I have a hAP ac2 running at home for about 5 years now, and its flash isn’t big enough to update to the latest versions anymore (I know I can probably get it updated with netinstall). Was thinking of an upgrade to something a little more modern. I compared some newer systems in the same price/market range but for the price and age, the hap ac2 seems very capable.
Spec
hAP ac²
hEX S (2025)
hAP ax lite
hAP ax²
Routing fast path
1973.4
3646.6
2462.8
2630.4
Routing 25 ip filter queues
1973.4
1430.3
946.5
2625.1
Cost
$79.00
$69.00
$59.00
$99.00
I could do without the AP in the meter cupboard, so perhaps the hEX S is a good choice? It does only have 2 cores, but I guess most of the heavy lifting is done outside of the CPU.
I do need it to do pppoe, can this do that at gigabit speeds?
If you can consider the hEX S (2025) as alternative, that means you don't need WiFi on the router. In that case, just remove any wireless or wifi-qcom-ac packages from the hAP ac², and you have about 2.8MiB storage free. That should be enough for many more RouterOS upgrade to come.
The hAP ac² CPU is more powerful (about 1.5x the routing performance without fasttrack) than the one of the hEX S (2025) or hEX refresh.
From the devices listed above, only the hAP ax² is an upgrade, performance-wise.
The published ac² numbers were from RouterOS 6, so they are higher than the number achievable with modern RouterOS 7 (due to RouterOS 7 no longer has the route cache). Real routing performance with the default firewall but with fasttrack disabled on my hAP ac² is about 750 - 800 Mbps.
The hAP ax² is actually faster, although the published 25 rules 512 bytes column value is lower. Because the hAP ax² numbers are from RouterOS 7.
