Cisco 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 9000) vs MikroTik Routers and Switches

Likelihood to Recommend

Any large enterprise with large throughput requirements for their business-critical infrastructure should use the ASR series routers without exception. The licensing cost might hit your pocket hard, but with the exceptional performance and reliability that the ASR series offers, it is easily the best option available in the market. It is the "tried and tested" router. Don't think twice, just go for it!

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 10,001+ employees

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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.

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Carlos Alberto Pedron Espinett

Especialista de Desarrollo

ARCA International GroupBanking, 201-500 employees

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Pros

Layer 3 multicast. It handles the additional load of multicast without issues. Other platforms we have used have had over-subscription issues.
We've used several MPLS features such as pseudowire using bridge-domains as well as xconnects. Plenty of features to solve any design problem.
IOS XR. I just love operating in IOS XR. Solve so many problems that exist in IOS.

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Verified User

Engineer in Engineering

Telecommunications Company, 10,001+ employees

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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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Alex Anwar

Aerospace IT Specialist

CommunicAVIA Pte LtdAirlines/Aviation, 1-10 employees

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Cons

Upgrade process overly complicated compared to NX-OS or IOS: new images and the current configuration need to be compiled into "golden IOS's". If you don't include the configuration, you will have a clean device with no config.
Major bugs in every release. We have had to cycle through all of our routers 3 times in the last year for updates due to show-stopping bugs that did not come to light until after the changes were made in production.
Terrible documentation. You have to mine their site to get to any documentation for recent versions of IOS-XR. If you make the leap from 32-bit cXR to 64-bit eXR then the documentation is more-or-less non-existent. Due to the internal architecture of hardware itself, technical specs can change from software version to software version, so don't expect any sort of firm scalability numbers. You'll have to rely on your sales engineer for that.

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Verified User

Engineer in Engineering

Information Technology and Services Company, 501-1000 employees

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Administration dashboard
BGP in Multiple Core

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Tanner Moreno

Gerente

OvnicomTelecommunications, 51-200 employees

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Usability

Cisco 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 9000) 9.1

Based on 1 answer

Always impressed with Cisco products, from the functionality to the customer support

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Verified User

Team Lead in Information Technology

Military Company, 10,001+ employees

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MikroTik Routers and Switches 9.0

Based on 1 answer

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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Alex Anwar

Aerospace IT Specialist

CommunicAVIA Pte LtdAirlines/Aviation, 1-10 employees

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Support Rating

Cisco 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 9000) 6.5

Based on 5 answers

In some ways, the platform is a big improvement over our previous IOS and NX-OS devices:

They offer version-controlled configuration staging/commits.
They have a robust portfolio of network protocols and features even beyond datacenter devices.
Due to the use of NPUs instead of relying entirely on ASICs for forwarding, new versions of the software are able to improve hardware performance and capacity.

Unfortunately, I have run into more bugs on IOS-XR than I ever did on IOS or even NX-OS (which has a shocking number of bugs of its own) and you have to be a licensing guru to get your order right the first time.

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Verified User

Engineer in Engineering

Information Technology and Services Company, 501-1000 employees

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MikroTik Routers and Switches 5.1

Based on 3 answers

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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Tanner Moreno

Gerente

OvnicomTelecommunications, 51-200 employees

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Alternatives Considered

Each has its own strengths and weaknesses. Juniper was more security/less routing and Cisco was more routing/less security. Redback was Ericsson which is easy when creating VRFs known as contexts. When doing show command it would give you all the information within that context. In Cisco you need to perform 3 or more commands to get the same info.

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Verified User

General Manager in Other

Telecommunications Company, 501-1000 employees

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I am managing lots of different networks for our customers, and the Sophos firewall has been causing me a lot of frustration lately. For every feature, there is another license you need to buy. Not as reliable as the MikroTik routers, too many updates or just service stops.Netgear is as inexpensive at MikroTik, but not reliable and not as performant.Cisco products are expensive compared to MikroTik, but as reliable.

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Adrian Takacs

Infrastructure Engineer

X-Net SolutionsInformation Technology and Services, 1-10 employees

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Return on Investment

Higher reliability has significantly reduced the need for manual intervention
Lower downtime ensures better top-line figures
Although it may be difficult to quantify, I am certain that the higher performance does have an impact (maybe indirectly) on other business functions. High-performance routers are like the oil that keeps an engine running smoothly.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 10,001+ employees

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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.

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Marcin Chabowski

Teacher

Zespół Szkół Elektronicznych in BydgoszczPrimary/Secondary Education, 51-200 employees

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

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Free/Freemium Version

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Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Entry-level set up fee?

No

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No