[nathanvanfleet]

At one point I was kind of excited about Mikrotik routers. They seemed pretty beefy, a bit pricey, but cool as a device support OpenWRT and having an OS that they said was "even better" than OpenWRT.

However everything I looked at was somewhat disappointing. One router I was looking at had an unpowered USB port, that was a low speed (USB 1), which just seemed to be a weird caveat when consumer routers of the time were all USB-2 and capable of running at least a small pocket hard drive or at least mount a USB key.

At this point there seems to be a lot of good commercial routers which are strong, cheap, and don't require much blob code etc and are easy to find (sometimes it was vague what kind of chips you'd get with different commercial hardware).

[zippergz]

I guess I'm too used to Cisco and Juniper pricing, but "pricey" is the last thing that comes to mind when I think of Microtik... When you say "good commercial routers" that are cheaper, are you talking about consumer hardware? I'm curious what you prefer.

I don't have any Microtik hardware at all, so I don't have any vested interest here - I am just curious what people are liking these days. The vast majority of the consumer networking gear I've tried has been terrible, even with alternate firmware (e.g. OpenWRT doesn't keep crappy Linksys routers from overheating).

[atombender]

I'm using a $50 Mikrotik hAP AC Lite (RB952Ui-5ac2nD-US) as a home router. It's not the most high-powered router — it only has a single 5GHz radio, no antenna, and the Ethernet port is 10/100 only — but it's stunningly solid.

Previously I had, over the span of 18 months, an ASUS "Dark Knight" (whose 5GHz network slowly faded and then _disappeared_, apparently a known issue), an ASUS RT-AC66U (frequently just choked, requiring a reboot), an a Netgear Nighthawk AC1900 (same, and also issues with unstable wifi).

By contrast, the Mikrotik has been rock stable for the time I've had it (6 months). I also love the WebFig UI. It's a lot more technical than consumer routers, but it's responsive, consistent and doesn't hide any technical details from me. I don't need 90% of the RouterOS features, but I know that if I needed something obscure, I could set it up. You basically get an industrial-quality Linux-based router/switch OS for almost nothing.

(I do like the fine-grained metrics, though. You can get bandwith and connection data not just per interface, but also per NAT rule, for example.)

[sathackr]

I cut my teeth at an "ISP" that would order a business DSL line at a MDU/Apartment complex, run it through a Linksys router, then over the phone wiring using 2-wire "HomePNA" devices and charge each person $30/month for the service.

The routers locked up so much they had one of those plug-in timers [1] set to reboot the router each night during their 'daily maintenance period'. They wouldn't even dispatch someone to do it when they started getting calls.

[1] http://www.walmart.com/ip/GE-15153-GE-Mechanical-24-Hour-1-O...

[atombender]

That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever read on HN.

[sathackr]

I left after about 6 months. This was around 2001.

They also got in trouble with the LEC(and law enforcement) for using the LEC copper to interconnect their equipment between buildings. It was a common practice for them to tone out pairs in a neighborhood and patch their own wires in using the LEC's boxes and wiring.

They are no longer in business.

[zippergz]

Yes, this reliability is why I don't use consumer network hardware when I can avoid it. I got sick of getting calls from my wife when I was traveling and she was trying to work from home but the wireless had stopped working again.

My home network is all Ubiquiti, and is also rock solid. The 10/100 ethernet port is what actually pushed me to move from my Cisco ASA to a Ubiquiti router - the router had become the bottleneck in my internet connection.

[blacksmith_tb]

Agreed - I'm using a Mikrotik hAP AC at home now, after a series of disappointing high-end consumer devices (ASUS RT-AC3200 most recently). It isn't perfect (AC speeds are temperamental for me), but it does offer a huge amount of configurability - including a Cisco-esque CLI interface via SSH, which is nice.

[sathackr]

Mikrotik routers are not designed to be a consumer router. The average consumer would pull his/her hair out trying to configure one. Providing network attached storage is generally not a feature requested of anything but the full-consumer line home routers of the type that you purchase from Best Buy etc...

[tomaac]

That is not quite true. They have soho product group: http://routerboard.com/products/group/20

[benjohnson]

The newer firmware also has a single-page setup that let you set the WAN/LAN IP, DHCP server and other basic stuff with ease.

Basic port forwarding is still interesting - it's simple once you understand MikroTik, but there's a learning curve.

[sathackr]

I haven't spent much time in the "Quickset" page...I learned it before they had that function and it never seems to do what I want it to.

Probably is handy for some basic configurations though.

[sathackr]

I was not aware they were marketing in that direction...imo they shouldn't be, for the reasons listed by others. The UI just isn't quite intuitive enough for the average-joe that's expecting something like a Linksys/Beldin interface.