Deth

We’d used a RB2011 for quite a while, and it worked great for our needs, but I wanted 5ghz Wi-Fi thinking it would help with the congestion and that’s truly the only reason we’re not using the old one still. I was so happy with the RB2011 that I looked into Mikrotik again and came across the hAP AC which and the 2.4ghz and 5ghz radios. We’ve been using it forever a year now and have zero issues. It’s never shut off or dropped connections like the old Linksys did.

Compared to the RB2011 the hAP AC might have a slightly weaker Wi-Fi signal, but it works fine in the house and around the yard where we want it to. It just doesn’t work in the neighbor’s house any longer. This spring and there’s been plenty of times we sat on the front porch enjoying adult beverages while using our tablets outside.

Like the old one, this gets regular software updates, and I’m slowly learning to use the more powerful abilities it has. The manufacture releases timely software updates than at least in my experience haven’t seemed to have any ill effects.

The one problem we had with it is with Roku sometimes not working. First to solve this I set the 5ghz and 2.4ghz to have different SSIDs. It was weird because the Roku downstairs lost connection sometimes, but the one upstairs didn’t. I eventually figured out its because the AC was using 5ghz channels that the Roku doesn’t connect to. The Router on auto would sometimes use the DFS frequencies with the Roku doesn’t support. This was solved by manually on the router and so far, no more disconnects.

If you’re able and willing to deal with the steeper learning curve, I’d highly recommend you give Mikrotik a look. It really is refreshing to have a device that does what you want it to do, rather than you having to do what the manufacturer thinks you want to do. That has its place like with grandma or whatever, but sometimes you need it to do more or need to disable a feature that you’re not using. A great example of this is on the Mikrotik it’s very nice to be able to turn off the LEDs. Well, you can turn off all but the power LEDs anyway. I’m looking forward to delving deeper into it and learning the scripting aspect of it and that sort of thing. I never bothered with the old one, but curiosity will get the best of me.

This router has been rock solid since the first time I plugged it in. The only times this thing is offline at all is when rebooting from software updates or obviously if there’s a power outage. You can’t complain about that! I would imagine that our Comcast internet has had more total downtime than the router itself.

I don’t see any reason why I would want a new one, but if I’m ever looking for a new router, Mikrotik is definitely my first choice to check out. They really are powerful devices and truly have been set it and forget it other than firmware updates once I got it set up the way I wanted it.