RouterOS, as of v7, is utilizing modern Linux. For Mikrotik the bootloader and associated ASIC(s) are somewhat locked down. These choices satisfy the original objectives in all ways except for the ability to make distribution choice on the Mikrotik hardware. cAP XL ac is a powerful 802.11ac “Wave 1” and “Wave 2 capable” device that will work with Mikrotik’s CAPsMAN.CRS328-24P-4S+RM provides a lot of PoE at a fairly low cost.CRS312-4C+8XG-RM provides NBASE-T capabilities at a fairly low cost.Mikrotik gives you a Linux-like experience at a low cost where native Linux on bridging devices is not consumer accessible ( switchdev isn’t widespread yet).

have multi-WAN if the environment allows for it.įor bridging we examine a handful of devices from Mikrotik:.

have a bridge of other interfaces (opt1 through opt4) (switch on router).

Vendor sustainability, how well do they lifecycle their productsįor the edge of our networks we’ll be using the Protectli FW6D as it provides us with the ability to:.

Vendor Altruism, how much do they utilize and give back.

It’s worth taking a moment and looking at a this talk 28c3: The Coming War on General Computation. The leaders in adoption appear to be the Mellanox Spectrum line, but this is 10G->400G interface speeds. Historically the industry has had limited incentive to provide in kernel support for their devices at the “homelab” interface speed. There is an exciting project called switchdev which aims to provide in kernel hardware offload of packer forwarding on bridge/switch ASIC(s) chips. In networking bridging is an application where ASIC(s) are utilized.

An common example of this is a Graphics Processing Unit. You should be aware of specialized computing such as Application-specific Integrated Circuits. You should have a goal of clearly defining your objectives, such as:įor most of the lab you will utilize “ General Purpose Computing”, such as your workstation. There are a lot of hardware manufactures in this space.

Protectli fw6d