Buy a routerboard with routerOS v3 installed?

Hardware MikroTik hardware general
1

Hello,

I am new here, and new to routerboard/routerOS, so first, hello to all. For a little background, I am not an IT pro, but I am administering small size networks on oil rigs, which have severe bandwidth limitations and far too many users (including the usual bandwidth hogs who spend their lives on YouTube or downloading TV series)… I’ve been using dd-wrt so far with moderate success.

I am pretty excited about the Microtik products because I believe they can possibly solve problems I have been having for a while, so I am ready to take the jump and order a 450G for testing. I found some nicely discounted ones at third party resellers, however, it would appear that they run an older version of routerOS (v3). The reseller claims that the 450G comes with a license level 4, “freely upgradeable to a level 5 license by running winbox”. In that case, according to the wiki, it would mean that I can upgrade from v3 to v5.7 for free, but no more free upgrades after that, am I right (two versions jump)? If that is that case, I would obviously prefer to give up the discount and buy a board loaded with v5 and get free upgrades until v7.

Now I just did a search on this forum, and I see that upgrade from v3 to v5.7 is a “free upgrade”. So at this point I am seriously confused and I prefer to ask: if I buy a board configured with routerOS v3 and a level 5 license, will I get free upgrades until (and including) v7 :question:

2

Yes, you can freely update your purchased routerboard with the lastest version of RouterOS without any extra fee.
Be carefull upgrading from 3.x because you need to consider that 3.x had 7-digits license format and 4.x needs 8-digits license format.
Once you upgrade to 4.x or 5.x, at the next login you will be prompted to update your license. Just upgrade it and it will be fine.
Your license format can be found at /system/license (and you can see your current “Upgradable to:” step)

And Welcome to Mikrotik RouterOS, Come to the next Mikrotik User Meeting next to you

3

Wow, thanks for the lightning fast response (on a Sunday!).

Another thing to wrap up my order: can you confirm that all versions of the 450G can run on 12Vdc, and that this is recommended as opposed to higher voltages?

4

You can run all the voltages listed on the datasheet

Power options:
● J9 power jack:
10..28V DC (cut-off voltage - 30V)
● Power over Ethernet (PoE) on the J601 LAN1 Ethernet port:
14..28V DC (18..28 V suggested; cut-off voltage - 30V) non-standard PoE powering support

Be carefull on the Watts part, which is more important to feed enough power to your router.