Just received my Mikrotik 750, which I imagine is a good way to get to know the Mikrotik OS.
I used to deal with Cisco products professionally, before I retired, and I must say, I am very impressed with what I see in a router at a price point below the cost of many consumer routers, but with features that exceed many of the features even in “robust” versions of IOS.
I just got done readdressing the 750 to fit my network as a perimeter router, and I chose the router because I felt that having an access point on the same device as your perimeter device was a bad idea. Some home users may disagree. Whatever.
In any case, I am now operating a routed layer 3 network on my home network, and this keeps some layer two devices isolated from other layer two chatter. Having my microcontrollers ( Atmega 328, Attiny’s, Pic’s, etc. ) that are 8266 ( wifi ) connected on their own subnet makes me feel better. Having my growing farm of embedded linux devices on their own layer two subnet makes me feel a little better. Having the rest of the stuff, notebooks and desktops on their own layer two subnet… It gives me powerful options as far as having them on networks that can be bandwidth shaped, or have the interface or layer 3 route temporarily disabled while still being able to see and test network activity helps me from bastardizing my entire network just to ettercap and winshark a network issue on one network. Cutting down on all the “stuff” going on on a layer two subnet just makes life easier for me. Yes, I know I can set filters ( and I do ) on winshark or Network General Sniffer product, but it is still nice to isolate all the chatter from layer 2 adjacent boxes that have nothing to do with what I am testing.
Someday, I will dig through your wiki ( or just google/duckduckgo ) on how to run a tcpdump from your router. I am sure it is documented on the wiki, or somewhere else on the Internet.
It is somewhat frustrating to not be able to run Linux commands on what is a linux based router, but on the other hand, I suppose it has a security benefit to it as well. Average hackers hitting a mikrotik are going to be, “what the hell is that?”.
Then, hopefully, they will realise that easier targets are to be had. Just keep moving. Nothing to see here… Really. Honestly. Ha!
In any case, I just wanted to say thanks for creating such a great product at such a great price.
Keep up the good work.
-Kurt Oestreich
Former CNE, CC( Cisco whatever ) IE, etc.
Yes, I am older than mold.