What is Mikrotik?
You guys will continue to see me post about Mikrotik. Most of you will have never heard of it, which is a shame. Mikrotik is a rich man’s all in one router at a poor man’s price. It has a huge feature set including OSPF, BGP, MPLS, VPLS, VPN aggregation, 802.1q trunking, superb firewalling, layer 7 firewalling and policy matching, queueing and much more. All of this with a cli and an unmatched GUI. It is a Linux base, though you are locked out of the base OS, which makes it more an appliance than a server. You can load this on any x86 PC for the low price of $50 for a level 4 license.
They also sell ridiculously cheap embedded systems at routerboard.com.
You will hear me talk about their wired implementations most often, but they cut their teeth, and have the highest density of usage as wireless devices. Most of the WISPs in the area use them for their high features and low cost. I’ve seen wireless shots, including both sides of the link, getting 50Mb of throughput for a total cost of ~$500!
Needless to say, it is an exciting product…or I’m just very excitable.
PS: You can install on a machine and run unlicensed for 24 hours. Try throwing it on an old box or on a VM and see what you think. What do you have to loose?
I think you are just excitable.
Curious…you specify they are great for wireless networks, does this mean you don’t recommend them for wired implementations, also what kind of enterprise reliability do these have? Meaning, would you trust them in implementations of 100 users, 1000 users, 10000 users?
Knowing what something can’t do is as important as knowing what something can do.
Jacob,
Most of my implementations are wired, and I think they are great for either.
As far as enterprise reliability goes, that’s a different animal. In my opinion, if you are an organization large enough to be considered “enterprise”, you will have the budget for a major manufacturers gear(Cisco).
With Mikrotik, as long as you stick to the major releases and don’t always ride the newest version, they are stable. Often enough, this can be said about most companies.
We manage some locations that have hundreds of bandwidth hungry users running through a single celeron box with 512 megs of ram. These boxes usually average around 15% CPU utilization. We’ve been running flawlessly since the day we installed them.
My $.02: If you can use Cisco, do it. I’m biased and I know it. I’m not necessarily pushing brand new Cisco gear, either. Their gray market gear can be had for pennies these days. You can get a 24 port 2950 for $120! Having said all of that, if you are comparing power for price, the Mikrotik will win every time. If you are comparing raw features, the Mikrotik will win every time. If you are touring a huge potential client through your facility, Cisco will win every time.
Proof is often in the pudding. Mikrotik will let you install and run for 24 hours without a license. Download the ISO, install on a virtual machine or old box and give it a whirl.
Mr. Brain,
Ok…next question. If Mikrotik is so cheap, and it sounds like it can perform the services that Cisco can, why buy Cisco?
Similar to why should I buy a Cadillac when I can buy myself two Prius’ and still pay less? I know that if the cadillac breaks down, I will get great service to return the Cadillac to the road as quickly as possible, but if I can just drive my other Prius while the primary gets fixed, who cares?
Furthermore in an age when everyone is pushing redundancy and disaster recovery why not save your budget and keep a bunch of Mikrotik’s on the shelf as hot spares?
Thanks,
Jacob
Mr. Brain,
New question, is Mikrotik purely a routing platform or do they do switching as well?
Does Mikrotik play well with other platforms?
Thanks,
Jacob
Jacob,
That is a valid point. Thanks for asking. To that I say, “peace of mind.” With a Cisco product I can sleep easy knowing my backbone is going to just work. If I have a piece of Cisco gear in a critical location, I can get Smartnet on it that will then provide me with that peace of mind. Cisco’s code is stable. I’ve hit some bugs in my time, but for the most part they are solid.
Mikrotik can’t boast the same support. They don’t offer a “Smartnet” level support system. Also they really have one train of code.
Here is a link to their changelog.
You’ll notice some major fixes in each release like:
*) fixed IPv6 on RB1xx and RB5xx; Seems like a pretty big thing to break in the last revision.
*) fixed problem – web proxy used up all router memory if unlimited ram caching was enabled;
Having pointed out some of those bugs, I’ll still use it, because I don’t ride the edge; which means it runs and runs stable. I love it’s features and ease of use. I recommend it regularly and will continue to do so.
Jacob,
They are mainly into routing, but they are capable of bridging. None of their equipment has really high port density, though. I believe they have a routerboard with 9 ports. Though, each port can be a 802.1q trunk, access port or a routed port, so you get a lot of flexibility.
Mikrotik tries to conform to the RFC standard on most things. I’ve seen certain RBs have issues connecting to a port adapter on a Cisco 7500, though. I’ve never attempted to do VRRP with a Cisco router, but I don’t really think it would jive. Perhaps I’ll do a test tonight and report back.
A quick note: Bridge interfaces are often assigned an IP address. If you want to create a loopback address on a Mikrotik, you simply create a bridge interface and don’t assign any physical interfaces to it.
Greg
MikroTik announced today at the Czech MUM that a new product will be release soon, similar to the 450, it will be a wired router complete with case and power supply for $50 US. The case will be plastic.
You may be just very excitable, but from what I understand these Mikrotik routers and Wireless devices played a big part in providing wireless access during the Katrina disaster.
Robert,
Thanks for the comment. I know the only people that don’t find them useful are the people that haven’t used them. Any product has a learning curve, but it seems that Mikrotik has done a pretty good job of making theirs as short as possible. I’ve seen Mikrotiks run solid in terrible environments reliably. I’ve seen them make some long shots for pennies.
Greg