#1 most frequent
Brazil
22.0%1,372 installations of 6,246
What is MikroTik Routers and Switches?
Latvian company MikroTik offers routers and switches.
Categories & Use Cases
Who Buys & Uses MikroTik Routers and Switches
#2 most frequent
United States of America
11.6%726 installations of 6,246
#3 most frequent
Indonesia
10.4%651 installations of 6,246
great features at low cost
Pros
- cost effective
- user friendly GUI
- built in firewall
- routing protocols
- NAT
- Gigabit ethernet
- SFP support
Cons
- hardware improvement
- add fully functional firewall
- anti virus
- IPS
- UTM
Most Important Features
- BGP
- no licensing cost
- built in firewall
- NAT
Return on Investment
- reduced overall cost
- implementation of high availability
- traffic filtering
Alternatives Considered
Cisco Routers
Other Software Used
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
Our Experience with MikroTik RouterOS
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
MikroTik Routers and Switches--dare to explore!
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
MikroTik is my first option
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
An elegant solution for the administration of business networks
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