I'm trying the new Mikrotik KNOT LTE thingy. It's tiny (basically a deck of cards). Surprisingly it has whole 512MB NAND. Has eSIM and apparently Mikrotik is now a MVNO.

the actual Quectel modem inside seems to be a bit finicky, sometimes needing a whole power-cycle when changing APNs or switching SIM slots, otherwise it just won't get an IP address. (or maybe that's a ROS 7.21 bug? seems like 7.20.7 works better)

I have the suspicion that RouterOS is running directly on one of the LTE modem's cores or something... already managed to crash it twice while reconfiguring lte1, and the second time it crashed so hard it wouldn't boot anymore.

fyi: unbricking a Mikrotik device is "sudo ./netinstall-cli -v -i eth0 routeros-7.20.7-arm.npk, then hold the reset button until the LED blinks→goes steady→turns off". it reinstalled and kept the old config just fine

no Wi-Fi, which is slightly a downgrade from RUT200, but I'd really *much* rather deal with RouterOS than OpenWrt/RutOS so it's fine

@grawity how much did you pay for yours? I could use one of those

@grawity product page says it's a QCA9531, which is a pretty old Atheros-era 802.11n SoC (~2015?) with 650MHz MIPS core. it looks like Mikrotik use that core in several dozen products, {h,Lt,m,w}AP, a few smaller CRS devices and SXT LTE6.

@astraleureka you're looking at the older KNOT, the one I've got is https://mikrotik.com/product/knot_embedded_lte4

its /sys/routerboard shows "firmware type: MDM9607" which seems to match the quectel EC25-EU (regular routerboards which run on regular SoCs show "qca9550L" or "mt7621L" in this field)

@domi goes for €65 here

(LTE antennas not included but I got mine for around €4 each)

to be clear, this is the new "regular LTE" KNOT, not the original LTE-M/LoRa KNOT

for comparison the teltonika rut200 (similar capabilities plus WiFi) is €114 now, was €84 when I bought one mid-2024

@grawity right in line with what i’d like to pay for a device like this tbh. neato!

@domi it's also got Bluetooth for whatever reason, and it's ARM32 meaning it supports the docker containers feature in ROS so you could probably run a fedi instance on it

@grawity a noteworthy reason to get a SIM card from OpenFactory with a public IP…

@domi I wonder if they could offer those here, I assume it's an MVNO thing over some other carrier?

Tele2 here has cheap unlisted M2M plans and a static IP is €1/mo extra, which is really handy for an emergency OSPF tunnel uplink, but annoyingly it routes everything through hell and back. packets to my workplace always go to Frankfurt then return via colt and geant some 100ms later.

(Mikrotik's own eSIM plan also uses Tele2 as the actual carrier but doesn't offer public IP of any version, and its routing is even worse)

@grawity where are you at? I’m not exactly sure if it counts as a MVNO, but they pay some other carrier to have a custom APN

sadly stuff will still go through Frankfurt, you kinda can’t escape it. but I can’t complain about ping times, it’s solid

@grawity oooh I see. the old KNOT page still says "newest addition to the MikroTik family" so I was a little confused 😅

@domi @grawity OpenFactory does that too? How does the pricing compare with A&A's (£2/month + 1.75p/MB) and does it have IPv6?

@noisytoot @grawity I Don’t Know. –> https://openfactory.net/services/home-internet/ <–