MikroTik Routers and Switches Reviews

I have worked more with the MikroTik Routers, as opposed to their switching products.

We use this solution to route traffic in our network. For example, if one group is experiencing a slow connection then we can re-route the traffic. This is possible because we have multiple links on our premises.

The most valuable features are the versatility and ease of use.

We make use of a script that will automatically re-route traffic when connections are slow.

The manageability of the web-based UI needs to be improved. I still prefer to use the Winbox application.

It would be great if they included some next-generation features in the future.

I have been using MikroTik Routers and Switches for about three years.

We had some trouble with the latest patch that was released. There were issues with high CPU usage, so we reverted back to the previous version.

This is a scalable solution. We have between 1,000 and 1,500 users.

We do not rely on technical support from the vendor. We do our own research, test situations in our lab, and solve our own problems.

The installation is straightforward.

Our in-house team deployed our routers.

This product is cheaper than competing products by other vendors.

I was not the person who selected and deployed this solution.

We have not had any issues with our MikroTik routers and I would definitely recommend them.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

I primarily use the solution as a firewall, and for routing purposes, and for multi-band load balancing. 

The load balancing is very good.

The solution offers very good multi-routing.

The firewall is very good.

For the interface, I always use Winbox.

The MikroTik weblog, web user log, was supposed to be remotely accessible. However, it was not as good as I had wanted it to be. I found its functionality disappointing. There's no proper interface. They show only IPs but not the DNS address or complete address. It only shows the IP addresses. Also, they only show real-time data and not the history of the user's log address. We would like to see a history on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

The solution needs to improve its security firewalls and mirror that of, for example, Sophos, or FortiGate.

The solution needs to focus on UTM in its devices.

I have about five years of experience working with this solution.

We've found the stability of the solution to be good enough.

The solution is quite easy to scale. We haven't had any problems expanding the solution when we need to.

I've never contacted technical support. If I have issues with the solution, I try to handle it myself. So far, I've never needed anyone else's assistance.

I've previously used FortiGate and Fortinet devices. They have very good security and firewalls.

The initial setup is a little bit complex for beginners. It's difficult to install the router and for initializing from the beginning all of the configurations we need, like setting up the initial firewall rules, for example.

If a user knows all the basic steps, the deployment only takes about ten to 15 minutes.

I handled the implementation myself. I didn't need the assistance of an integrator or reseller.

I'd warn others that a tutorial or a bit of learning is required before beginning. It helps if a user has a bit of understanding about the solution. There's some complexity in the terminologies and surrounding the initial implementation process.

Overall, it's a good product, but it requires a bit of improvement, especially in relation to UTM and security.

I'd rate it eight out of ten.

We use MikroTik both in our company and clients. Even extended to our household clients. MikroTik devices offer you similar features you'll normally get from high priced devices like Cisco and HP, however at a fraction of the costs. This works very nicely with us since our clients are mainly small and medium. The device price doesn't dictate whether the client gets a solution.

VLANs, L3 Routing, Load Balancing, HotSpot are amongst some of the features we normally use in many of our deployments.

Costs saving and expansion of our product portfolio as a result of those features offered by mikrotik, but would have to pay for licenses from other providers. Dude also improved network management and service, which our re-skilled team enjoy. Many MikroTik devices can be powered from 12VDC and this is also a cost saving on electricity consumption and allow our deployments in areas where solar solutions are offered, extending our footprint.

The pricing is a great selling point.

We find the VLANs, Load Balancing, HotSpot, Traffic Management the most valuable part of the solution.

We're very happy with what we are getting out of the solution in general. The features are good. They're comparable to other brands such as Cisco and HP.

We've had difficulties allocating different hubs with different IPs. At times, some users use it on one range and can access computers on another range. We thought isolation would help, but it hasn't. When you assign IP addresses to ports, people can still access those ports, and that's really frustrating.

The solution doesn't offer very good documentation. When we had questions around isolation and allocating different hubs and IPs, we couldn't find any verifiable answers.

The solution's website isn't that good. When I go to it, I can't find what I'm looking for. However, if I go to a third party's website, I can easily find the information.

We've been using the solution for ten years.

Very stable, not major failures reported at this stage.

It's a very scalable solution. It's not really an issue if companies need to scale. However, the issue of port isolation and the difficulties we have might ultimately affect scaling as we have to maintain security and right now we're struggling with that. When you scale, you compromise security. It's a double-edged sword.

We have about 15 users on the particular solution currently. However, these are solutions that will be deployed across different clients.

I have never contacted technical support directly. I have gone to their support website, which, I feel, doesn't have enough information or documentation. If you compare it to Cisco, Cisco has got more support online; you don't even have to call them.

Much as MicroTik is cheaper than Cisco, and you can see a difference in support quality. Cisco does offer a lot of support on their website. When you go to Cisco, you get answers to all types of issues. With MicroTik, I need to go look at private third-party websites. That's why I feel their technical support is a disappointment.

You can try calling or writing emails, however, you don't get responses. In the end, you have to fiddle around and try things yourself. This is not sustainable. A client will eventually not mind so much if they need to pay a bit more to get proper service.

