MikroTik hAP ac3

I'll be adding to this review over the next few days.tl;dr, this is a recent mikrotik product, get this one if you want all of the bells and whistles in updates for a long time. This is not a consumer, or even a "prosumer" product. While you can buy it and configure it with the phone app to provide a decent level of service, the configuration options are numerous and can be very confusing in their layouts and options. You'll be googling a lot, even if you're experienced with linux command line sorts of things, and a networking expert. It can do a LOT if you're patient with it, and do a lot of reading. I bought it because I wanted a router that'd get updated firmware for more than 2-3 years, and these get updated until the hardware can't do it anymore. This is one of four products that appear to be getting the very latest features and options, with the other four being far more expensive.Cheap for what it is, powerful, and did I mention cheap? Look at the Ubiquiti product prices and know that the mikrotik stuff is just as good.First things first. If you reboot this or make key configuration changes to the 5GHz channel, the router takes up to ten minutes to bring that wireless interface fully up. Something about "checking the 5GHz band for compliance/channels"? Something regulatory related. I've never seen that in a router before, and this gave me conniption fits as to why the router was running but no 5GHz.So keep that first and foremost, so it doesn't drive ya nuts when you make a change and can't figure out what the problem with the router is.I've had this for two days, and got it where I want it to be, but wow are there some caveats and tips that I can share.These folks got some bad press because someone malware'd their routers which had been installed without changing the administrator password, or disabling remote access.These problems exist with a lot of routers, but these folks sell a lot of low cost boxes.Most of the hacked routers were also running the original firmware for their unit from years ago. Auto upgrade wasn't set.The manufacturer has responded to this with a phone app, which does the basic configuration, makes you change the admin password to not be blank, and sets up updates.First impressions: The box wasn't in another box or an envelope, and it wasn't taped shut either. Little flap opened quite easily, and the product contents could have ended up on the floor of someones trunk. Heavy, the power wall wart is super heavy (generally GOOD!) and the box is heavier than it looks. I haven't tried to see if the router box is metal or not, but it feels that way. The box stays fairly cool to the touch even under load.After that quick configuration, it won't update to the latest version 7.xx firmware, until you play with the 'update channel' options to look for development/beta versions. But the 7.xx firmware is a released product. I think this has to do with not wanting a lot of significant change to the installed base, unless you really want it. That had me stuck for a while.Once you get it updated, you'll see the plethora of configuration options, from an obviously quickly written phone app that does the very basics of setup (but you won't want that), SSH in from a browser, a 'winbox' app, etc, etc. The options are jumbled, inconsistent and messy. If you've delved into how linux is always supposed to run great on everything, but you somehow always has trouble with a driver, or you have to tinker with alsamixer to get the sound to work? Just like that. This is a tech product, made by tech people, and bought by tech people. Don't expect to think 'consumer' at any point.You will want to install the winbox64 app on your computer (windows here), this is how you'll be doing most of the configuration, because its a way to securely access the router locally, and we'll need that because we're going to shut off every other option for security reasons.After you get past the basic router config with the phone, you've pressed it to update to the new 7.x firmware (if that's what you want) and cursed it out 3x because it seemed that you'd set it right, and there's no 5GHz interface up.Next, we 'harden' the router to prevent the sorts of remote access hacking that got some folks into trouble, and fortunately there's a guide for that. If you look hard enough. Did I mention that you get a many-fold little "manual" with it that nobody over the age of 30 can read without a magnifying glass?Here's the guide. Note the frequent use of command line stuff, fairly consistent with other linux based devices. Get used to cutting and pasting. Don't bother fiddling with the winbox gui for bulk work like this hardening process. You'll be all day just looking for the option.https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:Securing_Your_RouterNext, I was interested in having the router do some stuff a bit like a pi-hole, where we're going to block most common ad sites from the router so it won't even try to connect to them. This has the function of never loading most ads, rather than trying to reject them at the computer displaying pages. This is a simple script that loads most of the known ad sites by name, and the list is updated on reboot, taking about 5-7 minutes to complete on this quad core box. Note that this will also give you trouble if you're using a VPN on any device, since those often use their own DNS servers, not what the router says. That cost me another 10 minutes of time.Here's the script itself, as it says, cut and paste this into a Terminal window with winbox:https://www.micu.eu/adblock/adblock_script.txtAnd here's some discussion with a lot of folks pushing the guy who asked the question to use an ad blocker in their browser. I have devices that aren't using a browser, and can't take an ablocker easily.Other ways to do this is with a pi-hole, on the mikrotik support forum, someone connected a $5 raspberry pi zero to the router via usb and configuring it as an LTE modem, which this device does also support, and via a public DNS that throws away ads.Since raspberry pi's cost more than the router does right now (well over $150 if you can get one), and we have a nice beefy quad core cpu, lots of ram and lots of storage (compared to other, older mikrotik routers, and even high end consumer routers), so I'll let it do the work. Ten minutes on a reboot doesn't bother me.https://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php?t=172942I did NOT use the "cleaned up script" in that thread, I used the one above and it worked like a charm.Note that this is blocking about 17,000 domains, and some of them may be pesky. For example, twitter converts links to shortened "t.co" links, so they can count and track who clicked on what. Those links are blocked by this script, so you'd need to go pull up the article directly from the source. Quite a few of these tracking "links" are blocked.If you don't want that, you could revise the script to exclude those domains. So far I saw ONE ad slide through on speedtest.net, which is rather famous for finding ways to shoehorn more flashing ads on one page. Just one in a dozen refreshes, and the other ads/trackers are gone from each and every device, with no added parts or cost.If you aren't interested in the wireless end of things, either because you're waiting for the wireless AX access point that mikrotik came out with, or you plan to use your old wireless router as your access point, the 5 port (with SPF, even though you probably won't use it) is another recent product, with a traditional 4+1 port arrangement and no wifi for less $. The mikrotik wireless is a bit behind advanced wireless routers but they have a "Wave2" optional module that you can 'add' to the router, and once you do that it takes over the wireless on reboot. And every configuration option stops working because it's REALLY not integrated well at all. The GUI for configuring it left me seeing that I'd need to really bone up on the fine details of all of the options, and I removed that from being included. You load these modules by downloading the "extra packages" for the "ARM" based units, not arm64. Unzip the files in a directory, and use the "Files" option in winbox to add whichever of the 8-9 extra modules that you want. I just saved ya half an hour.Going forward, the wireless for now lacks some advanced speed niceties, but it's plenty good enough. I will probably add a pi-hole once I can buy a pi for under $20. There's quite a bit more of it, but I'll save that for another day.Great product for the money, with an enormous amount of reading and playing with command line options, and a frustrating "this could be made to be MUCH simpler and easier to use" aspect to it.Therein lay the problem, a fine technical product made by other technical folks who can't explain to someone who isn't an expert already in the product in how to use it.The next step up from this is the "RB" series, which have models from 1xxxx to 5xxxx. The 5xxxx was just announced. The rb4xxx is the big box with lots of ethernet ports, and even capacity, for about 3x the price.I'm very happy with the purchase, and knowing that unless the company goes under, it'll be updated for longer than I want to use it, and remain fairly secure. Great price, and if you're familiar with linux and router details at a low level, it'll work out fine for ya. Even if they do go under, it looks like some other router firmwares like opnwrt are supposed to be able to run on it.

