What needs improvement with MikroTik Routers and Switches?

The login process needs improvement. There should be a way to log in without a username and password possibly through console access, especially when login credentials are not available.

The tool needs to add more tutorials and documentation for new functions.

I think the documentation of specific features could probably be improved. Especially if you want to try a new feature, sometimes you must test it thoroughly before implementing it with the client because the documentation doesn't give you the full background. Also, we only use MikroTik Routers and Switches for Internet breakout. I wouldn't use them as switches inside the network or as part of the backbone of our networks. For those purposes, I would use something more reliable, like Aruba. So, they are not reliable enough for those features.

The profit margins and lack of local support are the major complaints we have with MikroTik. This makes us consider other options. Therefore, we're not sure if we'll keep MikroTik in our portfolio in the future. The product is very good with a lot of features, and we're really happy with the devices, but it's a product that doesn't give us much profit. Profitability is one of the strategies we're looking for in our business. Secondly, when we have a problem and reach out to MikroTik support, it's not very fast. Usually, you have to speak in English, so my technicians need to have strong English skills to communicate. Sometimes, it's not easy for us to reach customer service and support and try to solve issues when they happen. So, these are my major complaints with the brand. So, we are looking for better commercial options - better profit and better support. Our clients would like to see a stronger firewall, something like Fortinet or Barracuda. In future releases, MikroTik should also improve its Deep Packet Inspection (DPI). My customers demand more cybersecurity. Routers like Fortinet or Barracuda provide the kind of cybersecurity that my clients need, and MikroTik doesn't have those same features. I'm suggesting that it would be interesting for MikroTik to provide either these kinds of features within their current products or offer separate products that focus on advanced cybersecurity.

The solution is a complicated device.

MikroTik Routers and Switches lack a user-friendly interface for applications or specific settings. For example, compared to a router from VGG Network, MikroTik's DNS and UI apps might require more technical knowledge to configure easily. While MikroTik offers certified support and clear website guides, some features, like Webex configuration, lack an intuitive interface for automatic setup. Additionally, MikroTik often requires manual tasks like uploading hotspot tickets and setting up certificates. This can be burdensome, unlike easier solutions like UniFi, especially for monthly updates.

Improvements could be made in terms of SD-WAN capabilities and zero-touch provisioning.

There is room for improvement, particularly when dealing with the substantial volume of traffic that routers in highly complex networking companies typically handle. The firewall has the potential for enhancements, and it's essential to explore and implement those improvements. It is sensitive to electrical fluctuations. Even slight changes in the electrical current can disrupt the functioning of the switch or the overall network infrastructure. Addressing this sensitivity might involve hardware modifications to make the devices less susceptible to disruptions caused by variations in electrical conditions. I would appreciate enhancements to impose more restrictions on VPN connections. Currently, VPN connections have no restrictions whatsoever. The user interface needs improvement to be more user-friendly and intuitive.

A central management platform would be great.

The product's setup process could be easier. Additionally, its interface needs to be modern, similar to Grandstream.

It would be nice if the interface was easier to use. It's probably one of the most complicated user interfaces to use, but then again, MikroTik routers are also the most flexible routers to use. So I guess it's a price you pay for using a product that's capable of doing pretty much anything.

The product needs to include more power.

The updates as well as the patches could be improved. I believe it would be beneficial to automate the process of router patching to avoid the need for manual checks. With automated patching, as long as the router is connected to the internet, it can automatically perform necessary updates. Failing to patch the router can leave me vulnerable to potential security threats. Currently, my security is vulnerable due to this potential risk. I would like to see automated updates for the patches.

If the reporting functionality of the solution is considered, I think it is not good. I think MikroTik should include features like antivirus into their prevention and detection system to prevent any kind of attacks. I want them to improve their reporting functionality and include antivirus in the solution.

MikroTik Routers and Switches need a firewall policy to secure the network. My company is looking for a new firewall device to secure the network. I also want Mikrotic to add load balancing to the firewall policy, as it's currently hard to do in Mikrotik devices.

I have not really faced any difficulties. We'd like for them to improve the UI and improve on speed. The interface capacity must be bigger.

I would like to see some content filtering with MikroTik Routers and Switches.

I cannot speak of any missing features. The initial setup is a bit complex.

