RouterOS supports UPnP, but it’s yet-another-thing you must configure and enable yourself. Your game consoles and apps simply won’t work without it. While it’s redundant in IPv6 networks and considered insecure in IPv4 networks UPnP is nevertheless expected to work in residential networks. UPnP is a method for devices inside your network to open public ports on the router. You don’t get niceties like support for Universal Plug’n’Play (UPnP) out of the box. For example, you can create a privileged open network, and an isolated network for guests and your internet of things (IoT). Or, you can set up individually partitioned and managed networks for each or some of them. You can set up the Ethernet ports to act as a simple switch. Take a few minutes to explore the online demo of their web administration interface before you continue reading. You’re required to know what you’re doing, or at least be willing to put in the time to learn it. RouterOS can be configured to make anything you’d like out of your network. MikroTik’s network products are powered by its proprietary RouterOS operating system. The yellowing is the cosmetic price you pay for a quiet and passively cooled/fanless router. The yellowing indicates that the router has struggled to shed excess heat which has accelerated aging in the plastic. The processor/heatsink is located directly underneath the yellowed area. For comparison: the Vilfo VPN router is intended for a similarly sized network, but features a twice as fast processor and 2 GiB of RAM.Īs you can see from the above photo, a section of the hEX’s plastic top chassis has turned yellow.

However, the server will be bottlenecked by the processor before reaching speeds above ≈60 Mbps. MikroTik comes with OpenVPN and L2TP/IPsec servers built-in, but there isn’t support for the newer WireGuard protocol. It can also do light virtual private network (VPN) server duties for a handful of clients. Yet, it costs only just shy of 50 Euro (60 US). It’s just enough for it to handle package switching for a Gigabit internet connection. That’s roughly double the processing power and two–four times the RAM found in most consumer routers. The hEX features five Gigabit Ethernet ports, an 0,88 GHz dual-core MIPS processor, and 0,25 GB RAM in a compact enclosure (optional). It’s not a consumer-grade product, and it certainly isn’t your grandma’s router! I’ve used it as my home router for the last five years. The MikroTik hEX (RB750Gr3) (ad: available on Amazon) is an inexpensive Gigabit router with advanced capabilities.

Mikrotik hex rb750gr3