What Mikrotik RouterOS is all about

Mikrotik RouterOS is the operating system of RouterBOARD, the hardware range of products manufactured by Mikrotik. It has all the necessary features for an ISP – routing, firewall, bandwidth management, wireless access point, backhaul link, hotspot gateway, VPN server and more.

RouterOS is the operating system of RouterBOARD. It can also be installed on a PC and will turn it into a router with all the necessary features – routing, firewall, bandwidth management, wireless access point, backhaul link, hotspot gateway, VPN server and more.
Mikrotik RouterOS can be installed on any X86 PC and with network interfaces installed on the PC, it can be configured to work the same way as a RouterBoard.

The steps to install the Operating System on a PC involves the following
1. Download the ISO image from Mikrotik website – https://mikrotik.com/download (X86 CD image)
2. Burn the ISO image into CD
3. Boot the PC from the CD and follow the screen instructions to complete software installation.
This installation will turn your PC into a full fledged Mikrotik Router during which you can only run the software for 24 hours trial period without a license. You can however turn off the PC to stop the timer. During this time you can try all the features of RouterOS.
In order to continue using the software on a PC, you must purchase the license using the SoftID which can be found under router License menu.