Hey mate,
Greetings to all. I’m a new member in this community. I hope this is the right place to start my issue here. I need a router for my new home with 3 bedrooms. Which one would be reliable?
Thank you so much for your reply.
Hey 
Well, you can use something like this https://mikrotik.com/product/RB951Ui-2HnD or this https://mikrotik.com/product/RB951Ui-2nD
hey thanks for your input. I appreciate your reply here. But I am concern because of this product availability. Are they available in local market? BTW I am from Bangladesh.
Hello. I am a university student who is using mikrotik device for university research in ROK [ South korea].
The space I study is using OpenStack and K8s (kubernetes).
If you also consider vpn, I recommend carefully the “Mikrotik device RB1100AHx4” that we use in our lab.
Our university lab also wants to refer to the upload speed / download speed 500M supplied from ISP.
The site we bought in our lab
https://www.amazon.com/Mikrotik-RouterBoard-RB1100AHx4-Ethernet-throughput/dp/B07687ZW39/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=RB1100AHx4&qid=1554997133&s=gateway&sr=8-1
As far as I know South Korea use the high-speedy connection than other countries.
Presuming you want Wifi as well. The HAP AC2 is a cost effective and small unit with a good balance of features. All depends what you need.
Recommending RB951Ui-2HnD in year 2019 is ridiculous. This model has been here for ages. It does not have gigabit ports, CPU has just one core, wifi is just 2.4GHz.
RB951Ui-2nD is even worse - wifi signal is way lower and by my experience, it is not strong enough to penetrate even few walls. Also 64MB RAM is very low and sufficient only for completely basic tasks and there are people who have trouble with upgrades, due to lack of memory and storage.
Meanwhile, you have RBD52G which costs only 10/15$ more but has strong 2.4 + 5GHz wifi, four core CPU, all gigabit ports…
I am not saying that he can’t use this, but it is definitely not good to recommend outdated models
That is an absolutely absurd suggestion for a home router. No one needs to spend $300 USD for a home router when a hEX or hAP AC2 will do the job and has IPSec accel for VPN connections along with support about 1Gbps of throughput.
I mean unless that RB1100 is doing a lot more than 500Mbps and a couple VPNs it really is a waste of a router because it probably wasn’t needed.
$300 for a router connection and cost. I don’t think everyone will like this idea.
They need to move these archaic models, and others, to the archive section. Confusing for newcomers to see all these options.
They are still on sale.
Should be more specific. What is your Internet connection? Do you have any WiFi infrastructure? What is your existing setup and expectations.
Not only that they are marketing in the newsletter “NEW” powerline, which actually uses three generation old chips circa 2012.
Things to consider:
- How is the upstream: Mikrotik has some routers that take SIM cards, some others that can take wireless USB sticks, most are designed to use Ethernet upstream. If your providers offer xDSL or fiber you will need some kind of modem/transceiver
- Speed that your ISP offers and probabilities of it changing during the life of the product. Some models have only 100Mbps, others CPU cannot deal with >300Mbps…
- Number of Ethernet wired devices you want to hook, if only the modem/transceiver or you have printers or desktop PCs… I manage several devices, one has 3 Ethernet ports used, others only the main ISP one, they are empty usually…
- Number of wifi devices you want to connect. Do they have 802.11n/ac (5GHz) or just 802.11b/g (2.4GHz)
- Spread of the house and how thin/thick are the walls (is it linear? rounded? will the ISP connection come from a central place or a corner? lots of interference or rural?..)
- CPU needs (are you using 1Gbps + VPNs that require CPU or just <100Mbps without much complexity in firewall
- Budget
It is not the same a 3 room house where 5 people live, having each a cellular phone, a laptop and maybe tablet and using a lot of video or downloads, than a house
where 3 people live and there is only one computer and 3 phones.
It is not the same a house with old stone walls than one with thin brick walls.
It is not the same a house with a modern big city 1Gbps optic fiber (or 300-150Mbps) than a house with a 1Mbps upstream/3Mbps downstream DSL connection. Or if you are going to use it with 3G/4G connections, how fast?
To give some data points:
- A normal flat, thin walls, with a high number of wifi devices and fast (>100Mbps) ISP connection a hAP ac^2 is good: dual chain, 2 bands, hardware acceleration, enough RAM. I have one such place, I had a hAP ac lite TC temporarily but the connection was maxing out al 90Mbps because of the ethernet. ac^2 is perfect.
- I also manage a couple of places with hAP ac, also fast connections, but in retrospect at least one of the would have been better served with an ac^2, and at half price. ac^2 has a slightly worse wifi, but it is better for VPN and high throughput due to CPU
- A lower budget set up, same kind of place, a <100Mbps ISP connection, not so many wifi devices. The hAP ac lite (or lite TC) is good if you need 5GHz wifi or the 5 Ethernet ports. Where my ac^2 is I had temporarily a hAP Lite TC with an android phone plugged via USB as the ISP, until they brought the internet. It worked well. If you don’t need the 5GHz band you don’t have too many wifi devices, etc. there are more economic single band models.
- A set up with 3 or 10Mbps connection, one laptop, a few phones. You could even do with a mAP (one Ethernet upstream, one for the PC, one USB and wifi) or mAP Lite (just one ethernet, all connections would be wifi). I have one mAP Lite for travel, I usually connect it via wireless to phone or wifi hotspots, but have also used it with my main internet connection when I needed to unplug the main router for a while,
my suggestion is use a router and an wifi AP, not a all in one.
it is likely you change the wifi ap every 2~3 year for newer standard but a good router can serve you for 6~10 years at least
also the best place for the router may not be a good place for for the wifi signal.