Don't get me wrong, they make powerful and feature-complete stuff, but their UI sort of assumes you really know what you're doing. I don't know what I'm doing.

But my LLM does. I've been able to set up site-to-site VPNs with Mikrotik in fifteen minutes now, rather than the day-long exercise of googling and praying.

I do use Mikrotik for 2.5g switching though, zero complaints.

It's royal pain.

Basic router setup is not hard.

Port forward to expose web server? Can be done after heavy docs&forum reading, but hair pinning never worked for me.

I checked their WiFi AP. It's UI is hard even for senior software engineer.

In the end I got opnSense installed in VM on Proxmox and it's my router for last 2 years.

I'm using 2 Mikrotik switches with their simplified UI to operate VLANs. Zero complains.

It's a great educational experience I would recommend to anyone interested in networking. Grab debian, grab a system with 2 NICs, make it your router/firewall/gateway.

There's also some really good value hardware that you can install OpenWRT on, I picked up a Xiaomi AP for like $30, flashed OpenWRT and it works great.

I like ipv6 but I have been thinking of disabling it lately because i cannot technically setup static leases with ipv6 like i can with ipv4, so technically the ipv6 for one of the services in my homelab could change and cause problems.

I really liked using Opnsense before I switched to Openwrt and I always want to go back, because it was just so much more streamlined and easy to configure from a 'geek but not a network engineer' perspective.

Chose them partly to reduce dependence on US tech too.

Other routers:

1. OpenWRT is a bit too basic, and updates are hit-and-miss.

2. Ubiquity is a bit too Apple-like, with its reliance on apps and integration.

3. Cisco is WAY too expensive, and too complicated to set up without having Cisco experience.

I'm now eagerly waiting for them to release the next generation of their routers. hEX Pro looks perfect to replace my aging CCR2004.

And all that is available from tiny home/SMB office devices starting at 40 USD, through dedicated wireless point to point bridges, to a big Ethernet switches/routers with 400G interfaces.

Of course it doesn't compete with high end NVIDIA Spectrum-X, Cisco or Juniper, but is good enough for 95% of networks.

It works great as a plug&play home/office router, too thanks to Quick Set, but for more sophisticated setups, a knowledge of networking protocols is mandatory. The more fancy setup, the more in-depth knowledge is required. Just like with programming and all stuff in life.

and it's cheap and fully customized, and powerful

For me when building homelab, customizability maybe important

Is that representative of using mikrotik hardware?

Scripts on RouterOS handle network checks for failover, DNS updates, etc.

I got that Mikrotik home router 10 years ago and it is still performing great and handles most of the use cases without issues.

UDM-SE it is for now.

They of course also have a DS-Lite AFTR gateways to tunnel the IPv4 traffic. In practice, everything works (for me at least).

Is there any manufacturer out there who produces high quality hardware that is not locked down?

step 2 throw the mikrotik in the garbage

For homelab, you are far better served buying a second hand Sophos baremetal/server rack mounted, and installing OPNSense in it.

I have a 2nd hand Sophos SG210 Rev3 from eBay, replaced the Celeron CPU with an i7 one, 16GB, new SSD, dual 10G NIC, it had been running like a dream.