Router on Stick for lab purposes

RouterOS Beginner Basics
1

Hello guys,

i would like to ask an simple question, which cheapest Mikrotik device would handle inter-VLAN routing (hence serves as RoS) on Cisco switch or basically any switch? This is just for lab purposes, im pretty sure considering Mikrotik price tag even VM would handle this, Im looking for least pricey solution.

thanks in advance :sunglasses:

2

Cheapest wold probably be hap lite, but with only 16 Mb of storage (and 32 Mb RAM) you won’t be able to run Ros 7 on it (or at least it won’t be easy or working “right”).

Nowadays I wouldn’t buy (new) a device with less than 64 Mb or 128 Mb storage.

Right now probably the best bang for the buck is the hex refresh:
https://mikrotik.com/product/hex_2024

If you want to save money, maybe you could consider used devices (even if they tend to be not very cheap for recent models).

If you are OK with limited speed (100 Mb ports) and v6, then a hap lite would do. (and they can be sometimes found for very little money second hand).

3

I prefer use a 5009 for lab and staging.
More interfaces, sfp+ and more power.

4

Cheapest is a CHR in a virtual machine. They have a free trial. And you can also use bigger tools like GNS3 to emulate multiple routers.

If you want hardware, all the routes have same features including BGP/OSPF and certainly VLANs, so even a hAPaxLite or new “refresh” hEX both let you test things & being ARM-based will offer the full set of features (BTH, ZeroTier, Container). But if your looking to test peformance, then yeah the CPU matters, and some of the higher end routers do have L3HW offloading switch chips too… So while routing config is same on all models, not all hardware will have exactly the same config for max performance when switching since there are things to enable L3HW/etc if that’s supported.

The RB5009 is a good jack-of-all-trades with a decent CPU, so as a lab device, it’s pretty good and you can always redeploy it to production. Just not the cheapest if you’re just looking to “play” with config in hardware.

5

Hello guys,

thank you so much for all replies, mine goal is to have physical lab, i used GNS3 only with Cisco images but there is no issue deploying ROS withing emulated env. so i aimed for physical device, ill sort it out now and DMOR.

thanks again