HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router

I've been a MikroTik fan since the beginning of my career some 15 years ago now. I have used the MikroTik router and Ubiquiti AP combination ever since. With that said, I can absolutely agree that their UX is terrible for anyone who doesn't specifically know how to configure a MikroTik router. The fact that you have to configure FQ-CoDel yourself and some bufferbloat protection isn't just a built-in option is absurd for anyone using it as a home router.

For me, the era of MikroTik is sort of... now.

Don't get me wrong, they make powerful and feature-complete stuff, but their UI sort of assumes you really know what you're doing. I don't know what I'm doing.

But my LLM does. I've been able to set up site-to-site VPNs with Mikrotik in fifteen minutes now, rather than the day-long exercise of googling and praying.

I'm more than happy with VyOS. Throw that in proxmox and you have an open source JunOS with zero license headache.

I do use Mikrotik for 2.5g switching though, zero complaints.

I use tp-link everything. I have all of them connected to self-hosted Omada controller in docker. Works like a breeze, including notifications. Used MikroTik before but "the dude" or whatever is called now was hit and miss. Probably you don't need it anymore if get llm to configure it.

About 2 years ago I tried to use Mikrotik, as the router for my ATT Fiber.

It's royal pain.

Basic router setup is not hard.

Port forward to expose web server? Can be done after heavy docs&forum reading, but hair pinning never worked for me.

I checked their WiFi AP. It's UI is hard even for senior software engineer.

In the end I got opnSense installed in VM on Proxmox and it's my router for last 2 years.

I'm using 2 Mikrotik switches with their simplified UI to operate VLANs. Zero complains.

Just use linux! Why use someone else's non FOSS, locked down linux, when you could truly own your router?

It's a great educational experience I would recommend to anyone interested in networking. Grab debian, grab a system with 2 NICs, make it your router/firewall/gateway.

One thing that frustrates me about MikroTik and OpenWRT too, is a lot of things require multiple steps to set up, like adding a port forward with hairpin isn't just one click, adding a VLAN requires adding stuff in like 5+ different places.

I really liked using Opnsense before I switched to Openwrt and I always want to go back, because it was just so much more streamlined and easy to configure from a 'geek but not a network engineer' perspective.

I gave it a shot but I really didn't see any benefit over OpenWRT which is plain old Linux.

There's also some really good value hardware that you can install OpenWRT on, I picked up a Xiaomi AP for like $30, flashed OpenWRT and it works great.

Switched to Ubiquiti, I'm quite happy except for their lack of a sane MCP.

I love Mikrotik products but they are lacking what I need at home. I need basic IPS/IDS, notification when something is wrong without writing mikrotik scripts, easy backup failover, etc not VxLAN, QinQ and BGP extensive filtering :) I moved to Unifi Cloud Gateways as home/small soho routers and can't be happier. But Mikrotik stays as emergency hardware backup ..

I am glad, I am 99% sure it's the case, that I don't have to do CGNAT with ATT. Sounds like a pain.

I like ipv6 but I have been thinking of disabling it lately because i cannot technically setup static leases with ipv6 like i can with ipv4, so technically the ipv6 for one of the services in my homelab could change and cause problems.

mikrotik is great for the tech enthusiast who wants to test things out or use enterprise grade hardware but without the enterprise grade cost (no license fees) but this also means you're missing the enterprise grade support. The equipment is a fantastic deal for what you get but you need to know what you're doing to get the best performance out of it.

I’ve been very happy with Mikrotik.

Chose them partly to reduce dependence on US tech too.

From some time, I had a though about getting my home-lab. Prior to that, I've decided to prepare my networking for it and ditch the router given by my ISP for MikroTik to optimise the network. It turned out it's not easy - why? Check it out on my latest blog post!

