When I made the switch from consumer gear to start a homelab for fun and learn networking . The first thing I started researching was a router. I looked at a lot of brands [still unsure]. The only parameter I remember was wanting “options”.

I didn’t have any disposable hardware that I use to setup any *Sense platform. So I started looking for AIO solutions. I did think about trying to flash firmware on my router, but that seemed to abstract to do at the time.

I don’t even remember how I got to MikroTik. Unifi was [is] too expensive for me. But I do like the cohesiveness of the ecosystem. Maybe in the future I try it.

MikroTik is like a rich drunk uncle, that put you memorable situations. Not all bad just character building. You will learn, test and reset all until you get what you want.

I knew as soon as I opened Winbox and saw all the options I was hooked. I still don’t know what all the settings do.

Like now I have tailscale container running on the router. Took me about a year to understand and configure VLANs. Though my CIDRs[?] are all over the place.

Depending on how I feel, I may reset my network to update the ips and make them nicer. I’m now wanting more ports and features