I am trying to decide if mikrotik is as powerful and reliable as some of the big guns out there. I am comparing the mikrotik routerboard 532 with a SR5 card to such products as othogonal, redline, proxim, RAD data. These company produce ptp solutions at speeds near 54mbps, however they range in price from 6000US to 15000US per link. I am wondering what I am getting for that money, And if it can be done, can I just use this mikrotik setup with the same results (or better)? If I can spend 600 on Mikrotik product instead, it would be worth my while. But if it is going to fail on high demand applications, I will lose more money than that. Any suggestions???

Hi there

With MT you get a great feature & quality OS, with a "community support" (mostly here, also some lists) with real experts (as well as beginners).
You also get some great HW components.
The question is, do you want to buy a completed system (such as the vendors you mention), with the level of support you need (are you beginner, expert, system builder?), or support you own-built hardware.

Every company is unique and your own needs/requirements for support will be different from others.

I can tell you that a properly-configured RouterOS system, on high performance hardware, produces results better than Redline, Proxim, Rad and others. BTW, we are an MT OEM, building RouterOS on custom hardware into complete products, and amongst other achievements so far have a case study on our website showing 200Mbps P2MP ethernet-wireless bridged throughput with 5 wireless interfaces. None of those vendors I know has equipment or performance like that.
Note - Orthogon is different, they have some unique technology with "space time coding" and all sorts of tricks to make non-LOS work better than "single radio" designs. Don't assume a MT-based system can beat that.
But if you have LOS or near-LOS, a well-engineered MT system can be hard to beat.

Do think carefully, "self-building" requires expertise and most importantly experience. Most people cannot personally recreate the experience of a 20-strong R&D department with 10 years at it - plus support. most of those vendors you name have all that.
It also depends on your customer base: what do they expect? Lowest cost? Highest throughput? "Recognised vendor name"? Warranty?

My summary: Right now, buy enough MT components for a P2P link to evaluate yourself: a small investment - take it outside and see what can be done - and then decide what route to take.
Flip side, don't assume all those "big name" vendors have "got it right": some sell out-dated and terrible products, relying on brand-name or price to sell. We beat them almost every single time.

Caveat Emptor ...

I agree - while we were using MT Routers at the access layer we didn't think of using it for the distribution. Instead we've used Redline, WiLAN and Proxim. I can say that MT will beat Proxim gear hands down, however WiLAN and Redline gear is stable and hasn't caused us any greif.

I'd say that MT was comparable if not better by its flexibility. Although its the flexibility that you have to watch out for, use dodgy bits and you'll get a dodgy solution. Use what MT suggest/supply or what others here have successfully used.

The performance will be completely based on your knowledge of Mikrotik's operating system.

If you know what you are doing, or take the time to learn how to properly configure things, you will get better performance with Mikrotik than most other products. There are many tricks and tweaks that need to be learned, and you cannot expect to just do a default install and have phenominal performance. Take the time to learn the system, and you will never look back.

SMA

I can speek for Proxim Tsunami and Cisco Aironet only.

Tsunamis:
Proxim Tsunami is a board with one mini-pci an older atheros card inside
and an OS which is much more simpler to use than ROS.
Simple means you can handle it with less skill but your possibilities
are smaller. Looking at the MAC-Adresses the cards are build
by accton. Dont know what the board is about. The device works
good but we're running into problems with the cards inside.

Disadvantage of the Tsunamis: Pricing. They make different
Models BSU,SU,RSU which in fact are licensing games to make
the CPE cheaper than the Accesspoint without using different
Hardware or OS.

So for small and simple installations the Tsunamis are just fine.
But when installations increase there are some features missing:
- OSPF
- More than one Wireless card/Ethernet per Device. If you can reduce
equipment by 2 your investment and broken equipment reduces by 2.
- Bandwith test!!! Often we would like to test performance between
2 towers.

So you have to combine them with some sort of routers. And if you
find routers which can handle wireless link ....


Cisco:
We started wireless with Aironet boxes and found them to have the
best link-stability of all equipment we found. They're rock solid and
we've a lot of them. Uptime is as long as the're getting power.
But they are not really designed for WISPs. Just Bridges and Accesspoints
for Industrial use. No Routing at all. And they where the last to
make a 5GHz Outdoor Solution.


