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MikroTik RouterOS v7 stable released

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Re: MikroTik RouterOS v7 stable released

#121

Post by djhworld »

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've been building a little TP-Link Omada setup for my home. There is a cloud option for the controller software or you can buy the hardware controller (or...run it yourself)

Was going to go all in on Ubiquiti but was put off when reading about the reliability issues, plus was way more expensive.

Pleased with my router + access point + PoE switch + hardware controller :)

Re: MikroTik RouterOS v7 stable released

#122

Post by nrclark »

tw04 wrote: post #117
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…

Synology has been far and away the best I've deployed for "friends and family". I've not received a single phone call for support and it's the first wifi product I can say that about. They also are introducing full VLAN support in DSM 1.3 which should be out soon if you're a power user. Honestly if they supported PoE for their extenders I probably would have switched out to it. The extenders will mesh wired or wirele…

Do their products have much in the way of phone-home / cloud access?

Re: MikroTik RouterOS v7 stable released

#124

Post by ahepp »

bigyellow wrote: post #33
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…

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

I agree that this is what I would want to use, but doesn't the lack of any kind of specialized switching hardware make it uncompetitive in terms of price/power consumption/speed?

I have on order a mikrotik rb5009UG+S+, which has nine gigabit ethernet ports, one 2.5 gigabit ethernet port, and a 10g sfp+ cage. It has zero fans and benchmarks show it capable of 10 gigabit routing. It costs less than $200.

I love vyos, and I would definitely prefer an open source router. But people I talk to love their mikrotik products. It doesn't seem like the old ones are being abandoned.

Re: MikroTik RouterOS v7 stable released

#125

Post by tw04 »

nrclark wrote: post #122
tw04 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Synology has been far and away the best I've deployed for "friends and family". I've not received a single phone call for support and it's the first wifi product I can say that about. They also are introducing full VLAN support in DSM 1.3 which should be out soon if you're a power user. Honestly if they supported PoE for their extenders I probably would have switched out to it. The extenders will mesh wired or wirele…

Do their products have much in the way of phone-home / cloud access?

They have a reverse tunnel that you can enable for remote access, but you can disable it.

https://kb.synology.com/en-global/SRM/help/SRM/NetworkCenter...

I personally like that because I can safely remotely access the routers I've deployed for others if I ever have a reason to. They just need to check a box to turn it on or off in the GUI.

They also have an "experience improvement" program that sends home telemetry that can also be disabled. As far as I know there's no "phone home" that you can't turn off if you don't want it.

Re: MikroTik RouterOS v7 stable released

#126

Post by systemvoltage »

nullwarp wrote: post #60
systemvoltage wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just bought a bunch of Ubiquiti equipment (UDM Pro + 10G Switch Aggregate + U6-LR AP) and I've been super happy with it. Putting sexy UI aside, the performance is outstanding and rock solid. Unifi really does unify the entire ecosystem, it's basically the Apple of network gear down the quality of packging. I love it. I heard good things about Mikrotik but their product line feels scattered and unorganized.

I've always found the Ubiquiti interface flashy but borderline unusable. Things are scattered everywhere to the point you need 26 clicks to get to anything and they keep moving things around (especially their awful cloud UI for the UDM)

Totally agree, I am not a fan of deeply hierarchical UI.

Re: MikroTik RouterOS v7 stable released

#127

Post by imiric »

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'm currently in the process of moving my home network from Ubiquiti to an open solution with a few Mikrotik RBM11Gs to serve as APs, and will probably also replace my Netgate SG-3100 with pfSense with likely a PC Engines machine. All will probably be running OpenWrt, though if that's too limiting / buggy, I'll just use plain Linux or OpenBSD on them.

The major benefit of this setup is that you don't depend on some manufacturer for updates. Given Ubiquiti's and Netgate's recently hostile actions towards users and open source, this provides a great peace of mind. The other benefit is that you're free to upgrade your hardware as needed, which particularly for WiFi cards is great to have. Right now I'm sticking with WiFi 5 because of the costs, but in the future upgrading to 6E would just be a matter of changing the cards (assuming they're supported by the OS).

Speaking of cards, I went with Compex WLE1216V5-20, which have an Atheros chip and are thus much better supported on Linux than Broadcom, etc.

Re: MikroTik RouterOS v7 stable released

#128

Post by donmcronald »

formerly_proven wrote: post #48
dprice1 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ubiquiti seems to have turned into a complete shit-show in the last five years.

Subscriptions are coming I bet. The whole ui.com account thing where they force you to create an account and link new devices like the UDM Pro are the writing on the wall IMO. They back-peddled on adding it to the v2 firmware of Cloud Key's IIRC, but the end game is likely to get everyone paying per device per month.

The last time they had a pay per device per month service it started at $1/device/month and then they bumped it to $10/device/month. Somehow they thought the one time cost of a device should become an annual cost and that people would adopt it. Obviously that flopped.

Now think of the same scenario, but everyone's gotten complacent and are getting dependent on their devices that are linked back to ui.com. They might not blatantly flip the switch, but now that they have a hook for licensing checks they can start shifting development so new features are licensed for a monthly fee rather than getting them free forever when you buy a device.

IMO as soon as the all-in-one devices that perform management (ex: UDM Pro) while being linked to a ui.com account get enough adoption they'll shift to some kind of feature licensing or simply release new devices / revisions that require "cloud licensing" or something similar.

They're also very flippant when it comes to breaking devices in a way that prevents a connection to the controller. They think SSHing into broken devices to fix them is reasonable and it's not if you have to deal with many sites / devices.

Re: MikroTik RouterOS v7 stable released

#129

Post by discardedrefuse »

InTheArena wrote: post #100
dhess wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard good things about TP-Link's Omada EAP series. Did you happen to look into that platform?

I tried it when Unifi was in bad straits last year. It's a poor copy of the Ubiquti interface. They copied the worst aspects of that UX.

One of the nice things about the Omada AP's is that it can run (and be configured) in standalone mode without the need of a controller. I bought one to replace the single Ubiquiti I had and its been solid; better even!

Re: MikroTik RouterOS v7 stable released

#130

Post by Arnt »

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…

It's possible that they still haven't merged the smallish patch described here: https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/atc17/atc17-h...

The hardware is underpowered because they optimise for people who deploy a hundred routers on mountaintops, with excellent lines of sight but poor access for replacement. Underclocking severely helps reliability.

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