Hi all,
Many years ago, I installed a Cisco 1800 series router for a client for them to connect to their ISP and route a /27 public range to their network. They want to increase their bandwidth well above the 100Mb interfaces that the 1800 has so it needs to be replaced. A new Cisco box could be $4,000 or more so I’m looking for a replacement. Of course, that 1800 just plain works and has been trouble free since day one. However, it’s not performing and NAT or IPSEC or VLAN or any other services so the needs are really basic. I’m also considering either a pfSense box or a Vyos box but I haven’t made up my mind yet on which way to go. I’m new to MikroTik but an old hand in networking. Could anyone comment on my basic IOS config and if RouterOS is a suitable replacement candidate? I assume it is…
service tcp-keepalives-in
service tcp-keepalives-out
service timestamps debug datetime msec
service timestamps log datetime msec
!
no aaa new-model
!
no ip source-route
ip cef
ip tcp synwait-time 10
!
interface Null0
no ip unreachables
!
interface FastEthernet0/0
description $ETH-WAN$
ip address 2xx.1.83.70 255.255.255.252
no ip redirects
no ip unreachables
no ip proxy-arp
ip route-cache flow
speed 100
full-duplex
no mop enabled
!
interface FastEthernet0/1
description $ETH-LAN$
ip address 2xx.0.231.33 255.255.255.224
no ip redirects
no ip unreachables
no ip proxy-arp
ip route-cache flow
speed 100
full-duplex
no mop enabled
ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 2xx.1.83.69
!
end
I’m looking at the CCR1009-7G-1C-1S+ as it has dual power supplies. Any advice or comment is appreciated. Thanks!
Your ios config looks real basic, and RouterOS will do the same easily. CCR1009 is a good choice if you need redundant power. Otherwise even some cheaper models may satisfy your requirements. You can find some performance numbers on the https://routerboard.com/.
I made this move a few years ago and haven’t looked back. The 1009 is a good choice for both stability and allowing your client to grow their network in the future. The nice thing is at that price your client could have one sitting on the shelf in case of a problem. There are a lot of features you may be able to implement in the future.
Thanks guys. Yes, I’d like to offer them at least cold swap redundancy. I don’t think I need to engineer it to real time failover as they have a backup DSL line to the firewall. I’ve looked at Mikrotik and RouterOS over the years but never sold/deployed it. I’ll play around with the demo web site for a while to familiarize myself with it a bit and learn where things go.
What you can do, is buy the cheapest router model, and play around. You can even recreate the full network as it is now installed at the client.
Of course the cheap device will not route 100 Mbps plus, but it will do the basic things.
With Mikrotik it is is like that: Once you familiarize with the OS, it does not matter what hardware you buy. They are the same. Some have more features, or ports, but the commands, and “look and feel” of the GUI is the same.
I agree with the above regarding “play with it”. You can get a hAP lite for less than $30 (!) and it does 95% of what the other higher priced routers do, without the performance of course.
The RB750Gr3 is a pretty nice machine for a very low price, might be worth looking into, but not if you need dual power supplies…
I’m working on a VRRP scheme where it would be easy to swap to the “backup” router and put in an upgraded primary with only seconds of downtime, if that. Should be possible with “out of the box” MikroTik features.
Hate to say it, but MikroTik support is nothing like Cisco, not even nearly. This should probably be obvious based on price. They have gotten back to me on a few issues though, some were my fault, some were not. Documentation is not great, and the names of some of the options they use in some features are quite ambiguous. To me at least.
MikroTik is fun to play with if you’re a Cisco or Juniper guy. Gives you a different perspective on how stuff can work.