Florin Iucha wrote: > My Linksys WRT54G is dying on me and I'd like to replace it with a > real router/access point based on Linux and using only free software > drivers. > > The old choice was Soekris [1] but they seem to be longer in the tooth > and in the price: ~$270 for just the box and the motherboard, with the > wireless being extra. > > Now, it seems that the top contenders are MicroTik RouterBoard [2] and > Ubiquiti RouterStationPRO [3]. Netgate [4] has a nice kit for $300 > that includes the motherboard, case, wi-fi card and antennas. > > Looking at the devices themselves, the Ubiquiti has Gigabit ports, > while MicroTik doesn't yet have a board with both Gigabit and mini-pci > (for wi-fi). > > From the software perspective, MicroTik has their own Linux Distro > (RouterOS) which seems to be quite polished, while Ubiquiti uses > OpenWRT, which I found to be not as stable. > > Does anybody has any hands-on experience with either of these two > options and has good or bad experiences? Any other option that I > should consider given the ~$300 budget? > We use MikroTik-embedded on RouterBoards, and installed on HDs. Both ways work very well. Highly recommended on our side of the world.