There are some bugs in the newer modules. For example, when it comes to Routing, which is already a very old module, it is very stable. However, Hotspot is a fairly new module. They still need to work on things regarding that module. It's not as reliable. The interface for management could be improved.

The solution does suffer from freezing and corruption issues. I cannot recall coming across any missing features. It offers us what we need.

If they can improve the OpenVPN, to make that a bit more straightforward, that would be ideal. Obviously, it's got a built-in OpenVPN server that you can do. I've played around with it a bit, however, normally, if people want OpenVPN, they just use a virtual machine with Ubuntu, as it's just easier to set up. When you block a website, so what I normally have to do is create a script with the domain name in it. And then it auto-updates the IP list. If they can maybe implement something where you can block websites using this domain name rather than the IP address, that'll be great. You can also obviously block it via the certificate, however, the problem is, a lot of the websites use a generic certificate from, Certbot or something like that. And then you block that, and it blocks a whole other list of websites. If they can do something like that, it will be great as well. I know it's not so easy as everything's encrypted, however, that'll be a great thing to improve. If they can implement something for the hotspot, where you can actually filter out, that would be ideal. With the hotspot, you've got your counters. If they can implement something that if you use local data, it doesn't go towards your hotspot. I've got a client and they've set up the hotspot. They use it so they don't use the internet. If they copy something from the server, it goes towards their quota. Now, if you copy a big file from the server, and it uses your quota, then you have to obviously first call them and say, "Listen here, I've copied this thing. Please increase my quota, or reset it," or whatever. That's the only struggle that I found. Other than that, I can't really think of anything else.

The only issue is with the software. The Winbox has many log-ins to it. The only thing I would improve would be with the software Winbox. It would be helpful to have more than one login capability. With the ability that we now have, when you want to change to another user account, using the Winbox and go through the user name and password for one device, the current user name and password for Winbox will be lost. Even if I try to copy the Winbox to a different location, it uses the same user name and password, and if I change it on the copy, it will also be changed on the other destination. I would like to have the option of having multiple logins. You should always do something to be better.

This product could offer better integration with VPNs. We have a SOC for network monitoring and all of our clients are connected to it. Through the SOC, we integrate our clients with our VPN. The switching capabilities could be improved. These devices have a lot of potential but need to improve first.

MikroTik does not have a wireless solution. If they created a high-performance wireless solution we would deploy it in our infrastructure.

It could be more scalable. Product awareness could also be better. There's a lack of awareness when it comes to MikroTik. People only know about Cisco and others, and they won't rely on MikroTik. This is primarily because of hardware limitations. While this product is good economically, it's unsuitable for high-end projects. In the next release, I want this product to be more compatible.

Better security is always better. If they can continue to improve in this area, that would be ideal.

The solution needs to offer better documentation. That is what is lacking right now. The user interface could be a bit better. It could be a bit more user-friendly with a bit of a re-design.

They need to create a license for IBS. I have a lot of clients that have spam on their networks. We need to purchase a firewall inside of this solution in order to make their networks secure from spam and to protect the blocking of wanted public IDs that are put in it. Additionally, there is an antivirus needed. In the next release, there could be an improved user interface.

Technical support could be better. They don't have good support like Cisco. It can also be more stable and scalable.

The Soft-GRE support needs to be improved. To use this product, people must have some network knowledge and a little bit of training on the MikroTik devices. The payment conditions from the manufacture need to be improved. Nobody wants to pay immediately, especially for large companies like ISPs and big corporations.

The overall performance could be improved. The CPU load is too high. This causes the Internet to lag. MikroTik should be open source.

The routers that this vendor makes are quite small and I think that they should make their products such that they conform to what the industry is used to. Not that it matters from a technical perspective, but often, customers see the size of the router and they think that it is used for a small environment because of its size. They look at the router and because it doesn't look like the Huawei or Cisco models, they think that it is underpowered because of the size. If they changed the external look and feel of the products to match what the enterprise environment is used to, then it would be good. Again, in no way does it affect the performance. Rather, it's just the perception. They should improve technical support and make direct access available to the customers.

This solution is good, but my network is growing and it is no longer sufficient for us. We are considering a Hybrid model or we will replace MikroTik with another good OEM, such as Cisco, or Juniper. There are limitations to how many users you have simultaneously. It's a max of 300 users.

