MikroTikTik RB4011iGS+RM Port Black

This is a decent router from Mikrotik with lots of powerful features. There's also a wireless version of this router but I personally found the UniFi wireless solution works much better than Mikrotik's and decided to stick with UniFi instead.HardwareYou do get a lot of hardware for your money, with a quad-core CPU, 1 GB of RAM, 10GbE SFP+, 10 Gigabit Ethernet etc., Port 10 also supports Passive POE out (which works fine with UniFi kit too!). The LED's on the RB4011 are really bright and can light up a house at night. There is no way to turn the LEDs off and I've ended up using some black electrical tape to cover them up. The device is passively cooled and the case works as a heatsink which means it's silent but it does get quite warm. Mine spends most of its time around mid 30 degree Celsius.Getting StartedI simply connected my PC to port 2 on the RB4011 and the router issued an 192.168.88.x address. Using my browser I was able to connect to the RB4011 and begin the basic configuration in WebFig. Out of the box the MikroTik has a couple of quick start options which will give you the very basic config but this device really isn't for beginners and without a basic understanding of routing, switching, DHCP etc. you will struggle to configure this device any further.RoutingThe MikroTik RB4011 a very powerful router with an insane amount of features. The device runs MikroTik's RouterOS and offers several routing features only normally found on more expensive enterprise level products. The routing performance of the RB4011 is great and even ploughing several gigabits per second through it the CPU barely seems to break a sweat. From what I can tell MikroTik's routers are excellent at routing and is one of their strong points.SwitchingThe RB4011 is not going to be great as a switch and if you specifically require wire speed switching you will be better off buying a dedicated device instead. The reason why the RB4011 is not a great switch is because of the use of its 2 x Realtek RTL8367 chips. These chips do not support hardware offloading when you are using VLANs and therefore any switching and inter-VLAN routing is performed by the CPU via one or more bridges. The block diagram for the RB4011 also indicates that ports 1-5 and 6-10 are both connected via 2.5Gbs links back to the CPU so this means you will never be able to achieve full switching speed for all 10 ports.BridgingBe prepared to learn about bridging with the RB4011. For most configuration scenarios, ports and VLANs that you want to route between (including the 2.4GHz and 5Ghz Wireless interfaces) need adding to a bridge which performs software based switching. Although the concept of PVIDs, tagged and untagged VLANs are heavily used with the bridge, the implementation may take a little getting used to and is not as obvious as other products. It does seem to work really well though.Management ToolsThere's a few choices for managing MikroTik devices. WebFig is management GUI built into the device and can be accessed via your browser. WinBox is an external application downloaded from MikroTik's website that provides a multi-window interface for managing the device. There's also an Android app which also allows you to fully manage your device (and looks very modern compared to the other options). Out of the GUI options I do prefer to use WinBox but it does have quite a 'legacy' look about it which can be distracting but it's actually very responsive and feature rich. You will definitely want to learn the CLI on RouterOS which is different to every other router or switch I've ever used and feels a bit more like a programming language than configuring a switch. You can even create scripts to perform certain tasks if required.Logging and debugging toolsI have to say that MikroTik provides much better logging and debugging functionality in RouterOS than I've seen in various other products. I've found the debug logging and build-in tools such as 'Torch' incredibly useful for diagnosing what's (or not) going on, compared to say EdgeRouter and the majority of home products (Netgear, DLink etc.)Support/UpdatesMikroTik is not as common as other manufacturers and their support channels do seem much narrower. You will find far less configuration examples online of how to achieve certain scenarios. The forums are also full of people asking questions with either no replies or being blamed for misconfiguration when there are bugs in hardware or software affecting lots of people. For me it doesn't inspire confidence in getting support when I need it and you should definitely consider if that is important to you. MikroTik do release regular updates to RouterOS though with different branches (stable, long term, testing and development) so if you do experience issues there's a chance it will eventually get fixed.It's a decent router with lots of features and technology and I highly recommend it.Pros:- A lot of hardware for your money- 10GbE SFP+ port- 10 x Gigabit Ethernet ports- Decent performance despite being software based switching- Fanless design so silent in operation- More features and functionality than other products in the same class- Regular software updates with different branches (stable, long term, testing and development)- RJ45 serial port on the rear of the deviceCons:- Fairly steep learning curve and unlike anything else- Poor quality switching chips- LEDs cannot be turned off- No USB port for 3G/4G dongle- Serial cable not supplied

I brought this for our Gbit connection here.All worked fine, setup PPPoE information and connected right up.I did have to enable IPv6 and then add all the Firewall Filter / Rules which was fine.The only small issues were that this product came with an EU 2 pin mains adaptor and that it comes with no manual and that the only manual is online that you cannot even download, so I would of hated it if I had connection issues.But other than the above issues this is a real nice product so far.

As per title. Lots of features, great performance, but difficult to configure and requires network expertise to get the most out of it.

Very well built, it feels bulletproof.

You won't get a better router for the price.

Bought this to replace an edge router that I was currently using and to be honest, I really didn’t think it offered any performance benefits over the ER at all, unless you were needing something that could perform serious routing which in many cases, SOHO don’t need.However, good well built product with an os that you can drill right down into for configuration, but be warned, it is a fairly steep learning curve.Having said that, the forum is a good place to go if you need any assistance but a basic networking knowledge is a must before you even start!