A bit of decision paralysis...

RouterOS General
1

Hi All,

My previous router died (ER-x) and I would like to get a replacement, in particular a MikroTik device. The learning curve doesn’t worry me and I’m happy to spend time to get it working the way I would like. This is purely for my own curiosity and need to play around with equipment as the internet is really just used for home purpose (netflix, gaming, VPN, maybe some external web services).

My current connection is a 900/400Mb Fibre connection and VLANs etc. are handled by a switch.

I just can’t seem to make a decision around the model at the moment because, well, there are quite a few, I’m currently looking at a Hex S (RB760iGS). I don’t need the SFP port at the moment, but the cost difference between the Hex (RB650Gr3) is minimal. My concern is purchasing a router and not being able to utilise the wan connection fully if needed.

Routers I had also seen recommend are:
RB2011 (so many models)
RB450G
hAP ac2

I’m running with the assumption that the Hex S will be fine for my use, but don’t want to ignore anything else in case I’m wrong… Um, thoughts? Recommendations? Am I over thinking it and I’m an idiot?

2

General advice: check the test results, which are published on product pages. My experience is that the figure published under “Routing, 25 ip filter rules, [packet size] 512 byte” is the most relevant for usual real-use cases.

An a comment on models you mentioned: I wouldn’t recommend RB2011, it’s an old model and generally can’t cope with high routing throughputs. In addition, it doesn’t play well as a switch either, half of ports are 100Mbps only plus ports are handled by two switch chips with interconnection passing main CPU.

I’d suggest you to have a look at RB4011iGS+RM … it’s one of latest models of Mikrotik routers and highly capable. The price tag is slightly higher than the rest of models you listed though.
And I guess you made mistake when typing model number of the RB450 (a very old model) … you should be looking at RB450Gx4 …