Hi all,

Just signed up and am looking to purchase a router for home use.
I'm learning what i can about IP and routing and am far from proficient.
I am using a Ubiquiti EdgeRouterLite at the moment, and do like it.
However there are some minor things it is missing in it's web interface.

I have had a look at the RouterOS demo pages and thought they were pretty good.
I'm now looking to buy a RouterBoard device.

I am quite certain the Hex Lite would satisfy my basic requirements, however as i'm purchasing for a self learning home lab i was intending to buy something that has plenty of bells and whistles to play with.
I also have a rack mount switch and rack on the way, so i'm thinking why the hell not get a RM device?

Connection is currently an ADSL2+ service, 8Mb/1Mb - soon to be VDSL2 ~50Mb/20Mb

1 thing that was a little effort was redirecting an external url to an internal IP, something i manged to do with the CLI in the EdgeRouter.
I suspect *this* entry in the WIKI is the RouterOS equivalent of what i'm after?

I'm looking at the RB2011UiAS-RM and RB3011UiAS-RM as options.

Again, both far beyond what is actually required, i wonder if there is any reason aside from being overkill that i might not choose them.
I also wonder if there is any advantage of going with the ARM / 1GB RAM unit over the 128BM RAM unit, aside from the obvious additional ram, will the RB3011 bring any additional feature the RB2011 can't do that might be good to learn / play with?

To anyone whom has read through this i appreciate your time doing so and look forward to any replies.

I would get the hAP ac and try it with every wireless device that I had.

But it does not have enough flash to learn some things.

I understand you just want to play and learn. In this case I would start with your budget first. Then you should think about buying maybe more than one device to play with wireless and caps manager. Having an environment for running few CHRs and to play with the Dude will be useful too. One 2011uias-2HnD and two 941-2nd will provide you a playground for few years...

You can also buy some second hand devices like 750, 751 or 443 for few bucks to play with for almost no costs.

The 2011 is good for learning because it has one gigabit and one fast ethernet switches, and at least 64MB flash. The WiFi version would be better.

I recommend that you check out GNS3 - virtual labs let you do a lot of stuff without having to buy any hardware at all.
The CHR image lets you use it free of charge with a 1Mbps throughput limitation - which is fine for tinkering with topology and features.

It's hard to play with routing protocols, pppoe servers, etc with just one router.