In my opinion Mikrotik does a good job, but not a great one.

We choose their products for the features and the low prices.

But what do you do as a network admin when you realise that a 48 port switch installed in a rack, that connects 30 servers, is not working (traffic not passing, flapping ports, instable uplink ports...and all other issues seen on this forum) ?!
Well, you first reboot it. Then you try and update the switch. And then another reboot. Finnaly you decide to change the switch with other vendor ! Will you trust to install again that mikrotik item ?
No! you dont !

I understand that there are 1 million of situations and you can not make all tests in your labs !

But, please, do more tests with your products in your labs before release them on the market ! Customers are not lab rats !

Sorry but you - network admin - are the one who is responsible.
Do not blame others for your fault.
(I do not deny there are bugs, but testing for your network setup is your job)

Ok, I understand. Network admins are to blame for using Mikrotik! Agree !

Ok, I understand. Network admins are to blame for using Mikrotik! Agree !

You can do your own tests before putting switch in production

Ok, I understand. Network admins are to blame for using Mikrotik! Agree !

You can do your own tests before putting switch in production

Yes, I can. But many times, problems come after a while, after you make test -> instability.

Another thing: you buy some products and on tests you realise that they have issues. And you loose a lot of time. More, you need to send them back, but some companies do not take items back (bad luck).

It wouldnt be easier that these equipments would do what they say they do? I dont say that they should have zero issue. I say that there are way to many bugs ! Bugs that could be handled in the testing labs in the first place, by hardware/network enginners.

I realise now that some of you really like to be lab rats.

Ok, I understand. Network admins are to blame for using Mikrotik! Agree !

You can do your own tests before putting switch in production

Yes, I can. But many times, problems come after a while, after you make test -> instability.

Exactly. MT team did some tests, decided to start to sell it, problems come after those tests ))

Ok, I understand. Network admins are to blame for using Mikrotik! Agree !

You can do your own tests before putting switch in production

Yes, I can. But many times, problems come after a while, after you make test -> instability.

Another thing: you buy some products and on tests you realise that they have issues. And you loose a lot of time. More, you need to send them back, but some companies do not take items back (bad luck).

It wouldnt be easier that these equipments would do what they say they do? I dont say that they should have zero issue. I say that there are way to many bugs ! Bugs that could be handled in the testing labs in the first place, by hardware/network enginners.

I realise now that some of you really like to be lab rats.

Easy solution, buy equipment from another company

Creatin, what a stupid answer!

He is absolutely right about making us beta testers where MT is used in many production environments. MT software development is an example how to make it wrong with no respect to users. It would be interesting to find out how they (not) test their software before releasing it to public. Their products are fantastic but the part of it, ROS development and testing, is some kind of a joke. I am looking forward to see they will understand it some day and do important changes to the process.

Network admins don't blindly reboot a switch and upgrade firmware in a mission critical environment.

People with switch credentials that shouldn't have them do that quite often though. Then they don't perform effective troubleshooting, and complain when something doesn't behave as expected.

Network admins don't blindly reboot a switch and upgrade firmware in a mission critical environment.
People with switch credentials that shouldn't have them do that quite often though. Then they don't perform effective troubleshooting, and complain when something doesn't behave as expected.

It doesn't matter because we do not discuss admin abilities. It's about Mikrotik which should do its job right.

It doesn't matter because we do not discuss admin abilities. It's about Mikrotik which should do its job right.

Please define your standards, because 'doing the job right' is vague and subjective.What does 'doing the job right' mean? Can you provide an example of a company that develops software that you think 'does the job right?'

I'm quite curious what your standards are. No bugs? No downtime? No possibility of misconfiguration? No hardware failures? If those are allowed, what is the threshold at which they are no longer 'doing the job right'?

I am not saying that Mikrotik/RouterOS should have ZERO bugs.

There is no perfect network equipment (or other type of it&c item). Any vendor releases sometimes update, security patches etc.

But flapping ports between Mikrotik switches with Mikrotik cables? What the hell is this ?!

I am not talking only about my problems, but look how many users report mikrotik issues. And I am not talking about sophisticated situations, but simple bugs that should never exists on released products.

And btw, I refer to Mikrotik hardware+software, not only software.

I am not saying that Mikrotik/RouterOS should have ZERO bugs.

