Cisco 800 Series Industrial ISR (IR 800) vs. MikroTik Routers and Switches

The [Cisco 800 Series Industrial ISR (IR 800)] is great when we need to add a small new site in a very short time. Our previous experience with these units makes the roll-out of new sites quick and almost seamless. The 800 series excels in locations where we want to tunnel all traffic back to the core site. Split tunneling for "SD-WAN" type use is not as functional as in other products.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• Small factor
• Low cost
• Fast configuration
• Switch port

Incentivized

• Affordable, it has more features compared to other brand at the same price.
• Widely available, by today it's easy to obtained one, even online retailers sell it.
• Highly customizable, you may write a powerful script to enhance the function.
• Flexible, you can make different configuration approach based on you needs.

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• Most are single power supply
• If they aren't a full 19" 1U device you have to purchase rack ears separately from the device
• VPN tunneling can be a bit of a configuration challenge

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• 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.

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We are already looking at more purchases

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My experience is that there is always something that proves to be just a bit tedious to get figured out but once you do it is easily duplicated

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Almost perfect, despite some issue that need to be addressed by the manufacturer. If this issue has been addressed, a full 10 mark will be given.

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Cisco routers can be configure and forgotten unless you are adding to the configuration or on the rare troubleshooting event.

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Cisco routers can be configure and forgotten unless you are adding to the configuration or on the rare troubleshooting event.

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People have bad days and some things are deemed not critical enough to fix.

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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.

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My training was through a third party that had good knowledge but wasn't able to answer all of my questions.

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The more you can plan in advance the easier the deployment will be.

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The Meraki Z3 falls into roughly the same category as the 800 series and requires no daughter card for PoE. The Meraki MX are more expensive and require more infrastructure to support. The Meraki units also completely stop working when licensing is not renewed, and are more in the class of an SD-WAN product.

Incentivized

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.

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Not every router can handle all situations and so you have to purchase the upgrade to do handle the new requirements.

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• Investment in education
• High price
• Easy material

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• First of all it's cheaper than Cisco routers.
• It has more functionality than Cisco routers that cost 4 times more.
• It has a GUI. But it has CLI too.

Incentivized