We are a WISP working in Spain with mikrotik in the last 7 years. We start from 0 but now we have more then 7k clients and 700Mbits in throughput. We are now in a new network deployment running full BGP and OSPF between 4 routers. We use the CCR1036-12G-4S in all of this routers. We have in the last month 4 hang of the routers. We try to speak with support, and we get the same reply all time.
Update the ROS. But the problem is that we have it up to date and we still with the problems.
We buy more than 300K in Mikrotik equipment. We know that RB411, RB433 can hang but not the CCR because from this depend our core.
We decided to move our equipment to a carrier class equipment like Cisco or Juniper. We know that this equipment is more expansive thank Mikrotik but the expansive is our clients angry.
Also for your company is a good idea to test the new releases because you fix one issue and broke a 4 things that working good.
I have 100% Mikrotik network OSPF, routed but not BGP at present, in general it is reliable, Yes there is issues but no show-stoppers, my opinion is that Mikrotik needs needs to be configured by professional system consultants and tweaked by RF professionals
You don’t have a hangs never in mikrotik with no reaseon? We setup properly. We are a company with 35 employer 2 CCNA, MTCNA, MTCNA… I don’t say that is not working, it works of course. But the reliability in mikrotik at this moment is not enought. You can read for example in the post of ROS6.11 that so many people ask for a lab test before release a new version. I love the ROS and Mikrotik products i’m fan of this company but is not for a game is for a bussines.
You can live with MT in a professional business only if you are aware of the problems and work around. We still run BGP on RB1000 with 5.x. These routers are never touched. We back them up with 2 RB1100AHx2 toward our network where we do central work. We have only 2 CCR in production with 6.5 which handle our hosting/service network. All other routers run 5.x. Sectors and cpes run fine with 6.10.
Every main release I saw from MT needs >.12 to reach a pretty stable state. Everything below runs fine using only a subset of the features. Some releases are unusable at all.
We omit the switches from MT so far. There are other cheap switches which are easier to configure and just work.
CCNA, MTCNA, MTCNA which of these is a RF professional, put another way programming and using software only will not always fix some issues at a busy tower and this is where a RF professional comes in,
As regards the latest version(s), I don’t subscribe and never have to “Newer is better” until it is proven to be better,
In fact just now I am slowly introducing V6.7 to our network on non critical items and if it works OK, will continue,
Other users have suggested that Mikrotik use a “wireless engineer” and maybe this is would help reduce wireless related bugs on new releases.
It’s really funny that a lot of people here complain about the bugs in ROS and considering to move to so called “enterprise” vendors. I’m using Mikrotik devices at a non-profit, community based WISP and i’m quite happy with it. Sure i also faced some bugs, but in general it works. For every kind of device we use in the field we have at least one in spare. Those devices are also used to test new versions in our lab. So far i never downgraded a device which was in production. I think every commercial ISP should do the same: Tests setups which are common in your network before you rollout a new version.
Don’t get me wrong MT can really improve their testing: like bugs you easily find if you do common things on a fresh new device. But the OS is so complex and feature-rich that MT can not test every possible configuration. It’s up to you to test new versions with the special kind of configuration your network has. For larger networks my suggestion is even to roll it out in steps after it passed the lab testing. Like 5% of the devices, wait 1-2 weeks, next 30%, wait again, roll it out to the other devices.
Furthermore you don’t have to run the most recent version. If a device is doing its job without a problems, let it run! As long as there is no critical update regarding security there is no reason to touch a stable/running configuration.
For all who think moving to “enterprise” devices will end with no bugs: believe me you will be disappointed after a while. At my commercial 9-5 Job i’m working at a large ( Tier1 ) ISP where we have all these expensive devices from cisco, juniper and so. Those devices have at least as many bugs as ROS have. The main difference is kind of support and bug tracking you get from the vendor. That is the field where MT has a lot of space for improvement.
Well said and it is refreshing to read that “enterprise” devices has the same number of bugs as ROS?
A few months ago during storms it was the enterprise devices which were very expensive that gave the most trouble whereas the Mikrotik equipment were not effected.