MikroTik Router/Switch/Wireless

[TanKianW]

MikroTik has released their first Long Term RouterOS build in their Version 7.x stream: RouterOS Version 7.20.7. MikroTik reached this milestone more than 4 years after releasing Version 7.1 to their Stable channel.

This is great news!

Lesser 2nd-guessing on stability (usually lesser cutting-edge features or major changes), more production-ready.

Will be upgrading the majority of my appliances still on 7.19.X. But will probably hold for a while and test out the MLAGG feature, which tends to break between updates.​

 

[BBCWatcher]

For those of you who have MikroTik equipment that's compatible with OpenWrt (or will be in the future), there's some recent good news. MikroTik introduced a bootloader change in RouterOS 7.19.6 released on September 12, 2025. If you update your RouterBOARD bootloader to 7.19.6 or higher, you should still be able to boot OpenWrt. Previously you had to keep your bootloader at Version 6.x to retain compatibility with OpenWrt. (Version 6.49.19 is currently the latest Version 6 release.) Here's the 7.19.6 Changelog entry:

routerboot - fixed load of other kernels (e.g. OpenWrt) on NAND-less boards with MT762x, IPQ40xx, QCA955x and QCA953x CPUs ("/system routerboard upgrade" required)

For RouterOS 7 currently Version 7.21 is the latest Stable release and Version 7.20.7 is the latest (and first) Long Term release.

 

[TanKianW]

For those of you who have MikroTik equipment that's compatible with OpenWrt (or will be in the future), there's some recent good news. MikroTik introduced a bootloader change in RouterOS 7.19.6 released on September 12, 2025. If you update your RouterBOARD bootloader to 7.19.6 or higher, you should still be able to boot OpenWrt. Previously you had to keep your bootloader at Version 6.x to retain compatibility with OpenWrt. (Version 6.49.19 is currently the latest Version 6 release.) Here's the 7.19.6 Changelog entry:

routerboot - fixed load of other kernels (e.g. OpenWrt) on NAND-less boards with MT762x, IPQ40xx, QCA955x and QCA953x CPUs ("/system routerboard upgrade" required)

For RouterOS 7 currently Version 7.21 is the latest Stable release and Version 7.20.7 is the latest (and first) Long Term release.

Though I don't load OpenWRT on my MikroTik equipment, this is good news for tinkerers.

Personally I still prefer RouterOS over OpenWRT.


Pro Tip: Once you go the route of IaC (infrastructure as code) using Terraform with ROS, you are not looking back. Makes lots of sense for those looking at enterprise production setup.

For the few that are looking to build your own AI clusters in your worklab/high-end homelab, with the right drivers, you can activate RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) protocol for optimal latency and connect these machines over the newer CRS switches (Eg. CRS812, CRS804) that come equipped with 400G fibre interconnects using the QoS feature of MikroTik equipment for RoCE (RDMA over converged ethernet).​