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in this article, I am going to Discuss another Essential fact of MikroTik RouterOS.

In the following pages, you will find examples of some of the most important RouterOS features.

The most important RouterOS features

• Wireless
• Hotspot
• Quality of Service
• Web Proxy
• Tools
• The Dude
• Licenses

Wireless

A variety of Wireless technologies are supported in RouterOS, the most basic of them being the wireless access point and client. Also If it’s a small hotspot network in your home or a city-wide mesh network, RouterOS will help you in all situations. ]In Addition Some of the features supported by RouterOS:
• IEEE802.11a/b/g/n wireless client and access point
• Nstreme and Nstreme2 proprietary protocols
• Client polling
• RTS/CTS
• Wireless Distribution System (WDS)
• Virtual AP
• WEP, WPA, WPA2 encryption
• Access control list
• Wireless client roaming
• WMM
• HWMP+ Wireless MESH protocol
• MME wireless routing protocol

RouterOS also features the NStreme proprietary wireless protocol that allows extending the connection range and speed, when using MikroTik routers at each end. Also, This has helped to achieve the current nonamplified wifi link length world record in Italy. Also supported is NSteme dual which allows using two antennas at each end, one for receiving and one for sending.

Hotspot

The MikroTik HotSpot Gateway enables providing of public network access for clients using wireless or wired network connections. So The user will be presented a login screen when first opening his web browser. Once a login and password are provided, the user will be allowed internet access.

This is ideal for hotels, schools, airports, internet cafes,s or any other public place where the administration doesn’t have control over the user computer. No software installation or network configuration is needed, hotspot will direct any connection request to the login form. Extensive user management is possible by making different user profiles, each of which can allow certain uptime, upload and download speed limitation, transfer amount limitation, and more. Hotspot also supports authentication against standard RADIUS servers. and Also  MikroTik’s own user Manager will give you centralized management of all users in your networks.
• Plug-n-Play access to the Network
• Authentication of local Network Clients
• User Accounting
• RADIUS support for Authentication and Accounting
• Configurable bypass for non-interactive devices
• Walled garden for browsing exceptions
• Trial user and Advertisement modes

Quality of Service

Bandwidth Control is a set of mechanisms that control data rate allocation, delay variability, timely delivery, and Also delivery reliability. Quality of Service (QoS) means that the router can prioritize and shape network traffic. Some features of the MikroTik RouterOS traffic control mechanism are listed below:
• limit data rate for certain IP addresses, subnets, protocols, ports,
and other parameters
• limit peer-to-peer traffic
• prioritize some packet flows over others
• use queue bursts for faster web browsing
• apply queues on fixed time intervals
• share available traffic among users equally, or depending on the load of the channel

RouterOS supports Hierarchical Token Bucket (HTB) QoS system with CIR, MIR, burst, and priority support, and provides both advanced queuing, and also an easy solution for basic QoS implementation – Simple queues. PCQ was introduced to optimize massive QoS systems, where most of the queues are exactly the same for different sub-streams. For example, a sub-stream can be downloaded or uploaded for one particular client (IP) or connection to the server.PCQ algorithm is very simple – at first, it uses selected classifiers to distinguish one sub-stream from another, then applies individual FIFO queue size and limitation on every sub-stream, then groups all sub-streams together and applies global FIFO queue size and limitation.

Web Proxy

RouterOS features a MikroTik custom-made proxy server for caching web resources and speeding up customer browsing by delivering them cached file copies at local network speed. MikroTik RouterOS implements the following proxy server features:

• Regular HTTP proxy
• Transparent proxy
• Access list by source, destination, URL, and requested method (HTTP firewall)
• Cache access list to specify which objects to cache, and which not.
• Direct Access List to specify which resources should be accessed directly, and which – through another proxy server
• Logging facility
• SOCKS proxy support
• Parent proxy support
• Cache storage on external drives

RouterOS can also act as a Transparent Caching server, with no configuration required in the customer PC. RouterOS will take all HTTP requests and redirect them to the local proxy service. This process will be entirely transparent to the user, and the only difference to them will be the increased browsing speed

Equipment

To help administrate your network, RouterOS also provides a large number of small network tools to optimize your everyday tasks. Here are some of them:
• Ping, traceroute
• Bandwidth test, ping flood
• Packet sniffer, torch
• Telnet, SSH
• E-mail and SMS send tools
• Automated script execution tools
• CALEA data mirroring
• File Fetch tool
• Active connection table
• NTP Client and Server
• TFTP server
• Dynamic DNS updater
• VRRP redundancy support
• SNMP for providing graphs and stats
• RADIUS client and server (User Manager)

The Dude

The Dude network monitor is an application by MikroTik which can dramatically improve the way you manage your network environment. It will automatically scan all devices within specified subnets, draw and layout a map of your networks, monitor services of your devices and alert you in case some service has problems. Not only can you monitor your RouterOS devices, but you can also monitor any device that is accessible by Ping or provides SNMP information.

You are able to make traffic and availability graphs, outage reports, and even use the Dude as a Syslog server for your RouterOS device log files. Also The Dude can also manage your RouterOS device configurations and automate their software upgrades and mass configure them.
Best of all – The Dude is free of charge.

License

After installing the free trial version of RouterOS on a PC, you will certainly want to keep using it. To do this, you need to purchase a license key. There are four types of RouterOS license keys available, indicated by a “level number”. The lowest level is 3, which has wireless client functionality and a limited number of active users, and the highest is level 6 which doesn’t have any limitations, as you can see in the table on left. It’s important to note that regardless of the license level chosen, all RouterOS installations allow you to use an unlimited number of interfaces, include limited technical support over email, and never stop working. In fact, the RouterOS license allows you to install any upgrades.

That MikroTik might release, up until the last upgrade of the next major release since you purchased
your key. If you want, you can keep using RouterOS on that final release – the RouterOS license never expires. Therefore  It’s also important to note that each license is bound to the drive it’s installed on, which means that each Router needs a separate license key. All RouterBOARD devices made by MikroTik are already preinstalled with a licensed RouterOS version and don’t require
additional purchases.