My ageing Netgear and Zyxel ADSL routers were suffering from bitrot (described here) so it was time for a replacement.
My requirements were:
- 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 website. They seemed to specialise in routers running their own customised version of 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 Parallels virtual machine. I downloaded the demonstration ISO and loaded it into a new virtual machine.