This seems to be a divisive opinion, but I like Mikrotik routers. I run an RB3011 at home, and at the TV station I work at we have a transport stream out of the station to one of the transmitter sites over a GRE tunnel on two RB4011s. They aren’t as easy to support as Cisco but I like them.

We have an Aruba which is only ok, and several HP Procurve switches that are very simple and easy to manage. No fancy interface that takes up screen space or resources.

For monitoring, I use CheckMK and I just got done installing NetDisco. CheckMK installation is easy but the configuration is daunting because I could monitor literally whatever I want as long as there’s data for it, and then alerting is another layer of complexity and decision-making added onto it.

I installed NetDisco because I wanted something that could show me a very basic “automated” network map. The TV station is 40 years old and has random things plugged in under floors and behind walls controlling lights and similar auxiliary devices, and it’s hard to tell exactly what is where or what that thing does. I’m pairing this with a Netbox installation that will serve as a source of truth for the hundreds of network cables, hundreds of audio cables, hundreds of GPI cables, and thousands of video cables and all of our racks of hardware so everything is listed in one spot and I can easily see what it’s associated with (example: interface 27 on switch 2 is associated with cable 2385. Cable 2385 is also associated with camera 6. Camera 6 has Audio 512 and GPI 73 plugged in). Netbox also has the ability to manage an asset inventory, which would add another useful tool.

I apologize for rambling. Finally getting solid documentation on the physical and logical topology of my station is exciting.