[leoedin]

My issue with Mikrotik is that the UI puts all the complexity up front. A good UI should guide the user and reveal relevant information only as it's needed. Mikrotik doesn't do that.

For example, the most common reason I want to connect to my home router is to see what devices are connected, what their IP addresses are, and perhaps make their DHCP leases static. In a good UI that sort of common activity would be front and centre - in MikroTik it's buried under 3 levels of menu.

Under the IP menu is 26 alphabetically sorted options, of which I have to click "DHCP Server". Then the default page is to create a new DHCP server - why would I want to do that? How many users run multiple DHCP servers? I have to click on the "Leases" tab, and then I can see a list of my connected devices.

Every other home router I've used knows that users care about the connected devices, so show it front and centre.

[protocolture]

>For example, the most common reason I want to connect to my home router is to see what devices are connected, what their IP addresses are, and perhaps make their DHCP leases static.

You sound like a Windows user who just found his way into Active Directory.

>in MikroTik it's buried under 3 levels of menu.

Its buried 3 levels deep in a hierarchy, the hierarchy you need to learn to operate the system. Quickset is Mikrotiks concession to "Oh wow some users at home are operating these tools". But the tools aren't aimed at home users.

>Then the default page is to create a new DHCP server - why would I want to do that? How many users run multiple DHCP servers?

Me for one haha.

>Every other home router.

Right I think this is your problem right here. "Every apple I have ever eaten I could bite through the skin" is a weird criticism of an orange.

The mikrotik gui is an abstraction of the CLI. Its really good that way so when you are recovering a mikrotik at a remote site you dont need to think too hard about where IP/DHCP Server is from the command line even if you are a gui native.

[protocolture]

Hang on still angry at this:

>A good UI should guide the user and reveal relevant information only as it's needed.

Ok so 99.99995% of all Mikrotik RouterOS devices do not end up in peoples labs.

Even the devices that are homeish in capability are mostly deployed into apartment buildings as NTD's and managed via API/Ansible not by the occupant.

The cheaper routerboards, like the 2000 series, are almost entirely eaten by Wisps.

When you configure a new RouterOS device the use case is non obvious.

It might be an edge router that needs BGP to be stood up first.

It might be a tower router that needs only OSPF, or full stack BGP/OSPF/MPLS.

Maybe its going in a data center to terminate a bunch of VPLS tunnels or VPNs.

It might be an NTD/NTU or it might be a bodgy relay.

I had a customer that would deploy small form routerboards as ethernet regenerators when doing really dodgy cabling.

You are not the target customer. Its cool and good that as a hobby you dipped your toes in. But its a very long stretch to turn around and complain that the interface isn't good enough because it doesn't hold your hand the way you would like it to. Mikrotik offers training and certification for people who cant work it out.

This is the networking version of raising a fault with the linux kernel because you don't want to compile it, you just want the exe.

And no, theres not a potential solution in Mikrotik having a separate code base for non technical people. They cant manage the code they already have. "Its coming in ROS7" was a meme for the better part of a decade. We are almost completely done with "This feature doesnt work on this CPU" which plagued them for ages.

Asking RouterOS to be more like DLink or whatever it is you are more comfortable with is insane and I hope fervently you never encounter JunOS which is the absolute godlike gold standard but will likewise not hold your hand to help you setup your DHCP config.

[leoedin]

> Ok so 99.99995% of all Mikrotik RouterOS devices do not end up in peoples labs.

Mikrotik make all sorts of equipment, including home routers. The hAP ax3 is shown on their homepage. It runs Router OS 7.

> Asking RouterOS to be more like DLink or whatever it is you are more comfortable with is insane

It's not insane to ask for sane defaults or UIs which hide progressive complexity. Ubiquiti manage it far better. Teltonika manage it far better.

Networking is a hugely complex and deep field. Mikrotik make equipment targeting small businesses. There's no way your average IT person understands the tradeoffs of every configuration the device can have - which is why a sensible UI which guides you into the complexity would be good.

Perhaps Mikrotik don't have the resources to do that - fair enough, that's a business decision. But it's not insane to desire a UI which encapsulates domain knowledge in a way which guides the user. That's just good UI.

The problem with UIs like Mikrotiks, which are effectively just a graphical overlay on a config file, is that they make it very easy to make a mistake. And even seasoned IT people make mistakes. And in this case, a mistake often means a security vulnerability.

[protocolture]

>Mikrotik make all sorts of equipment, including home routers. The hAP ax3 is shown on their homepage. It runs Router OS 7.

See

>Even the devices that are homeish in capability are mostly deployed into apartment buildings as NTD's and managed via API/Ansible not by the occupant.

>The cheaper routerboards, like the 2000 series, are almost entirely eaten by Wisps.

I can see that you might get confused by the form factor, but I guarantee you can find these running entire branches of a wisp network.

>It's not insane to ask for sane defaults or UIs which hide progressive complexity. Ubiquiti manage it far better. Teltonika manage it far better.

Unifi is explicitly targeting prosumers. When they do snap out of that and target the ISP space you get things like their faulty dual UI POE switches (Make a change in the old UI? Welp thats going to wipe your comments from the new one!) or the poor slobs custom building rifle scopes for AF60 LR.

>Perhaps Mikrotik don't have the resources to do that - fair enough, that's a business decision. But it's not insane to desire a UI which encapsulates domain knowledge in a way which guides the user. That's just good UI.

The issue is that is the current situation. It does guide the user, the average one who will purchase their product. What they don't have is a big warning for people stumbling in from elsewhere.

>The problem with UIs like Mikrotiks, which are effectively just a graphical overlay on a config file, is that they make it very easy to make a mistake.

Yeah this is an issue tik has had for a long time. What they need to do is ape junos's commit feature set. But what they have is safe mode which reloads your old config on disconnect.

but.... that would piss off the prosumer crowd even further.