Check out http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:RouterOS_features if you're interested. You can download the OS and run it in a VM if you want to give it a try before purchasing.
Or I want to have two access points which route traffic between eachother, but also local clients can connect to either one. ap-bridge mode with wireless distribution system (WDS) can do this, but only with WEP encryption since for some reason one of the wireless cards must be in "station" mode for the WPA key exchange to function properly. In station mode the wireless card is not an access point, it is a client only and can not accept the local connections from laptops.
The support is surly and unapologetic. If your bug is fixed, in the next major release you have to pay to upgrade your license, but probably that release has some other bug as well. read the changelogs, the users are the beta testers. mikrotik are accused of being GPL violators as well, openWRT has not been able to support recent hardware. you get what you pay for.
If I had to deploy more wireless networks, I would use the ubiquity access point products, they've come a long way. Maybe I'd still use mikrotik for a router.
FTA: (...) a combination of commodity hardware and open-source firmware.
It's OK that you suggest RouterOS, I'm just saying OP is not supposed to mention it.
However, I'd argue that the use of open source firmware in this case is a means to an end, since proprietary firmware generally sucks. But since this is an article about how to have a quality Internet connection, rather than how to get started in router OS development, it might be more than suitable for many of his readers.
The feature list is very impressive and on par with professional-grade gear (Cisco etc.). Only downside is that it's not open source, but it's updated about every month or so. [1]
I'm not a network engineer, I just want a static IP to be assigned to the router and simple switching on the other ports, but damn if I couldn't figure that out in 15 minutes.
In the end I had other things to do so I put it aside, but be warned that you need to be willing to invest the time to make these work. (or already have a networking background)