MikroTikRB4011 Ethernet 10-Port Gigabit Router (RB4011iGS+RM)

This is a great little router. If you are concerned about it being too difficult to setup, they have a very nice 'getting started' program where basically you just enter in some simple details and the router is up and running. It literally takes minutes. I opted for this router because I wanted a box that was able to run from existing POE on my network and one that had the speed to give me the full 1 gig bandwidth I pay for while at the same time providing robust firewall and port forwarding so I don't have to compromise on what I am able to do on my LAN. The SFP port is exactly what I needed to connect to my ISP's network. The box has 10 etherports so if you don't have many devices to connect, that's all you will need. I have the SFP port to my ISP, and the 10 network jacks are for the LAN. Very simple, and very fast.

This thing is amazing! I cannot believe how much functionality you get in such a small device at that price. Every network geek out there should have one of these in their toolbox somewhere.

Need to be well versed in this area of expertise or use ChatGPT. But as far as the router, it definitely cut my ping way down. It’s only been up and running one day but I don’t really like it and the built-in software is top notch or tweaking my system now things like not allowing downloads while I’m gaming. It’s just one of them bunches more.

Perfect fit for my needs. Great power. Son set it up remotely.

Unlike the standard rack setup of the MikeoTik 3000rm or the Ubiquiti ER4 rack mount kit; the "Kit" on this is a very flimsy design with only 1 screw on just the bottom of each arm assembly to hold the rack mount to the device; there is no top screw mount. This should really have 2 on top and 2 on bottom of each side. Also the fit to the device has a lot of slop to it and not a tight fit. The device itself is substantially built and this "feels" like an afterthought. Best to wall mount or shelf mount the device instead of using the rack ear kit. The rack mount "kit" needs a substantial implementation redesign or the 4011 needs a bigger chassis with typical rack ears.

We have been using 5 of these routers for 1 to 3 years. Never an issue, set up was easy, works better than expected. A few tricks to successful configuration, but after a few tweaks and a round or two of reconfigure, all has been working great. You really can't beat this router for future, form and function. Not recommended for a novice, unless you intend for this product to be a learning experience. For those with moderate levels of expertise in router and network configuration, this will do most anything you will want it to do. I highly recommend this product.

If you know Mikrotik, you'll love the power of this device for the money - you'd have to pay double or more for a Cloud Core class or 1100ah class to get the same grunt of this device. Nice to see SFP+ for a 10 gig link as well.Why would you need this? If you want to custom program complex firewall rules, most routers slow way doing doing complex things where this unit will blaze forward with low latency. For example, I have all my IoT devices on a a couple different and segmented VLAN'd SSD networks. Then, I have THOSE devices operating on a nailed-up VPN that presents their traffic as if they exist in another city for complete isolation. This router does all of that without any noticeable impact to CPU. These devices have a separate DHCP server on this router with their own IP subnet.Another scenario - I have a foreign country block list that simply black lists any incoming traffic from bad-actor nations - to just cut down on any attack surfaces.Here's another one - I use port-knocking to open up certain ports so I can access things like RDP using a port-knocking app on my phone.Here's another one - this router (a Mikrotik feature) has built in DDNS - which I use to connect to another similar unit at my folks' house to create a site-to-site IPSEC secure tunnel so I can reach their local LAN to help out with network administration. No problem for this router - the encryption is done by a dedicated chip that does not affect CPU load.Here's another one - can organize your ports anyway you want - can group any combination of ports into separate "Switch groups" for hardware line-speed switching or use the CPU to create Bridges that can then do packet inpsection to look for keywords or patterns.Here's another one, this device not only has a DNS server that can cache DNS requests for more speed, but you can add static entries to redirect traffic to IP addresses of your choosing - sort of like a hosts file but for your entire network.If you don't know Mikrotik, there are plenty of tutorials out there (search for Greg Sowell Mikrotik to get started). Features you come to love are the rich built in tools that can capture traffic, can do in-gui sniffing to see where traffic is flowing (called Torch), IP-scanning, ARP analysis, bandwidth testing, and my favorite - this device can operate on Layer-2 using a Layer-2 telnet protocol, which means that even if IP addressing is not configured, you can still get to these devices to configure them. For super power users, can do BGP, OSPF, full SNMP and more.

This is pretty small, has 10 ports, and is really easy to set up. One thing I will point out is that it cannot manage mixed ac and ax gear; that is a by product of how drivers work in RouterOS but it caught me off guard and burned a few days of time for me. Once I understood that it was trivial to make progress.