I have been hesitating for years before I took the plunge to replace my not-so-good old ISP router. How to make sure that the router I would grab would be compatible ? The router is the base of my networks and thus all my services, would I be able to set it up ? Would it introduce security risks that I wouldn’t be skilled enough to mitigate ?…
I have eventually decided to give a go to the hAP ax3 (even the name is inimidating !). After four days of tinkering I am really amazed by the powerful tool that is Router OS. Putting one’s hands on it is fairly daunting. Of course, the first thing I did was exclude myself from my own network, then failing to reset, … But once understood the basics, learnt a bit with your amazing WinBox (I’ll take Win as in win, not Windows, anway …), I have started tinkering with the command-line.
Your OS is impressive and the WinBox is just stunning in the way that it guides the path to the command-line.
Furthermore the community here is awesome and I see members answering half-baked questions together with rather technical ones.
I just wanted to share that first impression with you.
This “home” router is a lot of router for the money. I tested cAP ac (as wireless access point only) and once realised what it is capable of decided to try out RB4011iGS wireless variant to fully replace ISP provided router. It was great experience up until I realised how powerful its 5GHz radio module but dated 2Ghz’s one. Neighbour’s router repeater began to use up all available 1/6/11 radio channels, but I needed latest wave2 driver at expense of losing 2Ghz interface. Still some wireless clients needed 2Ghz. Long story short, I bought hAP AX^3.
After four days of tinkering I am really amazed by the powerful tool that is Router OS.
If you haven’t tried mktxp-stack yet, it will greatly help you to see how every single router configuration’s and firmware upgrade impact an overall performance and stability. If you take step further and decide to replace thermal pads and thermal paste, then put it in 9’’ rack mount, then I have few stories about it here. What helped me the most was an antenna upgrade to efficiently reach majority of wireless clients without moving the router itself, so it stays in 9” rack mount attached to the wall.
Sincerely, I am totally ignorant in terms of hardware and my needs are pretty basic. So I might have over-invested. But what I understand is the software, and its conception is great. Its deviation relative to standard Linux distributions is at first quite disappointing, but once you understand its structure, it makes it so easy !…
Hmmm.
There, I fixed it for you:
it makes it so easy [1]
[1] for the very basic setups and for the few more advanced setups that are actually - direclty or indirectly - properly documented, all the rest is a lighter or darker suffusion of yellow.