There is no perfect network equipment (or other type of it&c item). Any vendor releases sometimes update, security patches etc.

But flapping ports between Mikrotik switches with Mikrotik cables? What the hell is this ?!

I am not talking only about my problems, but look how many users report mikrotik issues. And I am not talking about sophisticated situations, but simple bugs that should never exists on released products.

And btw, I refer to Mikrotik hardware+software, not only software.

Flapping ports does not necessarily indicate a switch problem. You have provided no details on why you believe the switch is the cause of the problem. Are you saying that somehow Mikrotik switches and Mikrotik cables (I didn't know they made cables) are incompatible, because that's the implication.

How do you know it is a bug? Have you done testing and analysis that demonstrates the cause is a bug? If you did, you forgot to mention it and provide that information that leads you to that conclusion.

People report issues all the time for all vendors. The 900 pound gorilla has announced 84 medium, high, and critical *security* advisories this month alone (https://tools.cisco.com/security/center ... rabilities). That doesn't count the non-security bugs they've squashed. Given they have a lot more products, but my point is that an organization with those resources also fights software bugs constantly.

If you put a piece of unvalidated hardware and software in production, don't be surprised if there is the rare unexpected issue. Most of us aren't trying to maintain mission critical levels of service. If you are, then validation of your specific use-case in a lab environment before deployment is a necessity.

You are absolutely right, that's what I've said in another topic: Mikrotik is NO good for critical environments.

For home use, small offices and other, are perfect ! And cheap !

You are absolutely right, that's what I've said in another topic: Mikrotik is NO good for critical environments.

For home use, small offices and other, are perfect ! And cheap !

I disagree. Mikrotik is perfectly fine in mission critical environments if the device(s) have the features required for that environment and implemented properly. That means hardware and software validation in a lab scenario that mimics the production environment the equipment will ultimately be deployed in. There is no way around that. All mission critical environments do this with all of their gear before going into production. They also usually have redundant routers (VRRP), redundant switches (STP), and redundant connections (MS teaming, VMWare vswitches) to servers.

If downtime will cost an organization US$100,000 per hour, it isn't hard to justify buying redundant gear, testing it, configuring it, and maintaing it properly.

Creatin, what a stupid answer!
He is absolutely right about making us beta testers where MT is used in many production environments. MT software development is an example how to make it wrong with no respect to users. It would be interesting to find out how they (not) test their software before releasing it to public. Their products are fantastic but the part of it, ROS development and testing, is some kind of a joke. I am looking forward to see they will understand it some day and do important changes to the process.

Once again, go buy equipment from another vendor if you are not satisfied (now I sound like my ISP representative).
I've spent a lot of time searching for equipment which suits my needs and I'd be glad if Mikrotik covers all of them but unfortunately it doesn't.
I need application control on my router/firewall, there are products from other companies which provides this service but buying their equipment + yearly license + support fee is too much for me, so I'm satisfied with Mikrotik.
There are things with which I'm not please in ROS as well but I have an option, use MT or use another vendor equipment which is btw X times more expensive than Mikrotik.

Well stated tippenring!!
@hostclub, I think you missed the point, which was if your not a properly trained switch manager you have no business being involved in switch infrastructure of any significance. So suggest you take your own advice and stick to home installs......

Is your brain at 100% stuck ? )

What the heck is the connection between being a properly trained switch manager and working with bad hardware that "reveals" issue at random time ?! Network admins CAN NOT fix hardware/software issues !

BTW: Welcome to 2020. The time when IT guys were sysadmins, network admins, hardware enginners, painters, electricians, janitors and other jobs has longed passed.

I dont want to be rude, I dont this is the place, but please, dont be smart ass.

I've given my input, I know my limitations when it comes to using MT (barely good enough to deploy at home), takes others longer to figure it out I guess.

By the posts and advice you write I believe your knowledge of MT could be used in some companies

I've given my input, I know my limitations when it comes to using MT (barely good enough to deploy at home), takes others longer to figure it out I guess.

By the posts and advice you write I believe your knowledge of MT could be used in some companies

Yes, I think anav underestimates his skillset, while others overestimate theirs.

I've given my input, I know my limitations when it comes to using MT (barely good enough to deploy at home), takes others longer to figure it out I guess.

