MikroTik WiFi 5 Router

<b>WARNING!! You MUST update your RouterOS on arrival for 5GHz WiFi to function correctly!!! </b>Up until a recent 2020 update to the RouterOS firmware; this had a serious flaw on the 5Ghz interface which caused an interface crash and complete failure until reboot, often within ~24h of use. This is now fixed, but you must update your RouterOS on arrival... and for security reasons of course.Originally gave this 4 star due to poor WiFi range and performance, but turns out that's limited to the 2.4G channel and manually tuning the 5G channel can give much better performance, so back up to 5 star!!PRO:- Very good price/perofmance for any modern routing tasks- Proper 10G SFP+ to a high power CPU, great for a RoaS and stateful firewalling- RouterOS allows you to make full use of the hardware and optimise it accordingly- Higher quality feel and looks over older versions (visuals are important!!!)CON:- Poorer switch chips with no VLAN hardware offloading :'(- No cool 'extra' feature like the 3011 and 2011- Poor WiFi was a con but upon further manual tuning its great now!Notes:- The case top is a <i>direct heatsink</i> to the powerful CPU! Expect the case to be too hot to touch all the time- Requires actual knowledge of networking to optimise for your environment- The PSU LED is STUPIDLY bright, you'll need tape over it if it's in an office (seriously)- To make use of WiFi propery, you'll need to manually tune itThis is a bit of a strange device since its name hints it's the newer version of the 3011 and thus 2011... but these 4011 routers, wifi or not, seem to be aimed at a different market. It lacks both the LCD and Bleeper. It no longer supports hardware offloading, and doesn't have a USB port anymore... This now seems to be more focused on being a very powerful router <i>without</i> fancy features and no longer cares about being a switch either.<b>Router performance</b>Brilliant. The CPU and overal design and internals make this a powerful router at a good price. RouterOS provides a lot of features available by default which may have otherwise require a higher price point. If you're new to ROS, good luck... but there's plenty of guides online. Make use of both help.mikrotik.com and the MikroTik wiki as right now the documents are being updated and transfered to the Help site, but not everythings there yet (mid 2020).<b>Switch performance</b>It looses a half-star here. The switch chips (2x RTL8367) do not support hardware offloading, thus will not achieve line-speed VLAN filtering. No only that but the pipes from these chips are limited to 2.5Gb/s throughput to CPU. This will not be a problem for RoaS setups (make use of that full 10G SFP!) but if you're using this as an all-in-one router and switch <i>with VLANs</i> you may see slower than expected throughput, as well as an awkward time figuring out VLANs if you haven't done this before on ROS v6+ router with bridges. I'd personally recommend just using seperate bridges per 'network' unless you do need a faster and larger LAN segregation on denser hardware; in that case it's a RoaS setup with a seperate VLAN aware switch(s) below it I'd say.<b>Software</b>RouterOS is brilliant. You can do almost anything on any device from MikroTik regardless of price point, including rather obscure setups usually only seen in big networks. It's like a Sandbox environment, but it will take time to understand if you're new. Use WinBox for setup as its like a IDE for the device.<b>WiFi</b>I wrote this next section with auto mode enabled... but it turns out if you (properly) scan and tune the WiFi adapters you can re-gain a ton of performance and avoid contamination in most scenarios.<b>2.4GHz</b>On 2.4GHz; If you're going to use this as the only WiFi access point in any building with walls, don't bother. Buy some access points. Even in a house it can only breach 2 or so walls before serious degredation (in my tests; from ~71Mb/s WAN to ~0.7Mb/s 2 rooms away). I'm not impressed at all with the performance, BUT you can gain some performance back by tweaking the default wireless adapter setting to avoid noise and overlap faster by manually scanning yourself, it seems to take a while to figure itself out when left on auto settings anyway.<i>5GHz</i>:MUCH better that 2.4 and when manually tuned. I wrote this review having it mostly on auto and has poor results but manually scanning and assigning frequency ranges seems to have improved performance hugely. The degredation is much less severe and in line with what to expect from a quad chain AN device!<b>"TO LONG REVIEW!! DIDN'T READ"</b>This acts like a "SOHO" version of the previous 3011 device, as in it's more 'professional' with less fun features but overall much more powerful. This is probably the perfect cheap-ish RoaS router especially if you want internal firewalling too as it can hapily grace though rules with fasttrack enabled. It almost looses a star because Wireless seems to want manually tuning to get expected performance and because the switch chips don't support hardware VLAN filtering even though it has 10 1G ether ports and looks like it damn should. ::D

This router is absolutely amazing, the configuration options are incredible.Its not plug and play, you need to be aware that this isnt for someone with little routing/computer knowledge.The router arrived with no configuration at all despite the leaflet with it saying connect to 192.168.88.1 and use the web page. If your is like that download wincap from Mikrotek (free) and connect to the router over a lan cable, then go to system -> reset configuration and do not check anything and then apply, after reboot you can connect as per the leaflet. For more advanced users starting from scratch is probably preferable.I used this as my Virgin Hub couldn't cope with the amount of wireless devices in my home and kept dropping connections. The ability in the Router OS to use your own DNS (in my case pihole) was a plus too.Lots of stuff online about configuring the router os, its been a steep learning curve but so far everything is rock solid and fast with zero disconnects.My router is the international version which came from "Wifi Stock UK" on Amazon (I saw some comments from others that got the US version , presumably from another seller)Brilliant!

excellent router, but I warn you, if you do not have knowledge of the settings of routers, you will have a very difficult time, the router also has a weak wifi but with access point and CAPsMAN roaming i dont have any issues with wifi signal coverage.

I've been using MikroTik since 2013 when I was working in Northern Nigeria and used their routers in a Wide Area Network. Conditions can be pretty harsh and their gear did the business reliably and at a very reasonable price. Their reputation for building quality products is well established with me. Since a MikroTik router's OS is standardized across all models with RouterOS, their router models will vary by hardware appointment. The RB4011iGS+5HacQ2HnD-IN has 1GB of RAM and support and IPsec Hardware acceleration. I use IPsec VPN constantly for remote-working and can attest there was palpable VPN performance increase from the RB493G this router replaced. In respect to the antennas, really great coverage. My neihbour can see my SSIDs on the third floor of his house. He can't even see his own WiFi network from his router on the ground floor ;-). Been using it for 5 months now and extremely pleased with it. You the price for a router with such chunky hardware and features make this a great value.