We have been hinting at this for some time, but this summer I flew to Latvia to check out how MikroTik makes its networking gear. Whenever we review MikroTik products, we get folks who say that they are Chinese or that it is a super small company. I had no idea, so I just went to check it out. Both of those are false. During the tour, we visit MikroTik’s offices to see the design, prototyping, and other processes, and we also visit a contract manufacturing line that produces products. This was all in Latvia, an EU country. On the super small size, something that I did not know, is that MikroTik is much larger than many people think. For comparison, our best guess is that a company like Netgear is less than 50% bigger than MikroTik from a revenue perspective.
For this one, we have a video. As with all of our tour content, the video is going to be much better than the web version because tours are just better on video.
Also, thank you to the STH YouTube members for making this possible. We paid for this trip out-of-pocket, so while we can say that MikroTik sponsored this by giving us special access (which they did), the STH YouTube memberships made this entire trip possible. This is a story that might have gone untold but for folks spending a few dollars a month to sponsor STH.
Riga Latvia
Riga was a neat city. It was nowhere near the scale of larger cities, but it has a lot of history.
Something that I did not appreciate is that there was a cool old town that had buildings ranging from medieval to modern.
Whenever I go somewhere new, there is always an element of not knowing what to expect. Riga was cool!
We even got to go atop St. Peter’s Church and film from a tower. Normally there is a no filming policy, so thank you to the folks at St. Peter’s Church.
If you are ever in Riga, take a few minutes and go up the tower.
One of the more somber places was the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia.
I have flown over 1.5 million miles just on planes that say United on them, and probably another 1-1.5M more on other airlines. While I have a huge list of places I have not been yet, I will admit that Riga was not on my list other than to visit MikroTik.
It certainly exceeded expectations.
MikroTik’s Offices Producing the Designs and Prototypes
When I first told my wife that I wanted to do this tour, her question was somewhere akin to “where is Riga?” So I pulled up Google Maps, hopped into street view, and showed her the MikroTik office with the Zeus statue out front. She looked at me a bit puzzled and I told her it was fine.
If this looks a bit like a factory from the 1800s, that is because it is a factory from the late 1800s.
MikroTik was not allowed to change the fascade due to the historical significance, so instead it retrofit the interior.
It is more of a new modern office building built inside a historic factory.
The term historic is used here because the factory has survived World War 1, World War 2, and multiple occupations. In a part of the campus that had not yet been rennovated you can see many types of bricks. This factory has seen some things.
Over the years, it has made many different types of goods. Those range from telephone switchboards, to radios, to cranes, aircraft, and even the small Cold War-era KGB spy cameras.
We managed to get into portions of the campus that had not been updated either in a long time, or not at all.
Still, MikroTik’s offices were far from being old.
Instead, the building inside the building was new and might as well have been a (very nice) Silicon Valley startup office.
There was even a giant climbing wall just after you enter through the main entrance.
Folks were there climbing after working hours. It was neat to see folks come down after hours and get on belay.
To be quite honest, I did not really know what to expect from MikroTik’s headquarters. Let us just say after about a second I was impressed with how nice the space was. It was also cool to get to see some of the older unrestored areas in other parts of the factory complex.
Still, the big question is how are MikroTik’s made, so that is what we will get to next.
Cool article, I did not know this, appreciate it! I bought some MikroTik Equipment based on your recommendations, never had a problem, but the IT departement was not happy, so I had to replace it with Cisco.
Really exiting to see all the steps an such detail, really great to have you guys take us there! I am based in Sweden so pretty close by and I try to purchase MikroTik whenever there is a good product fit.
Fantastic – this is such a great video I’m blown away by the effort and thorough content. Great job showing us this popular but little known company. Really awesome.
Stellar video, and I don’t normally watch your videos
Great post; I had no idea about this. I followed your advice and purchased MikroTik equipment; it worked fine for the most part, but the IT department was unhappy, so I had to switch to Cisco.