand i got a mikrotik a while back and while setting it up it was silently phoning home

Yes, I think it connects to the mikrotik cloud automatically to setup a usable external DNS to your device, but I believe access to it is turned off by default unless you turn it on.

https://manual.mikrotik.com/docs/network-management/cloud/

https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/spaces/ROS/pages/197984280/Ba...

The other reason is for updates, it can check periodically for firmware updates.

But outside of that it's not like streaming network telemetry or anything like that.

Re: HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

#13

Post by threatofrain »

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…

Check out Glinet.

Re: HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

#15

Post by bdavbdav »

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.

Re: HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

#16

Post by SlavikCA »

About 2 years ago I tried to use Mikrotik, as the router for my ATT Fiber.

It's royal pain.

Basic router setup is not hard.

Port forward to expose web server? Can be done after heavy docs&forum reading, but hair pinning never worked for me.

I checked their WiFi AP. It's UI is hard even for senior software engineer.

In the end I got opnSense installed in VM on Proxmox and it's my router for last 2 years.

I'm using 2 Mikrotik switches with their simplified UI to operate VLANs. Zero complains.

Re: HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

#17

Post by bombcar »

SlavikCA wrote: post #16

About 2 years ago I tried to use Mikrotik, as the router for my ATT Fiber. It's royal pain. Basic router setup is not hard. Port forward to expose web server? Can be done after heavy docs&forum reading, but hair pinning never worked for me. I checked their WiFi AP. It's UI is hard even for senior software engineer. In the end I got opnSense installed in VM on Proxmox and it's my router for last 2 years. I'm using 2 M…

It wasn’t terribly complicated for me but I seem to be built for the old Cisco style iOS.

But with an LLM it’s easier than falling off a log and the command line means it can do everything easily.

Re: HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

#18

Post by bombcar »

rafal_opilowski wrote: post #5
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.

LLMs certainly help out - in my case, agent helped with searching through various web forums about how my ISP authenticates and sets up Internet connection. Nevertheless let's give MikroTik, where it's due: * new documentation page is much cleaner to browse * tutorials on their YouTube channel are quite informative * WinBox v4 has in my opinion much more pleasent UX/UI than v3

I’m going to admit it took me too many years to realize there is a Mac Winbox client - I assumed it was a windows only thing.

Re: HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

#19

Post by Jnr »

I just got a backup ISP at home and connected fiber directly to Mikoritk using SFP dongle instead of the box provided by ISP.

Scripts on RouterOS handle network checks for failover, DNS updates, etc.

I got that Mikrotik home router 10 years ago and it is still performing great and handles most of the use cases without issues.

Re: HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

#20

Post by socalgal2 »

SlavikCA wrote: post #16

About 2 years ago I tried to use Mikrotik, as the router for my ATT Fiber. It's royal pain. Basic router setup is not hard. Port forward to expose web server? Can be done after heavy docs&forum reading, but hair pinning never worked for me. I checked their WiFi AP. It's UI is hard even for senior software engineer. In the end I got opnSense installed in VM on Proxmox and it's my router for last 2 years. I'm using 2 M…

Agreed. I tried Microtik. Seemed like it was written by DOS people from the 70s or 80s, made difficult on purpose.

I ended up switching to back to Ubiquti.

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