By the posts and advice you write I believe your knowledge of MT could be used in some companies

You two really need to get a room....As long as you understand each other so damn well

Meanwhile, for those who can understand, that this is not a topic related to 'admin skills' but for mikrotik equipment. I believe that Mikrotik should really DO more tests with their products before selling.

Right now, I still have an old CRS226-24G that has an issue, reported by many users (ports stopped sending traffic after 4-5 days, and now 1-2 days after last update) that no updated fixed it.
Anyway, its that one is garbage.

Reality is: Mikrotik should do a better job at quality control. A lot better.
I am in far from a big Mikrotik client with around ~ 100 routers and ~200 access points, but still I had to RMA close to 10 routers for various reasons, ranging from DoA to flapping ports and mysterious crashes. Another 5 still pending investigation with lots of packet loss and 3 just quit working out of warranty. ~15% is a lot from my point of view.
Good part: they are pretty cheap compared to their competition.

Reality is: Mikrotik should do a better job at quality control. A lot better.
I am in far from a big Mikrotik client with around ~ 100 routers and ~200 access points, but still I had to RMA close to 10 routers for various reasons, ranging from DoA to flapping ports and mysterious crashes. Another 5 still pending investigation with lots of packet loss and 3 just quit working out of warranty. ~15% is a lot from my point of view.
Good part: they are pretty cheap compared to their competition.

That is so strange. I'm in the US. I have installed around 100 (mostly) routers for clients over about the last 5 years or so. Most are either RB2011, 3011, 4011, or CCRs.

I have had 1 CCR1009 with dual power supplies lose a power supply after about 1 month. Strangely they aren't technically field-replaceable, so we RMA'd that one. I learned the RB2011 wifi was unreliable so didn't use it. I have had no other equipment failures.

Another 5 still pending investigation with lots of packet loss and 3 just quit working out of warranty.

I'm curious, on your routers experiencing packet loss, do you have a firewall rule that drops invalids in the forward chain? If so, I'd be curious to see what happens if you disable that rule.

The first reason we buy Mikrotik is their products are cheap. For the features Mikrotik says they offer, I am willing to pay more, BUT to be more stable and less bugs.

This is more a TRUST issue. Why big companies buy Cisco, Juniper and Arista ?

I dont want to talk about router, but the switching part is not so good.

Reality is: Mikrotik should do a better job at quality control. A lot better.
I am in far from a big Mikrotik client with around ~ 100 routers and ~200 access points, but still I had to RMA close to 10 routers for various reasons, ranging from DoA to flapping ports and mysterious crashes. Another 5 still pending investigation with lots of packet loss and 3 just quit working out of warranty. ~15% is a lot from my point of view.
Good part: they are pretty cheap compared to their competition.

Folosesti si switchuri Mikrotik ?

First of all - sorry for your troubles.
As a fellow admin - I can feel your pain.
How we can help you without knowing your switch configuration and setup?
What is connected, how, what brand stays from other side of the link.
Can you give more details and send the config?
There are issues even between switches of much more of the expensive brands.
Also - write to MT support, they may provide you with quick solution.

The last option - use another brand but chose wisely.
Dell's are good but have small hiccups with HP's. Both are OK and a bit pricey.
Linksys ....ah get MT better.
Aruba - not bad, price is OK, modular design.
Juniper - a bit strange to configure but stable and good. Modular lots of firmware versions and licence tricks. Almost Cisco but cheaper and with a twist.
Cisco - prevail all others but expensive as heck.

Folosesti si switchuri Mikrotik ?

Using switches also, but very few, so cannot really comment on those.
Two CSS326. Both "modded" with two fans: one on the rear for air intake and one internal, blowing down on S+RJ10 modules. No problems with them besides crazy SPF+ modules temperatures.
Two RB260GSP. One crashed and had to netinstall. Worked fine after. One was just decommissioned while still working fine.
Small issue with RB260GSP was that it could not power even a small Cisco SPA VoIP phone, so I had to purchase external power bricks.
later edit: correction about about RB260GSP, was in fact RB960PGS used as switch.

Another 5 still pending investigation with lots of packet loss and 3 just quit working out of warranty.

I'm curious, on your routers experiencing packet loss, do you have a firewall rule that drops invalids in the forward chain? If so, I'd be curious to see what happens if you disable that rule.

Will try and get back with results.
Thank you for the idea. Did not try yet.

