Mikrotik…. Everything
I have recently added a MikroTik router into my ever-growing list of MikroTik parts. This CCR2004-1G-12S+2XS is an extremely powerful router and overkill for my setup, but I was fed up with my Deco system and needed something that could go the distance. I was overeager in my first-time setup and made a number of mistakes by trying to take shortcuts or assuming I knew how things fit together. Once I took the time to get to know the interface, it all started humming along. I have discovered a number of features that the MikroTik team bakes into RouterOS now that have completely superseded dedicated systems I had before. The first was wireguard for VPN, I fought with getting it setup on my truenas system for ages before finding that the mikrotik has wireguard built in and its dead easy to setup. The second one was ad blocking I had been using pihole for a while and really liked it but I found that is was causing some issues with local DNS so I looked and low and behold the router has a built in adlist and you can link into repositories with just a few commands.
All this to say that I have been extremely happy with the Mikrotik product stack and have made huge strides in my networking knowledge and uptime with their products. From 100G switching to core routers it all works so well. My next step is to clean up some of the cables by moving the netgear down and letting the router take that slot so that everything can get a shorter run. I might sunset the netgear all together but time will tell there.