So we're looking into MT if it's the solution for the future. What makes
me optimistic is the open platform. I've the ability to change hardware and get it from different Sources. And I see discussions I'vnt seen for the
other platforms. Support can not do this as I've not seen any good
support of the big players. What does it help if support says that there
is no power supply available for a 3 year old device with an unusual
power supply. And proxim support asks a lot of standard questions
but gives no answer at all. After a while they're say that it's time
to close the trouble ticket ((. So dont calculate with support you've
not seen so far.

Regards,
Stefan

Mikrotik is very capable and flexible. However, I use mostly Alvarion and trango stuff for wireless. I do have a couple MT links installed within the last year, and have use MT for wired stuff extensively.

Of the three I use, Alvarion seems to be most reliable and 2nd best in features, and most expensive. MT has the most features, not as easy to build something reliable. Trango is simplest in terms of features, but is excellent and inexpensive per customer.

Orthogon is a step above the others in terms of performance.

If you stand to lose a lot of money from outages, it would make sense to have spares regardless of what system you choose.

I would rather buy a well engineered system than worry about a UFL connector popping off under 1/4 ounce of excess torque, or a $100 sr5 card failing at 1am, or using the wrong version of MT and having to downgrade to fix the resulting problem.

MT has the most features, not as easy to build something reliable.

Compare MT to other gears one should include the used HW in
discussion as the other gears are a fixed bundle of HW and SW.

If you compare MT on RB5xx with CM9 (which seems to be one
of the most used cards) with the other devices. Is it still not as
stable?

I'm not using MT until now. I was looking for a router to put
into my outdoor boxes at the towers so I found MT. I've ordered a
pair of 532s for testing (what shows the first problem: you simple
have to wait). I'm not sure to use them just for ethernet routing
or use them for wireless links too. What I cant really test is
stability in operation on the long run.

Trango is simplest in terms of features, but is excellent and inexpensive per customer.

Orthogon is a step above the others in terms of performance.

But both seems to lack the feature to be allowed here in Europe in
5GHz (DFS,TPC)

If you stand to lose a lot of money from outages, it would make sense to have spares regardless of what system you choose.

This is rule number one for a ISP. For every system you need a
replacement in your *own* rooms.

I would rather buy a well engineered system than worry about a UFL connector popping off under 1/4 ounce of excess torque, or a $100 sr5 card failing at 1am, or using the wrong version of MT and having to downgrade to fix the resulting problem.

So the problems with MT are (??):
- Choose the right HW (Board + Cards)
- Find the way to install it durable (Housing, Fixing cables,
soldering connections, grounding)
- Find the right version of MT and dont change it without strong need
- Find a proper configuration and dont change it without strong need


Stefan

Hi ,

we have used for many time Repeatit solution. The system is simple to use , no more expensive and with in mind a carrier !! BS e CPE with a software managent cost approx ( for 100 customer ) 30.000,00 to 35.000,00 Euro.

MT is a good solution , but haven't in mind a carrier ! More complicate to configure client ( expecially in trasparent bridge , at this moment no simple solution )


This is my cent ...

Marco

p.s. only one problem: the support of Repeatit is .......no support ...

To help things along:
When the shipment of router boards come in you plug each one in to make sure you don't have any DOA's. Then you win box in add an ip then you reopen win box and drag and drop a default bridge config into the files box.
You can have: password, dhcp, ntp, ssid, and on and on.......
you can make a few different files for APs repeaters and what ever..
And yes I know you will still have some other setting to enter but it really speeds thing up.

I am trying to decide if mikrotik is as powerful and reliable as some of the big guns out there. I am comparing the mikrotik routerboard 532 with a SR5 card to such products as othogonal, redline, proxim, RAD data. These company produce ptp solutions at speeds near 54mbps, however they range in price from 6000US to 15000US per link. I am wondering what I am getting for that money, And if it can be done, can I just use this mikrotik setup with the same results (or better)? If I can spend 600 on Mikrotik product instead, it would be worth my while. But if it is going to fail on high demand applications, I will lose more money than that. Any suggestions???

I just setup a link that's running Dual Nstreme and it's just a thinrouter from wisp-router on one side and on the other I have a AMD64 3000+.
The link gets about 45mbps full duplex which = 90mbps.
The only odd thing is that the bandwidth tester gets 66mbps on receive and send TCP. But only 45mbps when I run it on Both TCP.
Seems like I should get 132mbps not 90mbps.

Contact me on messenger