MikroTik

pfSense – A move to an easier life?

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Even up to having the FTTP installed I was a MikroTik router through and through kidn of guy however running my CHR in the way I did meant some trade offs were made and my day to day work life forking further away from Mikrotik based or even theorised usage meant that my mind went that way for my home network as well. I did the unthinkable.

I’ve repurposed my DellR210ii which has been rebuilt with a Xeon E3-1220 v2, 8GB of RAM and an SSD. I also added in some Noctua fans to keep the noise down below a whisper as the rebuild meant it won’t be working hard as the whole install is now “bare metal” rather than the complexitiy of being virtualised.

Has it made a huge difference to my life? No. I still have a working router/firewall however it is now a decent GUI rather than an app that had to be levered onto my laptop (I’m also now a Mac boi) and to be honest the OpenVPN implementation has been a breeze to get working as has all of the firewalling and NAt rules as well as pushing on with trying to squeeze more from the LAN itself (10Gb backbone and tolerance).

I’ve gone for pfSense+ as it’s my home firewall and I qualify as such for the + usage FOC (for now) and I’m pretty happy with it. Time will tell but currently I don’t see me folding back to ESXi with a CHR running on top.

The Migration Has Started

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As a small update on what is going on in my world. I am now slowly starting migrating all of my MikroTik related content onto my new domain MikNet.
I get a resounding amount of contact through from people all around the world talking to me about MikroTik related problems and projects they have and I feel that the “Steveocee” persona is not the right person to be dealing with this (Steveocee is an ingame handle so may be confusing when my channel is 80% PC games). MikNet will still receive the same content, tutorials and ongoing MikroTik love and also has it’s own YouTube channel which will slowly start to get filled up with helpful and niche problem solutions.

MikroTik SXT LTE Kit – The obvious next step.

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Image result for mikrotik sxt lte

I’ve recently been lucky enough to be included in a friends deployment of a MikroTik SXT LTE kit.
Having previously had a full hands on play with the kit, it is typical MikroTik quality, average quality plastic with a brilliant performance for a less than average price.

The purpose of the installation was to remove the tired fixed wireless link he had which was only the region of around 10/2Mb and wasn’t the most cost effective solution.
Being a semi rural location meant a fixed line solution wasn’t going to work and mobile phone signal wasn’t awful returning better than wireless access speeds.

The decision was made to put in an SXT and with the help of an unlimited data SIM card, he is getting speeds far superior to the FWA, cheaper monthly outlay and it’s unlimited which is something the WISPS tend not to do.

When there is 4G access this good it is a stark signal that there is light at the end of the tunnel for those who aren’t blessed by Openreach and their fibre.

Speedtest result of a recently deployed SXT LTE

CHR back in place with a shuffle around

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2019-04-10_08-43-07

The new PSU has worked so far so it was back up into the attic rack for my R210ii. No other modifications although if it manages a couple of weeks I will most likely look into some Noctua fans to quiet it off a bit. A bit of a tidy up as well removing some old switches and getting the patch panel in line.
One of the next jobs on the list will be to get a “CRS3XX” down into the cave so I can take advantage of some 10GB goodness with failover on 2 of the 3 fibres.