I'll add a comment here, since I've used the RB750G gear and RPi boards extensively as routers. I *highly* recommend the RPi4B! The difference in SoC processing power is massive, when crunching crypto for VPNs, enough RAM for BGP and other system services, etc. There are many OS/distro sources available and the very latest software version are only a few clicks away.
Also, MikroTik support for OpenVPN is seriously lacking--beyond the concern for simply having crummy data thru-put due to crypto processing overhead. I've got several RB750G routers, they're all sitting on the shelf, these days.
For network port fan-out, since the RPi4B has only a single (but REAL) 1GbE port, I mostly use D-Link DGS-1100-08 switches. They've got good support for 802.1q VLANs and are very economical ($35 or less).
I've also got a small fleet of Rock64 boards installed, since they were available with REAL 1GbE ports before the RPi4B was available.
Don't underestimate how capable this solution is! This gear is rock-solid, super inexpensive and available everywhere. Further, you're not locked into a single vendor/hardware platform, as the technology continues to leap forward.
These days, about the only time I gravitate to higher end gear is where I need faster router port speeds---10GbE or faster.
73, David KB4FXC
On Tue, 3 Aug 2021, Rob PE1CHL via 44Net wrote:
While I agree that it is attractive to use a Raspberry Pi because of its availability
and the capability to also host some applications on the same device aside from doing the routing, in my experience it is much easier to use a dedicated router like the MikroTik hEX (RB750Gr3) available for about the same price, but having 5 ethernet ports and all software required for VPN and routing pre-installed and much easier to configure and maintain than a Raspberry Pi.
Of course there always are multiple options. And Raspberry Pi should be one of them.
Rob
On 8/3/21 6:26 PM, Steve Stroh via 44Net wrote:
I agree strongly with N8EI's suggestion 3 to base the "Get on Net44" appliance on a Raspberry Pi. It's ubiquitous, capable, and well-understood. Please scale it down as much as possible so that it runs on a RPi 3 (so that there's at least one Ethernet port).
Please (for those of us mortals who don't routinely compile Linux kernels), make the "appliance" available as an ISO image so that it can be downloaded to an SD card and just stuck into the RPi and booted. Then have a one pager (or even better, a small script) that lets you "fill in the blanks" like callsign, VPN that you're trying to connect to, etc.
Thanks,
Steve N8GNJ
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