Scarcity of good routers in India

[_rajat]

Any specific recs for Mikrotik under 10k? @Lolita_Magnum

 

[Lolita_Magnum]

Yes, VyOS has a learning curve, but it is a good option if someone is looking to explore "enterprise"-based routers.

@_rajat Are you looking for just a router or a WiFi+router? Do you have any specific port requirements, like SFP or PoE?

For general all-rounder purposes, hAP ax2 (I am using it right now), hAP ax3, and hAP be lite are a good start.

If you are okay with just WiFi 5, then there's hAP ac2, which also supports flashing OpenWRT

 

[_rajat]

Looking for a Wifi+Router setup, don't want to cramp up my setup with multiple devices. No requirements for PoE or SFP. Very difficult to bypass Tata Play ONT so no point of getting a SFP module for that. I might need a multiwan setup in the future. Assuming that Mikrotik supports multiwan by default.
How's the Wifi range of hAP ax2 and ax3?

 

[hariselio]

various posts from reddit and Mikrotik forum say, ax2 has more range/speed compared to ax3, very strange indeed especially ax3 having external antenna. Myself having ax3, felt range is not great compared to wifi APs i use. So currently its sitting in box.

 

[jehunix]

@_rajat not sure about wifi range of hap ax2 or ax3 tbh, but personally i'd go with a proper router + dedicated access points setup: Mikrotik, unifi, grandstream, or omada, depending on budget and preference. pick the AP count/model based on how big the house is. a single router-with-wifi is stuck wherever your isp line enters, so coverage isn't optimized, separate APs let you place radios where you actually need them and scale up later without touching routing, firewall setup. this'll be way more robust and reliable overall.

for dual-wan on mikrotik you gotta fiddle with netwatch-based failover, pcc (per-connection classifier) or ecmp for load balancing across wans, and policy-based routing if you want specific traffic pinned to a specific wan. it's not plug and play like unifi or other prosumer routers tbh.

 

[_rajat]

@vishalrao Multi wan setup in load balance mode seems to have issues with banking apps. Does policy based routing help sort it out or is there something else? Apart from banking apps is there any other service that doesn't work?
@jehunix you're right but I live in a 1500sqft 3bhk apartment. I don't face range issues with my current Asus router, there are only a few dead spots which is totally manageable.

 

[vishalrao]

@_rajat yes policy based routing should help , you can config it to only your phone(s) after you set fixed ip in your dhcp server.

Maybe better option is something called "enable application optimised routing" in er605 load balancer settings that will sticky single connection apps yet still load balance multi connection apps like download accelerator or torrents.

 

[Trex]

I have used load balancing of two isp quite extensively for two years on routeros, never faced any issue with any banking app or websites. And I was using PCC load balancing not ECMP to utilize full bandwidth of both the connection at same time on same client/application.

 

[jehunix]

haven't had issues with multi-WAN load balancing with unifi personally. It has built in feature though! Haven't done policy based routing wrt banking apps. everything just works!!