I’d like to give a RouterBOARD a go, and would like to know your opinion on which RouterBOARD Core Router to start with.
I come from a Systems Administration background with Microsoft and I’d like to get my hands dirty in the network world.
I’m planning to study for my CCNA and work my way up into Mikrotik certifications.
I have an office in a small building, and have distributed internet to the other offices in the building.
I’d like to eventually become a full blown ISP, and my router research has landed me here.
I’d like to find a RouterBOARD that I can utilize as both a starter core router, and eventually when I get a more powerful core router, utilize this one for other tasks.
My personal research has pointed me toward the RB450G.
I have Zeroshell in production on a Dell Poweredge 1U, but the hardware has been giving me problems, and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to switch over to an appliance.
That depends on your uplink speed and number of concurrent(!) users.
I’d say for most things a RB750 is already enough but if it’s not for 200 concurrent(!) users you can’t do much wrong with a 450G.
The RB750 certainly looks very nice for the price point, but does not have a MicroSD slot (which I thought would be advantageous for web caching). Of course I could be completely misinformed on web caching since I’m altogether new to this.
It sounds like the past 12 years of my life. I started my ISP when I bought a T1 and split the connectivity with other businesses in the complex. Used Linux and BSD boxes then later Cisco and Mikrotik.
Got MT certs along the way. Got the CCNA cert, studied for the CCNP but lost the desire and drive for the cert after we became a Mikrotik distributor.
So I can agree with your approach. I am not sure that a full blown ISP is the way to go. It depends on the competition in your part of the world.
I think I would focus more on networking and consulting if I had to do it again. Maybe continue on with the CCNP and CCIE.
Back to your question… I love the RB450G. I think it is a great value and should be perfect for your needs.
I consider the use of Metarouter, running squid, a bit risky.
(Well, may be I am a bit old fashioned, but my long-time expirience in SW-development tells me: Keep it simple. The more modules you use, the higher the risk of running into a bug. Simple statistics. And the MT-SW I have to consider a bit “sloppy”, unfortunately. Because you want to start production use of your equipment, you should be concerned about availability, first of all.)
When you want to use squid as cache, simply put a real (cheap, old) LINUX-box with a HDD between the MT and the web. And then use the LINUX box as an upstream proxy. This also avoids possible long-term problems with a flash-disk for caching because of limited number of update cycles.
But before doing that, you can start using the web-proxy cache of RoS only. And then later on you simply add the LINUX upstream proxy. Learning curve then is just step-by-step
