Adtran NetVanta series switches are a very desirable switch set at a reasonable price point with a large amount of configuration ability for both L2 and L3. They are best suited for medium to large institutions that are not Cisco Dependent. They work well for small businesses as well but may be too high of a price point and too large of a feature set needed for a SOHO type set up which may turn away customers in that range. The 1531/P series does offer a smaller switch with the option of PoE in the P model and gives a total of 12 individual ports between the 8 PoE ports, 2 non PoE ports, and 2 SFP ports capable of Gigabit or 2.5Gbps with Adtran's interconnect cable. This may be more suitable for a SOHO set up but again may offer more than many small businesses need and may seem daunting.
MikroTik is suited for large companies that require advanced distributions in terms of contracted bandwidth, and in the same way, allows a single device to specify filtering and firewall rules without acquiring an additional device. There is a range for small companies which is more economical and less robust, but in case it's not necessary, such a strict control over the data consumption of the company is not a feasible solution.
Some of the wiki articles have not been updated or are not accurate enough. We spent a couple of days trying to find an example of implementing a mobile IPSec client solution. But once this has been implemented, it has been solid (always worked). A bigger community would help, and I am finding it hard to find the time to contribute to these articles.
There is no SOC, NOC, where you can contact to try to resolve any difficulties. The problems that these devices have are solved largely through the community, with workaround alternatives, or if the support team responds to a request, the response times are too high for the current needs of technological communications.
Cisco Routers are one of the best in the market, however they are also very expensive and not suitable for a small deployment or any deployment which requires just a couple of routers. MikroTik on the other hand are less expensive and provides many features that you require for a small scale deployment. they fit in with the budget and do what you need them to.
High Performance and reliability have allowed for a 'set it and forget it' type installation, giving greater customer satisfaction.
The price point of the switches, while higher than other models such as HP or Dell potentially, is in line with their reliability and functionality and comes in less than Cisco much of the time.
Having a long time relationship with Adtran as a company has allowed us to quickly assist customers with their needs, saving everyone time and money.
