there's a series that we're gonna be
starting here on category five
technology TV and that is to do with
advanced routing technology from micro
tech it's called router board I want to
show you this thing this is a a router
board this one is called the happe AC
router board RB 9 6 2 UI GS and it looks
just like a just like a standard router
right look at that but what is amazing
about these boards about these routers
about mikrotik as a brand is that they
are a disruptive technology you're
familiar with disruptive technologies
these are innovators who come out and
just completely flip the industry on
their heads what is amazing about micro
tech is that the features of the
firmware are not restricted and what I
mean by that is there are companies like
Cisco for example who you have to pay
licensing fees in order to get more kind
of industrial businesslike features and
the high-end features you've got to pay
through the teeth sometimes for
licensing to be able to unlock those
software features now mikrotik has a
different approach they say you know
what even if you buy our forty dollar
router we're gonna give you the full
software everything you're gonna have
access to everything so the only
limitation that you have with a micro
tech is the hardware lucky for us they
have a gajillion of these kind of
devices they've got a a wide range of
hardware available to us so with micro
tech the approach is instead to simply
find the hardware that's going to meet
your needs so the reason that I've
selected this one for the studio is
because we have
one two three four Gigabit Ethernet
ports we've got a gig port for
connecting uplink to our modem it's got
two point four and five gigahertz radios
so I'm gonna be able to kind of branch
out and you know like our wise cams for
example are on the 2.4 gigahertz band so
I'll leave those there but I want to
bring my smart phone and our laptops and
everything over to 5 gigahertz because
we're gonna get more speed and then
we're gonna presumably be able to free
up that that 2.4 gigahertz band here at
the studio there are a couple of
different things that are really really
neat about this device I mean they are
really really hardcore good quality but
they are about 1/10 of what you would
expect to pay for similar features and I
really really mean that I mean you'll
notice on the side there's a USB port
one of the first things that I ever did
with a router board is I used that USB
port which by software because it's not
limited remember so I wrote a script
that could turn on and off the power to
the USB port why would I want to do that
well USB is how many volts 5 volts I
picked up a 5 volt relay and I set it up
so that a USB cable went into that relay
and I could in the software turn off and
on the power to that relay basically
tripping the circuit so that relay then
had the power cable which was 12 volts
going to my modem my router board was
then the software was checking every 5
minutes
is Google responsive his Twitter
responsive is Facebook responsive and a
couple of other websites including my
own are they responding to pings if
they're not responding to pings let's
try again in five minutes and if they're
still
not responding to pings I'm going to cut
the power on the USB port and what that
then did is it cut the power on the
relay which tripped the 12-volt signal
to turn off my modem and then it waited
five seconds I programmed that into this
and then fired it back up again the
relay trip back
the modem powered back on and
essentially what I had done is I've
unplugged and plugged back in my modem
without ever having to be present or
even know about it as soon as the
internet seemed to go down because this
is a very common problem at the time
with my particular modem I would have to
power cycle that modem basically like
once every few weeks but by using a
micro tech I was able to do that
programmatically using the USB port so
all that to say it's completely open in
such a way that I can utilize all of the
features of the router without being
software restricted even to the point of
I can program the USB port to power on
and off my modem come on now they're so
cheap they're like a tenth of the price
of a Cisco for example with similar
feature set we do have links for you at
cat5 dot TV slash mikrotik that's mi k
ro TI k they gotta spell it weird so
that our links will be weird for you
because they don't have the software
limitations though I mean you can do so
very much with it so over the course of
the coming weeks what we're gonna be
doing is we're gonna be setting this up
this is this is the one that I selected
for the studio I'm gonna be setting this
up as a basic router so just basically
what you would need for home it's going
to protect you better than what your ISP
is providing for you significantly
better it's gonna be a lot more robust
it's going to give you a lot more
control but beyond that over the coming
weeks we're gonna learn how to use this
to create things like a guest Wi-Fi that
I control so well but Robby my my-y
by access point that the Internet
service provider gave me also comes with
guest Wi-Fi
well yes but do you have control over
that no what I want to do is not only
take that guest Wi-Fi and lock it down
so that the the people who are connected
to my guest Wi-Fi cannot access my
server my internal resources my printer
I want to lock that down but also I want
to restrict how fast they can travel
through my internet connection in other
words I want to throttle their bandwidth
they're a guest they're just using my
internet as probably to be honest it's
going to be one of the kids friends with
their Nintendo switch playing some video
games but when they come around with
their tablet and try to download videos
I don't want them to be milking my
bandwidth and slowing things down on my
network and Cha causing my voice to to
start buffering so I'm gonna be able to
do that we're gonna be teaching you how
to do that here on category five
technology TV in the coming weeks so
consider this as a little bit of a
preliminary introduction to this series
from there we're going to be learning
also how to lock it down so that we're
blocking ads through piehole directly on
this device and then we're gonna take it
one step further and we're also going to
create probably what I would say is one
of the best pornography ever have on
your home network on one of these and
that is going to be able to protect your
children and maybe if you're working in
a school and the education sector it's a
perfect opportunity for you on the cheap
to be able to create something that is
going to just absolutely protect your
users and and then it's also good in
business and it allows you to be able to
kind of control what your staff are
accessing and and just making sure that
it's not something that you would object
to or that you don't want your bandwidth
being used for at your office let's say
you can use the web interface I mean
this has a built-in web interface but
what's really really cool about the
mikrotik I'm going to say that a lot or
and
it's gonna be my crotch what's really
really cool about it well there's too
many things that are cool I I need to
have a bullet list one of the things
that I really adore about this is that
there's also a piece of software called
wind box which is available for Windows
or Mac however it runs flawlessly on
Linux in wine so it basically will run
on all platforms you're gonna use the
Windows version on Linux and it runs
perfectly well why would you want to use
software when it has a web interface the
reason for that is because if you ever
basically screw up and brick your device
make it so that it's inaccessible
through the web interface you can use
wind box in order to access it you can
recover it and it's just a simple tool
that detects your router on the network
and and lets see you access it and
configure it and it's it's fairly robust
as well so we're gonna go through this
over the course of the next few weeks
and I encourage you to follow the links
of camp five dot TV slash mikrotik if
you're looking for a good solid home
router business router that's going to
be able to give you some of those
features that are well beyond what you
would expect for the price point just
find one that has the features the
hardware features that you need because
again the software's not restricted so
if you need five gigahertz Wi-Fi you
need to make sure that you buy one that
has five gigahertz Wi-Fi the software's
not going to limit you that it's whether
the radio internally has support for it
they start like really really cheap you
can get one for like twenty nine bucks
or something and then they work their
way up to a couple hundred bucks and
then you can even get into rack mount
servers units that are going to be
several hundred dollars and they've got
the SPF and and everything else this one
also has you've got a you've got
everything on here that you'll ever need
app is the one that I got half is home
access point I believe so check those
out cat five TV slash micro tech and I
will be demonstrating this over the
course of the the next several weeks I
wish I could show you the internal today
unfortunately because of limitations to
our Stu
right now I'm not able to bring it up on
the screen I'm not able to show you or
teach you how it works
I really wanted to be there this week
folks it's coming and I can't wait maybe
teach me a lot of stuff about these
devices there