It would be very good if these products are accessible via different kinds of shells and GUI. It will make these solutions very usable.

Next year, we are planning to buy a hardware firewall from Sophos. The firewall and the VPN features in MikroTik are a little bit hard to set and are not user-friendly in terms of configuring those features. The protection of the web servers, VPN, and spam mail management, will be better in the Sophos model which we want to buy. We'll still use MikroTik for routing between our objects, however, for the main firewall features and VPN features, we want to use something more specific for this job. There's a new VPN protocol called WireGuard. It's very good to implement MikroTik in the router as firmware. It is more configurable, with WireGuard. It's very practical.

They lack the extended warranty for the equipment. They only provide a warranty for one year as compared to the other vendors who offer a warranty for three years, five years, and lifetime, etc.

The batch management could be improved.

My first impressions of the MikroTik router I have are that it is old and slow. I would like to see a higher throughput in the switch. The throughput speeds are killing us. Our VPN speeds are not up to par. MikroTik may make some routers and switches that do have higher throughput, but the models that we are using are not in that group of products. The security itself is lacking. For instance, most later model routers have web filtering so we can filter out websites and types. I would like to just be able to go in and say that I want to block out porn sites, or I want to block out hate speech — whatever the case may be. I would like to do that and get it done in an expeditious manner and have it work as expected. There is nothing like that type of simplicity and functionality in this router. So, the two main things that I look for in a router — speed and filtering by classification — are two things that I did not see. It is working, so I kind of leave it alone for right now because I do not really have the time to figure out what is making it work at all. I do know that the interface is very archaic-looking. It does not seem like the ease-of-use was a major concern in the development of the product. It is not very good in the area of user-friendly. Another problem that I do not like about the MikroTik routers is that I have to use a specific program called Winbox to access it and configure it. I should not be limited to accessing the configuration using just one tool.

The manageability of the web-based UI needs to be improved. I still prefer to use the Winbox application. It would be great if they included some next-generation features in the future.

The MikroTik weblog, web user log, was supposed to be remotely accessible. However, it was not as good as I had wanted it to be. I found its functionality disappointing. There's no proper interface. They show only IPs but not the DNS address or complete address. It only shows the IP addresses. Also, they only show real-time data and not the history of the user's log address. We would like to see a history on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. The solution needs to improve its security firewalls and mirror that of, for example, Sophos, or FortiGate. The solution needs to focus on UTM in its devices.

We've had difficulties allocating different hubs with different IPs. At times, some users use it on one range and can access computers on another range. We thought isolation would help, but it hasn't. When you assign IP addresses to ports, people can still access those ports, and that's really frustrating. The solution doesn't offer very good documentation. When we had questions around isolation and allocating different hubs and IPs, we couldn't find any verifiable answers. The solution's website isn't that good. When I go to it, I can't find what I'm looking for. However, if I go to a third party's website, I can easily find the information.

The biggest thing that needs improvement is the support. There are lots of bugs but you can find workarounds for these. However, without support for professional use, you don't know when it fails and why it fails. You have to troubleshoot on your own.

I would like to see a cluster feature added, where multiple devices can be configured and managed as one. One is in a standby state while the other is active, and if one fails then the other takes over. The stability can be improved.

In the Israeli market, we are in need of Hebrew support. We would like a Hebrew GUI or something that can translate it. We need this because when we remotely support end-users, they do not always speak English. Hebrew would be lovely. There are a lot of issues regarding the power supply. The interface for this solution is in need of a dashboard. Thinking about somebody who is in control of hundred of small routers, they need a way to manage all of them.

Configuring load balancing requires a very ground-level configuration that is not easy for normal users. The user interface allows you to do a lot of things, but it is not user-friendly.

The solution doesn't fit every need. There are lots of things you cannot do. There is no management and there is no controller in wireless. It's not a real whole network. You have to work them into other solutions. Mikrotik is mostly a standalone solution and you have to manage how it relates to other solutions, unlike Cisco, which is something that you can easily put into an ecosystem. They could improve their product if they set, for instance, a controller for wireless LAN. That would allow them to really have something more than an access point.

The queuing functionality needs improvement. The initial setup could be simplified.

Wireless throughput has not kept up with the competition.