[GLLUG] OT: secure router for home network

[John Winters]

On 24/05/18 11:53, James Roberts via GLLUG wrote:
[snip]
> - I have tried to use Mikrotik as have many others I know but I am now 
> bald and no longer enjoy banging my head against a wall. You may like them.

I should perhaps have mentioned that, from the point of view of the 
casual user, the MikroTik documentation is phenomenally dreadful. 
There's lots of it, but it tends to be recipes saying:

* Do this
* Then this
* Then this
* Then this
* Then this
   (adjust these commands to your requirements)

without the slightest explanation of concepts or what any of the 
commands does.  How you're meant to adjust them to your needs without 
knowing what they do is a mystery.

Lots of the explanations are clearly of the, "This is what I did" 
nature, with no attempt made to add any background information or 
anything like that.

I suspect that MikroTik look on it as more of a professional product, 
targeting the same kind of market as Cisco, and thus assume that your 
first step will be to go on a week-long residential course.

The whole area could do with a good introductory guide, explaining 
concepts and the the basic structure of the system.  It's so 
configurable that you need to have some idea what's going on in order to 
get started.  In case it's of any help, its firewall is much like the 
standard firewall software in Linux.

Having said that, it does have both a web GUI, and a standalone Windows 
application (which runs fine under WINE), by means of which the average 
tech-savvy user can do most simple tasks.

John