Hi, I’m afraid to say this, but DON’T buy any hardware from Mikotik, NO SUPPORT AT ALL.
For more than a year problem with Mikrotik WAPac and WiFi clients with broadcom chipset.
Emailed a lot, given all necessary info, no results, last emails don’t have any response!
Not my experience. I had issues with both my capACs, sent the supout report to tech support. They got back to me reasonably quickly and I carried out the necessary steps, in this case net install of firmware and was fixed up.
Based upon my limited experience, I would say the hardware seems fairly reliable (no dead units on delivery thus far) and the only real issues are my own config snafus!
The only thing I would caution against is buying the low end switches. I bought two and they are good for paperweights, and by that I mean not proper managed switches they are some weird twisted type of switch that I have not been able to successfully program and operate on my network. In other words they work and as advertised, I just havent been able to fathom as advertised. I have not tried the new SW OS 9 yet, but reading the fixes it doesnt say “Low end switches now work as proper managed switches” so I have not tried again. Perhaps SWOS 10 lol.
Yeah, i know how sound this. Yes, config is not a problem! default config for WAPac and linux/windows PC with broadcom chipset have problem also. I’m certified Mikrotik user
The problem persist from one firmware to another, even if i send all necesary info to mikrotik support.
Cisco support is very … this is why i intend to switch to ubiquity hardware and sell all mikrotik. From Ubiquity i’ve had a call in one hard case and we solve the problem!!!
You can try by yourself, just find a broadcom wifi card and try to use it for a month, and you will be angry, as me! Sometimes is working good, but sometimes i lost internet, not connection to the WiFi, Route is ok,IP is ok, WiFi stay connected, from other PC on Winbox i’m logged into these two routers, and NO disconnections or any logs to understand what happens.
Ubiquiti is also 20-80% more expensive depending on the product, and the software management is a nightmare in some use cases, and nowhere near as flexible at the least.
You take the good with the bad in some cases. I use Mikrotik because of the flexibility and pricing. I also understand that my pay-off for this is not having proper TAC like Cisco so I plan accordingly.
They cant attend to every bug as a top priority - yours may have been logged and is in the list to try and fix, but doesnt mean its going to be the very next firmware release, it may take some time. Depends if its a widespread issue, or if its able to be replicated etc. It may not be as bad or widespread as you think.
Yea yea.. UBNT Let me tell you story about cloudkey and power failures: Time gets lost, NTP sync gets stuck. Sync does not work even if corresponding daemon gets restarted. Without correct time, auto-backups are not working, notification emails may get refused (because timestamp is too far in past)…
Official support answer: “unexpected shutdown or forced shutdown can create issues with services which runs on UCK”
Suggested solution: “reset to factory defaults and restore from backup”.
I am sitting between the chairs with Mikrotik Hard- and Software:
On the one hand I get an extremely flexible and cheap product. Also software updates are regulary and bugs are often resolvend in a manner of weeks (occurence of the bugfix in rc)
On the other hand the quality of Hard- and Software seem to suck in certain areas. Also some issues seem to never get resolved (i.e. ARM wireless), Wifi throughput in general, IPSec throughput issues and the like.
So what to do? If you can forgo the extreme flexibilty of mikrotik and need good Hard- and Software stability go for refurbished Cisco products. They are much cheaper than you might think.
Example: 48Port Cisco Catalyst 3750G with advanced Layer-3 routing features for approx 500 Euros. Never had an issue with these. Plus: they are stackable
We have in our network around 1000 Cisco 3650 + other cisco sfuff.
In over two year we have had large problems with software for the 3650 switcher.
For every new version, there are some other stuff that’s break.
Fan on the short 3650 starts spinning up to max after some weeks.
Every time we escalate a problem with Cisco, it looks like we are the first in the world.
We have been given several bata version and patches to add to beta, but still new bugs.
For every new software, on to two reboot with downtime.
8-10 minutes to boot and with Wifi access point connected to Poe, 8-10 more minutes of downtime.
It may have to do with Cisco go to Linux software from their own software some years ago.
Image on switches increased from around 20-30MB to 500MB…
So Cisco have their problems too.
Mikrotik it one of the best boxes you can get for very little money,
Not perfect in any way, but who is…
Problem persist on WAPac old and new, i have different. And problem occur randomly at one day it can happens 5–7 times a hour, or one time at all day. I’ve tried to understand why this happens but can’t figure. It happens just on laptops/PC that have broadcom chipset, other laptop/PC connected to the same AP doesn’t have any issues.
And another bug that on new version of WAPac if i choose to have a guest wifi it have same MAC,same SSID(not on mikrotik but on WiFi clients).
Yeah i know how Cisco support works, and how long it takes when you need a small fix/patch, it’s take near a month even if you have subscription with response time 1-2 hours
For now Ubiquity for our settings works as a charm, no bugs or other problem. We tried to make a bridge with this two hardware(mikdrotik and Ubiquity) but no luck.
I’ve been MikroTik networking gear for close to 10 years now. I’ve never once had a bad experience with their support. They respond pretty quick.
The support is orders of magnitude better than Ubiquiti. As others have said, make sure you provided an exported config (/export hide-sensitive file=myexportedfilename) and a supout.rif file. You can then drag the resulting files from the file window in winbox to Windows file explorer before uploading them to the MikroTik support website.
Even before I get to MikroTik, I have the best distributor in the world to lean on, https://wirelessnetware.ca/. The owner, Hani goes above and beyond, is super knowledgeable on MikroTik routers and switches (and networking in general…he had several Cisco certs previously, but dropped Cisco when he realized how much more he loved MikroTik). If you’re in Canada, definitely give Hani a call. You’ll never look at any other networking gear ever again.