Fortinet FortiGate, Cisco 3504 WLAN Controller, Cisco Aironet 2800 Series Access Points, Cisco Catalyst 1000 Series Switches, Cisco Catalyst 2960-X/XR Series Switches, Cisco Catalyst 3850 Series Switches

Alex Anwar

Aerospace IT Specialist in Corporate at CommunicAVIA Pte Ltd (1-10 employees employees)

Pros

Affordable, it has more features compared to other brand at the same price.
Widely available, by today it's easy to obtained one, even online retailers sell it.
Highly customizable, you may write a powerful script to enhance the function.
Flexible, you can make different configuration approach based on you needs.

Cons

Hardware, current ARM based hardware turned out having stability issue. Uncommanded reboot and hang/lock-up occured sometimes.
Wi-Fi algorithm, in some cases the wireless module has performance issue.
New function that needed by today standard like secure DNS, improved VPN support like WireGuard, etc.
Add more function on the script to easy the management and maintenance, like ability to invoce wireless snooper from script.

Return on Investment

Affordable, this really save budget a lot.
Long lasting hardware, hardly no issue with the hardware even in 5 years in service.
Flexible scripting enables more value added service can be offered.
Mediocre Wi-Fi performance compared to competitors. For most scenario it's enough but for complex high-density scenario, it quite suffers.

Alternatives Considered

Ubiquiti Networks UniFi

Usability

Other Software Used

pfSense, VMware ESXi, Zabbix

Tanner Moreno

Gerente in Information Technology at Ovnicom (51-200 employees employees)

Pros

Dual Stack IPv4 - IPv6
Easy management
Multiple secure connection options

Cons

Administration dashboard
BGP in Multiple Core

Return on Investment

ROI quite fast
Poor support

Alternatives Considered

MikroTik Cloud Router Switch, Cisco Catalyst 3650 Series Switches, Cisco Meraki MS Switches and Cisco Meraki MX Firewalls

Other Software Used

Cisco Meraki MX Firewalls, Cisco Catalyst 3560-CX Series Switches, Cisco Meraki MR Series, VMware ESXi, VMware vSAN, VMware NSX

Adrian Takacs View profile

Infrastructure Engineer in Information Technology at X-Net Solutions (1-10 employees employees)

Pros

When you are creating a firewall filter rule on a router, the amount of options you have is incredible. For example, most other firewalls or routers will not give you the option to select a connection state, a packet size, specify the packet content etc.
You can use the routers in transparent mode, when your router is placed in front of a customer firewall or customer router, allowing only the allocated public IP address to communicate with the Internet and allowing you to allocate a certain bandwidth or speed.
The lowest end model routers have the same operating system, features as the more expensive ones making simple for us to test configuration on cheap equipment before commit to buy the more expensive one. The licensing model is very simple as well and easy to understand.
The cheapest routers also come with one SFP port, which is great as it is allowing us to connect fiber straight into it. No extra PoE injectors and converter are needed, reducing the number of points of failure.

Cons

Some of the wiki articles have not been updated or are not accurate enough. We spent a couple of days trying to find an example of implementing a mobile IPSec client solution. But once this has been implemented, it has been solid (always worked). A bigger community would help, and I am finding it hard to find the time to contribute to these articles.

Return on Investment

We have managed to implement our own network infrastructure to service a small business center at a very low price, and our investment has been returned in less than 6 months.

Alternatives Considered

Sophos SG Firewall Appliances, NetGear ProSafe Managed Switches, Cisco ASA and Cisco Ethernet Switches

Other Software Used

Solarwinds Take Control (formerly SolarWinds MSP Anywhere), NAKIVO Backup & Replication

Carlos Alberto Pedron Espinett View profile

Especialista de Desarrollo in Information Technology at ARCA International Group (201-500 employees employees)

Pros

It allowed to establish a distribution by areas of the bandwidth allowing to prioritize the access to it to the departments that most needed it
It allows to obtain real statistics by user, IP, fragment of network, department and unit of the consumption of bandwidth of the company.
Different DSL connections were added to obtain a larger bandwidth and thus be able to efficiently cover the needs of the company.

Cons

The configuration of the operating system routerOS is not intuitive, it requires advanced knowledge in computer science and free operating systems for its maintenance.
To make the load balancing is necessary to have more than one MikroTik device so its implementation in case of that being the solution sought is more expensive.
The cost of the devices for solutions at the macro business level is very high, it is a solution whose initial investment requires an important budget

Return on Investment

There is currently a suitable consumption of the data network and each department feels satisfied with the obtained.
Some analysts felt annoyed or generated a negative impact because when establishing navigation rules, access to non-corporate pages was restricted.
The investment made allows the use of equipment that is used as servers for services now covered by MikroTik and used in other required areas.

Alternatives Considered

Cisco Catalyst Switches

Other Software Used

PostgreSQL, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server

MikroTik Routers and Switches

What is MikroTik Routers and Switches?

Categories & Use Cases

Who Buys & Uses MikroTik Routers and Switches

Most Frequent Users

Information

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

Manufacturing

Most Frequent Users

Small Businesses

Mid-sized Companies

Enterprises

Most Frequent Users

Brazil

United States of America

Indonesia

Most Frequent Users

IT

Engineering

Other