Until recently I was running m0n0wall on a ALIX 2D3 as a home DSL router, but something shorted out and it is no longer stable enough to POST. So I have a few choices, replace it with another ALIX (which can’t do gigabit), upgrade to some sort of juice hungry Intel Atom system, or change to a Routerboard RB450G or RB750GL. The MikroTik devices are cheap, low power and do gigabit, however I don’t know anything about routerOS. At all. And there is very little online. So would it be possible for someone to sell it to me? What are it’s strengths, weaknesses? How does it compare to m0n0wall (which I prefer to pfsense)? How does it compare to dd-wrt? And most importantly, something I consider to be vital, can it cache local DHCP reservations to the local DNS forwarder? So I can resolve internal names and addresses? I don’t want to have to run a separate internal DNS server. And how do the 450G and 750GL compare? I really know nothing about RouterOS so I need to take it from the beginning.
While it has it’s faults RouterOS is probably the most flexible linux based routing platform made.
I have a very Cisco heavy background, working on my CCIE actually. If I was looking for a linux routing distro comparable to Cisco I wouldn’t hesitate to go with Vyatta. It’s not flashy, but it does it’s job very well.
Why am I using Mikrotik when I have some very expensive Cisco gear sitting in the closet? The flexibility. What you can do with RouterOS is only limited by your knowledge and imagination.
-You can create a bridging setup that will only pass the exact packets you want to a capture device.
-You can make it a dynamic traffic management device that adjusts its behavior
-You can make a dynamic firewall that detects anomalous traffic and react to it however you want.
-It can block, throttle, redirect, or even modify traffic.
-You can make it play his theme song when Darth Vader enters the room. http://www.tiktube.com/index.php?video=mCcI3eLKaLmIlDoKCoLzKvLxFlpoCFpm=
-You can do load balancing.
In short it gives me a lot more flexibility and features than an equivalent Cisco for a very small fraction of the cost. If you get a Routerboard it’s going to be a whole lot more powerful than any off the shelf consumer or small business router sold beside them. They may not have the rock solid reliability of a Cisco, but hey they’re made for business use so they’re far from unreliable.
Then there’s wireless. You get the same flexibility there as you get with the other features and if you get something with the mini-pci slots you can upgrade or expand by swapping or adding a new card.
Is it perfect? Far from it, but I can deal with it’s quirks.