I agree. Many years ago i ditched ubiquity to mikrotik for all the features of networking packed in a device. I use it for networking a home to a huge hotel via capsman. I love and fanaticaly support a european company with such quality, features and RELIABILITY... But... Lately something changed the software to unreliable. After upgrades something stops working or malfunctions. At least use a good firmware version for stable release because thats im going to use for critical environments. I setup mikrotik to public authorities buildings with advanced routing and or multiple gateways vpns servers etc... please dont let me down and make me use a simpler but reliable equipment. I experiment with mikrotik but in my lab with new ros release. When i setup it to client i need RELIABILITY and when i get something useful at my lab i then deploy it to client. When it comes to reliability it is something that works as intended without needing reboot for years. Mikrotik and ubiquity does that but mikrotik has software advantage. Dont screw that. If you want to experiment ok but please at least put a reliable version to stable packages to deploy on production environments the last thing you want is to loose reliability as networking equipment.

I'm a network engineer at $dayjob, and my motto is simple: don't upgrade unless you *must*. And 'must' means one of two things: 1) there turns up a colossal security hole in the software you're running (and it must be in functionality you actually use) or 2) newer software has functionality you absolutely can't live without.

You must create your own stability. No network vendor, be it MikroTik or the likes of Cisco or Juniper, can or will do it for you.

Ok. But how to build a network when i receive a router with a buggy software factory installed and i wont upgrade it because i fear the new is buggier? One crs i installed 1 year ago in replacement of an hp switch was port flapping out of the box and thank god the upgrade fixed that. I was at the point of reinstalling the hp switch back. Of course if it works dont upgrade it unless it is absolutely necessary but the thing is it wouldn't work from the beginning. How to make it stable myself? Shall i rewrite its firmware? I think mikrotik releases firmware updates too often too early. My opinion is to cut stable update releases by half not every month a new one but to test and double check so to deploy a stable one. Developer beta releases should exist as already is for people who experiment and test and it should send reports at mikrotik automatically to improve their next release.

Yes, we should build our own hardware

As agnostic said, and this was the point of this topic, Mikrotik should make the stable releases more stable

And stop making us, the customers, your beta testers ! You can not just release a product and "lets see what happens" !

In my opinion Mikrotik does a good job, but not a great one.

We choose their products for the features and the low prices.

But what do you do as a network admin when you realise that a 48 port switch installed in a rack, that connects 30 servers, is not working (traffic not passing, flapping ports, instable uplink ports...and all other issues seen on this forum) ?!
Well, you first reboot it. Then you try and update the switch. And then another reboot. Finnaly you decide to change the switch with other vendor ! Will you trust to install again that mikrotik item ?
No! you dont !

I understand that there are 1 million of situations and you can not make all tests in your labs !

But, please, do more tests with your products in your labs before release them on the market ! Customers are not lab rats !

I understand, production is down, Bosses scream at you. Here is a story from a fellow network admin.
Cisco big expensive switch:
- ports up
- mac table has entries
- absolutely no error you can find with any cli command

Issue: anything connected in ports 1-4 does not work

After extensive reading I found out that for that particular switch CISCO groups each 4 ports under the same ASIC which failed without giving any error. Cisco replaced the switch.

My point? failure happens. it's electrical equipment, it will fail sooner or later. Do not think Mikrotik is the only one with these issues. Yes, it has bugs but if they hire 1000 more people to work on them they will make the product more expensive. We would all like cheap and powerful equipment but it does not work that way. Main issue is that people buy Mikrotik and they see cheap Cisco/Juniper. Far from it. Mikrotik has its market and I am thankful they do it this way, it allows me to buy 1Gbps feature rich router at $100.

Failures do happen. But this is not the point.

The point is that Mikrotik releases an equipment with an OS that is not stable. This is because they do not test enough the OS before releasing to the market.

I allready said that we buy Mikrotik because is cheap and it has many features. Who would buy Mikrotik if their product were expensive with all this bugs?

As I said, if you care about stability and uptime, Mikrotik is not the product !

I would say the same for Windows which are killing me with their weekly updates and fixes but here I'm still using them

In my opinion Mikrotik does a good job, but not a great one.

We choose their products for the features and the low prices.