We've previously used Cisco, which was much more expensive.

The initial setup is straightforward. Deployment typically takes about one hour if it's just a basic initial layer that needs to be implemented.

In-house, it was more of a trial and error but finally got it. We still and constantly improving our know how but we will get there.

The costs of hardware reduces the ROI dramatically. Same way the Costs of Ownership does.

The pricing of the solution is quite reasonable.

What we do is we buy Level Four devices, so we don't have to buy license supported versions.

We came across MikroTik and immediately fell in love with it

We use the solution and we provide services to clients as well. It's much cheaper than when we used Cisco and other devices. We're a reseller and solutions provider.

I do advise people to use the solution, because of the price and features. The more you learn is the more you realize how valuable MikroTik devices are.

One thing I would mention to others is that MikroTik is on Linux, but there's nothing like WinBox for Linux, or what you might call a Linux box. You need to do something that looks like WinBox, because if you're using Ubuntu, you will need to use WinBox and there isn't one for Linux. Not everybody uses Windows and many people, especially technical people, are moving away from Windows. 

The solution is a good product and it has improved since the first time we used it. It's just support that is really lacking.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. I'd rate it higher if technical support was better.

We primarily use our MikroTik devices as layer three routers.

The best part about MikroTik Routers is the price.

The biggest thing that needs improvement is the support. There are lots of bugs but you can find workarounds for these. However, without support for professional use, you don't know when it fails and why it fails. You have to troubleshoot on your own.

I have been using MikroTik Routers for two or three years.

The stability is poor because it's dropping packets. As you control it through the GUI, the device is starting to drop packets, so it is not stable.

The scalability is hard for me to judge at this point.

Technical support is bad overall. However, when I contacted them last, the answer to that question was straightforward. It was a little bit confusing because they were talking about CPU queues versus hardware queues, and my English is not perfect, but I did get a straightforward answer after the second email.

If you read the manual and the documentation carefully, and also research the Wiki support sites, the setup can be quite straightforward.

The length of time for deployment depends on the type of scenario and what you want to do.

To have a working solution it can take weeks. You have to test all of the limits because if you don't know your limits then you don't know your product area. For example, can a device be placed when serving a 1G internet? Knowing the limits and testing the limits is a time-consuming activity. It can take one to two weeks depending on what you are testing.

The implementation can be done without the help of a consultant. You can do it on your own.

The technical features in MikroTik are not mentionable because it is a low-cost solution. There is no service, support, or proper training. We are using them because our competitors are using them, and we have to stay competitive.

The only real value of MikroTik is the price and I would not recommend this solution for any other reason. If you can get another device from a bigger company at a similar price then I would do that because the support is going to be better. Proper support is important.

I would rate this solution a five out of ten.

We use this product to route traffic with dynamic routing protocols like BGP. We also use it for filtering traffic and making network translations to provide access to services that are behind it. In this regard, it acts as a firewall.

It hosts a lot of B2B sessions with our internal and external peers.

MikroTik provides us a quick way to give access to internal services from outside of our network, and a way to manage those services.

This solution offers features that make it convenient for debugging.

Traffic classification is a very convenient feature.

The flexible IP firewall and IP network address translation make it very easy to give access to internal services. 

I would like to see a cluster feature added, where multiple devices can be configured and managed as one. One is in a standby state while the other is active, and if one fails then the other takes over.

The stability can be improved.

We have been using a MikroTik router for seven or eight years.

This solution is not very stable. I would rate stability at seven out of ten.

The scalability is good and we have 50 or 60 users, in addition to perhaps five technical staff who can connect devices and configure them.

Technical support responds very quickly. However, we very often catch bugs that they are not aware of, which is bad. MikroTik should be finding these bugs itself.

We are happy with the communication from technical support, but they should improve with respect to testing and releasing updates.

The initial setup is very straightforward and easy. It will take several hours to set up and have it work properly.

The implementation was done by my team.

There is no licensing fee in addition to the hardware, but we do pay an annual fee for support.

I would recommend this solution for those who don't need a very stable solution. You will not have zero-downtime provided by MikroTik. Also, if you need clustered routers then this solution will not work. However, if you are willing to update several times a month with several minutes of downtime while upgrading and rebooting, then it will be fine.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using this solution is to write the network plan out before implementing changes. Then, go only by the steps of the plan, and do not deviate.

Overall, it is a very good solution with a lot of features.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We are a system integrator and this is one of the solutions that we implement for our customers.

Our primary customers are Fiber to the home (FTTH), which are small customers who are connecting by fiber.

We have found this solution is quite robust and there are a lot of features in a small device.

The dimensions of this unit are quite good.

You do not need extra licensing to use all of the features.

In the Israeli market, we are in need of Hebrew support. We would like a Hebrew GUI or something that can translate it. We need this because when we remotely support end-users, they do not always speak English. Hebrew would be lovely.

There are a lot of issues regarding the power supply.

The interface for this solution is in need of a dashboard. Thinking about somebody who is in control of hundred of small routers, they need a way to manage all of them.

