HACKER Q&A
📣 lax4ever

Recommended Router for Home Office


I am trying to be prepared for the eventual failure of my older Apple Time Capsule. It has been a pretty good router, done most of what I asked and functioned as a steadfast device for almost a decade. I don't foresee it breaking, but I would like to be prepared for the future. I am looking for router suggestions that have the following features:

1) No Wifi needed, I have a separate AP for that.

2) Have 1-2 2.5 Gb ports that don't require link aggregation if possible. One of my future goes is to try and get a home NAS that is capable of doing 2.5Gb.

3) Have 1-2 SFP+ ports so that I can connect a switch or two. Another future goal is to connect a couple of switches, one with PoE+ and one without, though I will admit this may not be necessary if I am not going the 10 Gb route which I am on the fence on.

4) Allow for 5-10 port forward entries and at least 20-30 MAC address reservations.

5) Rack mountable

I have been leaning towards MicroTik, in particular their new RB5009UG+S+IN

https://mikrotik.com/product/rb5009ug_s_in

However, I have no experience using their router OS and if it will provide the options I am looking for. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thank you!


  👤 daveloyall Accepted Answer ✓
I have two MikroTik devices. ("Mikro", not "Micro".)

I encourage you to purchase their stuff, though I haven't researched the particular model you linked to.

I recommend using the terminal interface to configure them, exclusively. It is available via telnet, ssh, their web UI ("webfig") and their MS Windows-only GUI ("WinBox").

Please note that consumer-oriented concepts like "port forwarding" are not included. To set up "port forwarding", you add a firewall rule! See https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual%3AIP/Firewall/NAT#Port... (Personally, I had to add `inferface=ether1` so the rule wouldn't try to fire whenever I tried to visit any site on that port from the LAN...)

Like any device, keep your firmware up to date and do not use default passwords. There is some kind of auto-reconfigure script out there that will try to reconfigure your device..


👤 gigatexal
I got an old PC on eBay threw in a dual port Intel nic and put PFSense on it. Boom done.

Similar small form factor boards can do the same and even be powered over Ethernet.