<I don’t know if this should go in here or General, but General says “Router OS” so I’ve always assumed it was software-related and this seems more appropriate (honestly I wish there were just a “General” for meta-topics or topics not covered by other forums, but either way).>
I’m trying to get many different items for my clients all over the US and I’m seeing various items disappear rapidly with no signs of restocking (i.e. few or none on order on many vendor sites, like Baltic, Streakwave, Microcom). For instance, I saw there were dozens of WAP ACs a month ago and thought I’d wait to order until I was going to a specific customer’s site to order them in case I had to return one (thankfully have never had to return a single MT product), but two weeks later I was lucky to get a single one on eBay and even then I barely got it before they were sold out. This seems to be happening with more and more items, so I’ve gone from buying basics and waiting for new products to be shipped (like a 5009 for myself) to barely getting the basics for myself or clients and scraping together what I can, going without, or buying other junk to hold them over.
I realize that many supply chains have been seriously interrupted and that’s causing delayed cascades going far beyond the initial problems getting bleeding-edge CPUs/GPUs, so it seems that it’s now hitting the long tail of ICs made on older nodes (a real issue as explained in this video, for anyone curious), likely including many or all of the processors Mikrotik and competitors use.
So, what I’m looking to find out is if Mikrotik is just stuck waiting it out with everyone else until component shortages subside or if they are able to kick production and/or shipping up to meet these shortages? Or, alternately, if somehow I’ve missed it and the stocked products are now with some other sellers or markets?
I had good luck with Pace International recently. Turned out they had stock of what I wanted, while Baltic pushed out availability from April, to May, then September. Newer items like the 5009 as mentioned are still backordered, but they do seem to have stock of some things.
Mikrotik is not stuck waiting, we are constantly working with different suppliers, to re-plan everything that is delayed, and that something is always being manufactured and shipped. We have an excellent logistics and purchases team, they are meeting with chip manufacturers, and everything is moving
From my viewpoint, I ordered a RB5009 to replace out of support Asus stuff in March with a preliminary delivery date in early April, only to be pushed forward to end of June and then to unknown, so there is definitely lack of supply for at least some products.
I appreciate @normis responding. I am not trying to give Mikrotik a bad name. I’m just having a difficult time getting clients provisioned with the gear we specced out and am wasting a lot of money on alternate gear I don’t plan on keeping (but don’t have time to resell later) and am hoping to be out of this mess sooner than later as costs for projects are skyrocketing since the integration is part of the reason I can keep costs low. But, still, such is the nature of the whole world right now, and it’s not unique to Mikrotik.
Back on this: As far as I can tell, most major sites that are out of items are all saying mid-to-late September for gear coming in, maybe slightly sooner for some projects, which is 2-3 months away, a very long time in business terms, so I guess we’ll have to do what we have to do.
#1 isn’t just limited to MikroTik. Big C among others are much further out on product delivery. Our corporate IT was quoted almost a year from Big C on some Catalyst equipment with PoE.
#3 yes - and we issue the teams CCR1009s for network access. Thankfully these are rock solid devices both physically and software. I’ve needed to replace HAPs in the past 12 months but no CCRs.