This solution is ninety percent stable. The defects are coming from instability with the power system, and there are a lot of issues regarding that.

Most of the errors occur when the system shuts down incorrectly. Otherwise, there are not a lot of bugs.

For our purposes, we are not concerned with scalability. 

We do not use technical support for this solution. We read articles and have been able to do the support ourselves. We do use the forums and the internet for searching for answers.

I am familiar with solutions by Aruba. The MikroTik routers and switches are not as well known in the Israeli market.

The initial setup of this solution is straightforward.

The deployment takes approximately twenty minutes for the technician to implement one house. It is a matter of connecting and doing some basic enrollment.

Our technician performs the deployment for our customers.

In our last project, we used two hundred units and the price was approximately 500 Shekels ($140 USD).

My advice is that this is a small package with huge features and you should try it on your own.

The biggest lesson that I learned from this solution is that we underestimated the power and value of MikroTik. We primarily implemented Cisco and Aruba solutions, but since then, we have found that MikroTik can be used in place of these bigger brands.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use this solution for normal routing, as well as load balancing for internet traffic. I have a dual internet load balancing setup.

This is an on-premises solution.

The improvement is that we can have two different internet service providers offering 2Mbps each, and you can combine the bandwidth to make it 4Mbps. You can also achieve multiple failovers.

The most valuable feature is controlling the bandwidth. This is helpful because the users' bandwidth requirements keep changing, and we have three connections to handle the data.

The wireless switches are good.

Configuring load balancing requires a very ground-level configuration that is not easy for normal users.

The user interface allows you to do a lot of things, but it is not user-friendly. 

This solution is quite stable.

Right now, I am not using it for VPN.

I have not contacted technical support for this solution. If there is a problem then I try to find solutions for the problem online.

We did not use another solution prior to this one.

When I first starting working with this solution I found the initial setup to be complex, but now I think that it's easy. It takes approximately ten minutes to deploy, although if you want to set up more advanced features like load balancing then it might take thirty minutes.

One person is suitable for both deployment and maintenance.

I performed the deployment myself.

This product is a one-time purchase.

This is a great product that gives you a lot of good features at that price.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for high performance, low-cost routers and for low-cost wifi environments where we need specific configurations.

The cost and versatility are the solution's most valuable features. You can do anything with them if you know how to. The solution has a whole portfolio of routing features available.

You don't need to buy special licenses for the solution. You have everything there. The configuration capabilities are good too. They're very flexible. 

The solution doesn't fit every need. There are lots of things you cannot do. There is no management and there is no controller in wireless. It's not a real whole network. You have to work them into other solutions. Mikrotik is mostly a standalone solution and you have to manage how it relates to other solutions, unlike Cisco, which is something that you can easily put into an ecosystem.

They could improve their product if they set, for instance, a controller for wireless LAN.
That would allow them to really have something more than an access point.

The solution isn't really scalable. Each machine has a purpose, and while you can swap it out for a bigger one, you have to create a new design. They're stand-alone products. There is not a flow of products that brings you to the next step easily.

I haven't reached out to technical support myself, however, my colleagues have, and my understanding is they were able to resolve the issues. They were satisfied with the level of support they received. However, it was a process to get in touch with them, share the problem, and work together to solve it.

The initial setup is complex. Users will need to do a bit of research before implementing the product. You must prepare and understand how to set each parameter. You couldn't use Mikrotik if you're not certified or have a deep knowledge of the solution.

We use a few different solutions. We are installing big networks with Aruba and use Extreme Networks as well. Which solution we ultimately use depends on the project itself.

We buy from wholesalers, but we don't have a special selling agreement with anyone.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten when it fits. It's useless if it doesn't fit. If it fits, I don't think there's a better product when you are looking at price-performance. Overall, I'd rate them nine out of ten. Any requirement would be fulfilled from Aruba or from Cisco, but not necessarily from Mikrotik, which is why I don't give them a perfect score.

The radius and wireless features are the most valuable aspects of the solution.

The queuing functionality needs improvement. The initial setup could be simplified.

The stability of the solution is great.

The scalability of the solution is very good.

We've used technical support a few times and have always found them to be quite good.

We have previously used Cisco and HP solutions.

If you are not familiar with the solution, the initial setup can be a bit complex. It's quite different from other solutions. Deployment times vary, but it should only take a few hours.

I handled the implementation myself.

The cost of the solution is okay. It's not too expensive.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. If they made it a bit easier for new users to implement, I would rate it higher.

Our primary use case for this solution is to provide wireless internet service.

This solution provides our service at a low cost with excellent quality.

The most valuable feature is that you can do anything on all platforms.

The GUI is also good, and the CLI is excellent.

Wireless throughput has not kept up with the competition.

The two most valuable features to me are the firewall and traffic bonding.

The interface could be more user friendly and more intuitive in terms of what information or features are found where. I also wish there was a dashboard, kind of like landing page with all the basic system analytics.

We've had no issues with deployment.

We've had no issues with stability.

We've had no issues with scalability.