MikroTik RB4011 Ethernet 10-Port Gigabit Router (RB4011iGS+RM)

25 May 2020: I recently increased my Internet speed to 500mbps and I wanted to actually use that speed, so I purchased a gigabit TP-Link Safestream Multi WAN VPN Router. Unfortunately, it would only pass 78mbps. I chatted with support we tried all their ideas to no avail. Of course, they blame my cables or switches or computers or whatever. They wanted me to perform a complex test of installing special software on two computers and hooking them exclusively to the router. Too much work. I returned it and purchased the MikroTik RB4011 Ethernet 10-Port Gigabit Router (RB4011iGS+RM) and it worked perfectly right out of the box (proving there is nothing wrong with my stuff as I expected). The MikroTik hardware screams quality, with a gadget to keep it from coming unplugged, and a heavy-duty heat sink, which Ive never seen before on a router. It is infinitely configurable with the most complex GUI Ive ever seen, but as I said, it works perfectly without changing anything at all! I highly recommend it.

Bien configurados son Unos equipos excelentes

Like all mikrotik devices, this is a swiss army knife of routers thanks to their RouterOS software. I was first introduced to Mikrotik devices through my work and do not want to go back to anything else. The level of control mikrotik gives you over your network is unreal. These devices arent for the timid though. With so many options and things you can configure, it can feel daunting at first. Luckily theyve recently been including default configuration options for most common situations thats made it easier to get up and running. For my set up, I have the RB4011 paired with a cAP AC and wAP. The 4011 is the brain of the network and I manage both the cAP AC and wAP through CAPsMAN. I have three separate networks: Standard for most devices, one for IoT, and one for security cameras. All three get internet access through the router and are on separate VLANS. I also set up firewall rules so my IoT network can only go out to the internet and cannot see anything else on the local network. The exception to this is communication to and from a PRTG Network Monitoring server I use locally to verify everything is running smoothly. On top of this, I set up my parents network in a similar way. Since we use mikrotik devices I was easily able to set up an encrypted tunnel and can monitor their network health and adjust if needed.

Absolutely phenomenal performance and the best set of features I have ever seen. You cannot beat the price as well.

Works as expected

If you know Mikrotik, youll love the power of this device for the money - youd 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 VLANd 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. Heres 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. Heres 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. Heres 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. Heres 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 dont 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.

I don’t have the knowledge to get one of these devices up and running had to return it you better have some knowledge on how to configure this thing before you purchase

Small, light and powerful

I migrated our system from Ubiquiti. I had an Edgerouter Lite and 2 APLite access points. I became sick of the promise of Ubiquiti equipment. What killed it in our house was WIFI calling from cell phones that kept dropping calls which I was able to trace to the Edge-router Lite. Their APLite access points were also unreliable. Adoptions half the time failed, and Ubiquiti software is poor and unreliable and for whatever reason doesnt integrate the Edgerouter Lite with the APs. IP addresses were obviously being assigned by the Edge-router, but half the time didnt show in the list. So, out went the APLites in favor of TP-Link Omada AC1750s, and this, the MikroTik RB4011 Ethernet 10-Port Gigabit Router. From a speed performance, no drop off from the Edge-router, and also runs cooler. reboot times much faster. Upgraded firmware without a hitch, and all equipment works without a hitch. Best of all, NO DROPPED WIFI CALLS from the cell phones. I dont know if there was a setting in the Edge-router that defaults to a protocol that needed to be changed and I just didnt see it, or if it is a defect in router software. Either way, it solved my problem. Of interest, I port forwarded the address for my Plex Server on the MicroTik which allows me access to my media from outside of my network. Plex shows the network as unavailable, but it all works outside my home network. Dont know what the setting on the router is that would fix that (or if it is the router at all), but it works.

Powerful router. Good price.