MikroTik

MikroTik's Gigabit Passive Ethernet Network (GPEN) products are designed as a cost-effective alternative to fibre's Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) solution. The key difference between these two technologies is that MikroTik's GPEN utilises copper Ethernet cabling instead of fibre. MikroTik has introduced a clever concept. Copper Ethernet runs of up to 1.5km makes this an ideal alternative to complex FTTX installations. Here are some benefits of choosing GPEN over GPON.

VoIP is fast becoming the industry standard for office telecommunications and as more people work from home, it makes sense to ensure traffic is prioritised adequately to deliver voice packets smoothly. In this article, we have included a useful configuration guide to assist with Quality of Service best practices using MikroTik. VoIP does not require a large amount of bandwidth but it relies on low latency and jitter as voice communication is happening in real-time. Although QoS will help in many situations, it is not a silver bullet to solve VoIP quality problems on poor connections and is therefore not recommended to be used with high latency bandwidth types such as DSL or satellite.

The demand for the ability to work remotely is the highest it has ever been. A number of solutions are available depending on your requirements. Here are a few ways you can get connected remotely using solutions offered by Scoop.

There are multiple ways to achieve ISP redundancy with MikroTik. Some ways are more complex and offer additional functionality. This article serves as an introduction on simple ways to achieve failover using RouterOS and assumes all basic configuration has already been completed on the router.

Long Term Evolution (LTE), also known as 4G, is a technology designed to deliver data over the radio wave spectrum typically between 700MHz-2600MHz. With the demand for bandwidth increasing, technology providers like MikroTik have adapted their product line to include several high-performance LTE devices. Choosing MikroTik over conventional entry-level LTE products has many advantages. It is packed with functionality and is available in different form factors with high-gain MIMO antennas to cater for long-distance applications. All models include PoE which allows users to make the most of their signal without introducing long antenna cables with associated loss.

One of the biggest challenges with indoor wireless installations is ensuring you have sufficient coverage - meaning no dead zones and good quality connections in all the necessary areas. While indoor wireless connections offer simple installation and very few cables, they are unpredictable and easily affected by numerous external factors such as walls (obstructions) and interference from other wireless devices. Thankfully, there are a few products available to users to easily extend existing coverage when it does not live up to your expectations.

For anyone installing or managing a MikroTik router or system, knowing how to perform a Netinstall on the device is a valuable bit of knowledge to have, as it allows you to recover the unit should it crash or start failing in some way. When experiencing an issue with a MikroTik router, it is typically due to corruption of its software or failure of the software to perform a certain process. Performing a Netinstall on the affected router will format and re-install the RouterOS onto that device and should fix the issue at hand.

MikroTik's LtAP is a great solution for vehicle connectivity over LTE and offers dual SIM capabilities for network redundancy. It has an integrated 2.4Ghz 802.11n radio perfect for a small mobile hotspot as well as GPS for vehicle tracking. We have always loved the idea of being able to provide basic internet services to our own company vehicles as well as being able to track them with one device and this is how we did it.

Before setting up, mounting or configuring any wireless links, there are a few questions that you need to ask yourself before going ahead with the installation. Am I doing a PTP (point to point) or PTMP (Point to multi-point) link? Do I have clear line of sight to the other end/s? What equipment do I need to use? Answering these questions will help you plan your links to get the most out of your deployments. PTP or PTMP? This may seem like a trivial question but it is quite important. Depending on your answer to this question, all of the other questions will follow suit and be adapted to work for the answer. Must I cover a large number of connections coming back to a single point, or will there be individual links consisting of just two devices per link? PTMP topologies will generally achieve less bandwidth due to shared access to the wireless network.

The annual European Mikrotik User Meeting (MUM) was held in Vienna, Austria on 7-8 March. This conference on MikroTik RouterOS software and RouterBOARD hardware is a great opportunity to meet the MikroTik team, distributors, certified trainers and consultants. The best part was, however, the opportunity to interact with all kinds of like-minded users from all over the globe involved with using Mikrotik products. Though there are a number of MUM's happening throughout the year and around the world, the European MUM is considered the main event due to the fact that Mikrotik announces their product plans for the upcoming year.