Hello Everyone, I’m fairly new to mikrotik and I’m having trouble choosing the right router for a new project.
Normally, I do small projects in which I won’t have more than 30 or 40 concurrent users on a network. This time it’s different though, For this project we’ll have around 150 users using the network at all times.
We’re located in a third world country, and our ISP contract is for 50 mbps (up and down. Believe it or not, this is considered good in here). Our wireless infrastructure consists on 10 unify UAP-AC-PRO’s, and we have a couple of gigabit switches for the ap’s and some wired Voip phones.
Being that this is my first middle sized project, I’m having trouble deciding which router should I use. I’ve been thinking about the RB3011UiAS-RM and I would like to know, which criteria do you guys use to choose the best router?
If you are limited by 50/50 uplink, then practically any gigabit router should have more than enough routing/filtering power.
I would start with summary what functions will be needed - if it is only static routing and queues (and how many queues), if you need vpn, encryption, if you need bgp, etc etc…
Next I would look at amount and types of ports which will be needed (depends on your network architecture - if every person is connected via some tunnel, if you want to have different parts of network connected via separate L1 etc etc..)
Lastly I would determine, if any extra features are needed - beeper, serial port, display, rackmount etc…
The 3011 would be a good choice if it was stable. It has a lot of port flapping issues which are yet to be fixed so I wouldn’t confidently tell you to buy one.
The RB1100AHx4 is very good and would easily cope with what you need however is a bit pricier than the 3011.
Maybe the Hex or the Hex-S if you need SFP would do what you need and are significantly cheaper than 3011, also look at hAP AC2 as that would do what you need.
As @vercernik87 has mentioned, this will probably come down to your feature “wants” as most current MT routers will do what you need.
As you mentioned on your post, you are from a third world country. I’m too from a third world country, and in my case it’s pretty easy to find used quality mikrotiks on the internet. I had a similar case to yours, and a RB2011 iLS was more than enough horsepower to pull through all the queues, firewall, vpn and receiving 100mbps full on the sfp port that it has. It’s still on production on that site, and as long as you are carefull with your configurations it wouldn’t use too much cpu or memory.
I have not seeing the RB4011 myself, but I’m looking foward to get my hands in one on this November, on MUM Brazil. For the description at least, it looks pretty good, and would definitely suffice your needs, but as Steveocee sad, 3011 has it’s bugs and the 4011 is a brand new equipment, so you might find some bugs in there too.
i just gave suggest for OP