MikroTik Cloud Router Switch vs. pfSense

MikroTik Cloud Router Switch work very well as layer2/3 switches in enterprise environments, aggregation or distribution layers. Example: in our case (ISP) we use CRS326 and CRS317 at multi-dwelling units to finish the customer lines, manage vlans of service and apply basic qos. They offer a good variety of ports 1/10G, which is perfect for connecting other ISPs or connecting corporate end users. MikroTik Cloud Router Switch would work fine in low-traffic Routing and Switching, you could configure L3 Hardware offloading and serve some significant traffic, but you may missing some features like, mangle, nat, firewall or other things that may be solved with other device in an upper layer of infrastructure. Based on our experience MikroTik Cloud Router Switch is not good for high performance traffic, they are not optimized for heavy L3 routing task. Example: if you use a CRS as core or router in a small DC or IX the result is traduced on high cpu usage and load performance. If you are looking for special works, MikroTik Cloud Router Switch in this aspect is out.

Incentivized

I believe PFSense is well suited for both home lab environments as well as up to small to mid-size business environments on a tight budget. However, I would implore that anything in production requires the use of the authorized hardware that PFSense sells to receive support. However, in my experience, PFSense is a solid set-and-forget firewall solution.

• L3 Hardware Offloading
• Vlan segmentation
• Traffic troughput
• Port density
• Cost effective
• Port Isolation
• Trunk, access and hybrid configurations

Incentivized

• Easy to use. Good user interface design! Easy to understand and easy to set up.
• Lower hardware requirement. 3 years ago, we used an old PC to run it. Now, we have changed to a router device with Celeron CPU and 8GB RAM. It runs smoothly with a 1000G commercial broadband.

Incentivized

• L3 features like firewall IPsec NAT
• LACP with more than 4 interfaces
• Centralized Management platflorm
• Limited Hardware offloading insight
• Outdated web interface
• CLI usability

Incentivized

• I did kind of mention a Con in the Pro section with OpenVPN.
• When I create a config for an employee other employees are able to login to that config.
• I could be doing something wrong when I am making it - I am not afraid to admit that as I am pretty new to all of this, but it seems like it builds a key and I would think the key would be unique in some way to each employee, but I could be wrong.
• I actually do not have a lot of Con's for this software - I did not get to set this up on our work network so I am not sure of any downfalls when installing.
• I installed this on my personal machine in a Hyper-V environment to get a feel for it before I started working on it at work and it seemed pretty smooth. I didn't run into any issues.

Incentivized

Powerful features at a low price: MikroTik Cloud Router Switch provides a good variety of features that are not present on more expensive brands. Flexible deployment options: SwOS for simple switching use cases and RouterOS for more advanced configurations. Winbox is a fast and responsive tool for configuring, maintain and monitoring the traffic or other variable. Why it doesn't score higher, we think that the learning curve for new users could be hard. Sometimes the logic configuration can be unintuitive example: bridge filtering, vlan interfaces. Inconsistent UX Across RouterOS versions, some features may change without clear documentation causing confusion missconfig or incompatibility between versions. Documentation and support are poor, official documentation is fragmented and depht in some cases, the active community should be your best friend.

Incentivized

The pfSense UI is easy to navigate and pretty go look at. It is much better than some high dollar firewalls that just throw menus you you. The pfSense UI is quick and responsive and makes sense 99% of the time. Changes are committed quickly and the hardware rarely requires a reboot. It just runs.

Incentivized

pfSense+ basic provides "As Available" email support. pfSense+ Pro offers 24 hr turn around email support. pfSense+ Enterprise offers 24/7 phone support.

Incentivized

We chose MikroTik Cloud Router Switch because it met our technical requirements without significantly affecting our budget. MikroTik Cloud Router Switch offers a performance reliable and scalable for access and aggregation roles and is easy to integrate with our existing infrastructure (Mikrotik CCR). While it doesn't offer enterprise-class UX, or automation frameworks out the box, its disruptive focus, control and granular configuration convert it in an attractive option for ISP operations.

Incentivized

Meraki has a unified management login for all devices, which is nice. It also has decent content filtering, both areas where pfSense is weaker. Where pfSense far ouclasses Meraki is in the ease of use and the other width of features. These include features such as better VPN interoperability, non-subscription based pricing, auditability, not relying on the infrastructure of a third party, more transparency of what's actually going on, easier to deploy replacements if hardware fails. Additionally, the NAT management for pfSense seems to be a bit better, as you can NAT between any network segment and not just the LAN segments out the WAN interfaces.

• Significant Cost Savings
• Rapid deployment and flexibility
• Bottlenecks in wrong scenario of use
• Manual configuration overhead
• Perception and vendor approval barriers

Incentivized

• pfSense can be installed on commodity hardware with no licensing fees. With a simple less than 10 minute restore time, on most hardware, it's an extremely inexpensive way to achieve the same results that some of the more expensive vendors provide.
• The easy to use interface has allowed configuration management to be preformed by lower level technicians with quick and easy training.

Incentivized