D 2012-02-19T14:44:38.532
L IPv6
P 84b34e645aa24b5f428d5c28ace5bf9ae4b41f1f
U davidevans
W 1471
My ageing Netgear and Zyxel ADSL routers were suffering from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_rot|bitrot] (described [router problems|here]) so it was time for a replacement.

My requirements were:

  *  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6|IPv6] (Internet Protocol version 6) support so it would be future-proofed.

  *  Reliable ADSL performance on my phone line as  I am rather a long distance (2.5 miles) from the exchange.

  *  Good diagnostics in case of problems.

  *  In hindsight it did not necessarily have to be from one of the big names.

  *  Wireless N and Gigabit Ethernet.

  *  Reasonably easy to set-up, but hey, I'm a geek, soI can cope with a bit of complexity.

After some research on various manufacturers websites I failed to find anything that supported IPv6 at a reasonable price.  They all seemed to be rather coy about describing their IPv6 features in their manuals.

Eventually I noticed a blog posting which said good things about Mikrotik routers.  I had never heard of Mikrotik so I looked at their [http://www.mikrotik.com/|website]. They seemed to specialise in routers running their own customised version of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux|Linux] named RouterOS.  They offered a try before you buy facility to run RouterOS on a spare PC.  I do not have a spare PC, but I do have a [http://www.parallels.com/|Parallels] virtual machine.  I downloaded the demonstration ISO and loaded it into a new virtual machine.
Z b2286c6d3a9078c58ff8b61b311fbe6e