Love my MikroTik Products ! Once you learn how to use the hardware they are over achievers! Non-Cloud user.

This is definitely not for consumers and I'd say you'd need decent IT experience to set this up without too much frustration. The forums and wiki are very helpful and this unit is more powerful than you need for most home users. Be aware that if you are planning to set this up as an AP you'll want to put an IP address on the bridge so you can still manage it when you switch modes.

The router has grate proformance compered to a 20 eur one i had beffor it but its signal dosnt reach as far as the old one and i dont know if i have missconfigured it or something

El euipo es bueno, de facil configuraciòn, he tenido mikrotik desde hace tiempo com proveedor adsl y actualmente con proveedor de fibra optica y este equipo es bueno para la fibra optica

Solved my problems.

I am a networking professional and well familiar with Router OS. This is a great product for the money, but I do not recommend it as a consumer product. Even with quickstart, setup/configuration is not consumer friendly.For those savvy in routing and networking, this is a fantastically powerful device for the money. Plenty of horsepower for lots of processing and WiFi performance is better than expected.

I am familiar with MikroTik's software and so I bought this router because I appreciated the functionality and control over my network. I have had nothing but problems with this hAP ac3. The Wi-Fi is severely lacking. My house is only about 1200 sq. ft and the 5Ghz barely reaches to the other side of the house. The 2.4 signal is fine but performance is awful because of the lack of chains. It would be one thing if it were just the wifi, but I also see about 10% packet loss on the physical switch. I want to say I just have a faulty router but I returned my last MikroTik router and got this one only to find similar issues. If you're looking for a plug n' play MikroTik Router, go for another model. This one is bad.