I am using a tiny mini pc j6412 with fd.io vpp(with dpdk enabled) and some customized plugins for pppoe and overlay tunnel, it works quite well

and it's cheap and fully customized, and powerful

For me when building homelab, customizability maybe important

Mikrotik is not a mere replacement for plug and play routers such as TP-Link and the like. It's a very advanced device offering countless networking features, including multiple VPN server options, advanced Layer 2/bridging/switching features - VLANs, nested VLANs (Q-in-Q), VXLAN, spanning tree protocols (STP, RSTP, MSTP), 802.1x authentication, bridge-based firewall and bridge-based NAT, data center bridging (a.k.a. "lossless Ethernet"). Advanced Layer 3 features such as BGP, policy routing, traffic shaping, VRRP, hardware layer 3 acceleration. Then containers, matter/thread protocols, mesh networking, advanced wi-fi features such as centrally-managed network (CAPSMAN), multiple/virtual access points, hotspots, and many many more. Advanced firewall for both IPv4 and IPv6. On top of that scripting, SSH server, NTP server, DNS cache. API client for advanced integrations, and built-in scheduler, packet sniffer for troubleshooting, safe mode for automatic rollbacks of recent changes in case when the admin gets cut off due to a dangerous change. It'd be really hard to enumerate all that RouterOS offers.

And all that is available from tiny home/SMB office devices starting at 40 USD, through dedicated wireless point to point bridges, to a big Ethernet switches/routers with 400G interfaces.

Of course it doesn't compete with high end NVIDIA Spectrum-X, Cisco or Juniper, but is good enough for 95% of networks.

It works great as a plug&play home/office router, too thanks to Quick Set, but for more sophisticated setups, a knowledge of networking protocols is mandatory. The more fancy setup, the more in-depth knowledge is required. Just like with programming and all stuff in life.

Mikrotik is really a sweet spot for routers. It's feature-rich and it has a nice Web UI (or WinBox that is now cross-platform). And Mikrotik as a company is just amazing; they still support hardware that is almost 15 years old.

Other routers:

1. OpenWRT is a bit too basic, and updates are hit-and-miss.

2. Ubiquity is a bit too Apple-like, with its reliance on apps and integration.

3. Cisco is WAY too expensive, and too complicated to set up without having Cisco experience.

I'm now eagerly waiting for them to release the next generation of their routers. hEX Pro looks perfect to replace my aging CCR2004.

I can't read the nearly-white (or super-thin font) text on the white background.

Is that representative of using mikrotik hardware?

So good to see so many articles pop up on hn regarding self-hosting and home labbing

I just got a backup ISP at home and connected fiber directly to Mikoritk using SFP dongle instead of the box provided by ISP.

Scripts on RouterOS handle network checks for failover, DNS updates, etc.

I got that Mikrotik home router 10 years ago and it is still performing great and handles most of the use cases without issues.

Frustratingly I couldn’t find a Mikrotik that would offer me a few SFPs, and a 2.5 or two. I wanted ideally just 3 SFPs - two WAN for LB / Failover and one up to switch. 2.5g WAN would do but would rather SFP for future use.

UDM-SE it is for now.

I hope there is a part 2, where they make sure the internet can't access their management interfaces...

In Poland, Play.pl sets up IPv6 by default. One phone call to ISP to disable the hidden firewall on their router gives us full IPv6 network transparency, no NATs are needed anymore. I highly recommend after installing a firewall appliance (for example OPNsense, but probably Mikrotik should have it as well). IPv6 "feels" like how networks should work since the beginning. IPv4 feels like a legacy technology.

They of course also have a DS-Lite AFTR gateways to tunnel the IPv4 traffic. In practice, everything works (for me at least).

I went with omada and I'm happy for now

step 1 buy openwrt hardware accelerated NAT compatible device

step 2 throw the mikrotik in the garbage

I love MikroTik, but ffs just let me install something else on it. SONiC or any other Linux would be awesome. I love their hardware, but their software is absolutely awful.

Is there any manufacturer out there who produces high quality hardware that is not locked down?

MikroTik is a nightmare from what I have heard, companies who invested hundreds of thousands of dollars cannot wait for the contract to expire to replace everything.

For homelab, you are far better served buying a second hand Sophos baremetal/server rack mounted, and installing OPNSense in it.

I have a 2nd hand Sophos SG210 Rev3 from eBay, replaced the Celeron CPU with an i7 one, 16GB, new SSD, dual 10G NIC, it had been running like a dream.