But what do you do as a network admin when you realise that a 48 port switch installed in a rack, that connects 30 servers, is not working (traffic not passing, flapping ports, instable uplink ports...and all other issues seen on this forum) ?!
Well, you first reboot it. Then you try and update the switch. And then another reboot. Finnaly you decide to change the switch with other vendor ! Will you trust to install again that mikrotik item ?
No! you dont !

I understand that there are 1 million of situations and you can not make all tests in your labs !

But, please, do more tests with your products in your labs before release them on the market ! Customers are not lab rats !

Thank you for your words! It’s so true.

I was facing issues with several new switches from MikroTik. Crazy bugs - support not helpful.

This week I had outage based on strange behavior of the 48 port switch - switch stopped switching on some ports in the range 1-8 and around 14-24 ...

Only way Problem got solved was rebooting the switch - no log no error nothing .... this sucks I am thinking to replace it with one of my old 3com Switches

Even I also face a strange vrrp issue - see my other posts - I can’t explain or find any reason for this - I guess it comes from a bug inside some MikroTik hardware ...


Br
Mark

I'm a network engineer at $dayjob, and my motto is simple: don't upgrade unless you *must*. And 'must' means one of two things: 1) there turns up a colossal security hole in the software you're running (and it must be in functionality you actually use) or 2) newer software has functionality you absolutely can't live without.

In general I can agree with that (I am just now in the process of migrating some internal systems at $dayjob from SuSE 10.0 to something current) but you should also consider that waiting too long to upgrade can also make it more painful to finally do so.
E.g. update procedures that support some automatic migration of configuration often fail to do so correctly when you make too big version jumps.
In the past there have been big changes in some parts of RouterOS, and upgrade would usually fix the config to cope with that, but I would not want to upgrade e.g. from an early 6.x version immediately to the current 6.47 especially on a router with a somewhat more complex config including switchports (master-port), IPsec, wireless with special settings, etc.
Especially not from remote or even when the only access to it is via the local network and there is no serial console or MAC-level access.

In general I can agree with that (I am just now in the process of migrating some internal systems at $dayjob from SuSE 10.0 to something current) but you should also consider that waiting too long to upgrade can also make it more painful to finally do so.

True (I'm looking at you, NX-OS ).

Mikrotik is the best devices world could ever have.
They dont need to try to make new things every day for marketing purposes.
They need to keep a little back of features for sake of stability or just keep stable releases for critical environments.

PRO: Cheap and feature rich
CON: poor support, lack of stability, lots of bugs, no testing before releasing, poor software releases.

Good for: home users, offices, non critical environments, small business
Bad for: 24/7 usage, critical environments (hosting, datacenter etc), remote

3 months and mikrotik still didnt fix that shitty CRS354-48P-4S+2Q+ port forward traffic issue !!!

Is true that Mikrotik not have a really good quality in their products. I see 3 devices damaged (cAP ac, RB450G and LtAP). No fix posible and all failed after some months of functionality. Also I had a broken BaseBox 2 but I can recovered it by software (It was very lucky) I hope that on the future they can do better job on their products.

For example, yesterday I used a RB450G that I not use more. At the moment of connect the AC plug, the board not turned on. What?!!! Then I disconnected it and connected again and works. Very weird. All devices are installed for home/small business and anyway it fails.

Anyway I want to trust in Mikrotik.

Is well known that all companies their products fails, but is truth that in the case of Mikrotik most probably is that fails more that all we would want.

Regards.

At this moment, the problem of failing hardware is not the biggest issue. If a hardware fails, you just replace it and thats easy (or should be).

The problem is that the software/hardware is unstable. You cant just replace with another one, because it has the same issues.

There are 2 ways:
1. Kick mikrotik ass and make them fix the issue as soon as possible
2. Kick mikrotik ass and replace their equipment with another vendor.

Any way you choose, mikrotik ass should be kicked )

Let's see what will happen with ROS 7.

Regards.

I feel you hostclub..

right now im using CRS354 48G 4S+ 2Q too..
switch is running 24/7
and sometimes port 1-8 is stop forwarding packet... luckily currently running switch only have 3 gigabit port and 1 SFP+ uplink,
so i can move it to another normal port... but if you utilize more than 40 gigabit port, you must be dead.

and iam agree with you that it will be more better if this problem solved, without let their client test it and report.
still following the thread (the flapping port CRS 354) its already 2 month, lot of ppl get angry haha
so mikrotik can compete with their competitor.