Wow, 3com. Forgot about em. I have a Cisco HUB in the basement, soon it'll be like having a legit dinosaur bone, if it isn't already.. #"fast"ethernetnot
About three years ago I put two 24x100M switches in the dumpster because I couldn't find anyone who would take them for free... In 15 years they'll probably be worth $1000 again for "retro networking" or some such nonsense. 😂
I have a MikroTik Cloud Routerboard 1100hx2 that powers my home and lab. Other than software updates and a couple of power outages it has ran constantly 24/7 for 5+ years trouble free. It's good to see they are still making solid stuff.
I came here because this video was featured in Mikrotik's December newsletter. I'm a homelabber that upgraded my core network with this switch a few weeks ago. I had to also get a few new 25G NICs and SFPs to take advantage of it. I liked it so much that I pulled fiber from the rack to my office to get it to my desk too. This switch is awesome for the price tag!
This definitely makes sense in a lot of smaller environments who don't have/need Juniper/Cisco/etc. style gear/density and I really think you hit on a super important point which is the 100/25g trickling down and I can't wait for that to push prices down more as time goes on :)
I am also excited for the 400GbE. We have a 64x 400GbE switch in the lab that we will do a main site review (maybe a video but not sure) of in January 2023.
Been using MikroTik for about 2 years now and I can't say I'm disappointed. Lots of bang for the buck. Just their wifi that lags behind the competition a lot but can't have everything.
Really liked this particular review, and totally agree with your assessment, that many SoHo and mini Research Data labs are needing exactly this type of capability/capacity switch. They also can use the 4x100GbE version of the switch to connect their two MS WS-19 Servers and a AI Workstation to the networks all Native NVMe Flash 24-bay RAID Storage sitting on it's own 100GbE Communication Tier. I wish MikroTik also made a cheap and reliable 8-port 32/64Gbs Fiber Channel Switch. That would be great for the separate FC Communication Tier. So this would make it super easy to put together your co-low Oracle Server and co-low AI Edge Server in a small rack along with the 5000KVA UPS and Firewall Appliance. Really love the classic Triple Tier communication architecture 1-10Gbe, 25-100GbE and 32-64 Fiber Channel backbones. We're Hoping to move to 200-400GbE as a fourth Tier to support the 150Gbs capability between the External all Flash Storage and the AI Server.
We are going to take a look at the 4-port version, the CRS504 soon, although we have a few other pieces in progress. That 4-port version was in the background of this video :-)
We moved and I finally emptied my old computer stuff. Found my old Hayes dial up modem. My son figured out how to send dial number so it makes sounds. In a few weeks at the family Christmas he is taking the modem and my old Motorola Microtac flip cell phone. That was not that long ago. We enjoy your videos and happy holidays
We use them in our Datacenter without any Problem. Very stable very good to configure. Price is one of the topics. We always have two switches one running and one cold standby. It is much cheaper then a Cisco Solution and the performance is the same.
Apparently this model supports MLAG, which could make it a compelling option for some use cases. I've only ever configured those kinds of features on Cisco and Aruba CX, so I'm curious how well it works on Mikrotik. Would you consider doing an article or video on the redundancy features of these switches? I'd love to have a fully redundant core for my homelab network, if just for the flex.
@@CptPatch haha nice, would like to see it too! I'd love to have a redundant setup at home as well. I'd probably would just go L3 only and let BGP + BFD do the failover. Since my APs all run OpenWRT they could easily peer too!
i've read their documentations and there's a bunch of caveats here. * only supports 2 devices in an MLAG group * MLAG is mutually exclusive to other advanced features, such as ASIC routing and controller bridge it boils down to routerOS v7 still being heavily under development, every month they release a new version with a crap ton of fixed bugs and new features. if this feature is a deal breaker to you, i'd suggest holding off at least another year to see how their software matures and if the feature support improves for these.
1 year too late, but anyway - regarding fan swap, you can do it (almost) toolless, definitely no wirecutters involved. If you look at that connector, there are small tabs on side. You can easily lift them up tiny bit and back end of that connector releases and then you can actually remove cable from self-crimping contacts. This style is quite common in many connectors for flat cables.
Cool stuff, although I'm not going to have it since it provides much more than I would need, at least for now. For me, one of the coolest features in Mikrotik CRS switches is the possibility to simply run a network sniffer 😎 That's something that might really ease the diagnosis in any case of troubles. What I like in Mikrotik and often can't find in quite recent switches from other vendors: if you put an SFP module, you immediately see all details - model, vendor, etc. All these small details made me a great mikrotik fan - and I still remember how traumatized I was when I saw Webfig for the first time 🤣 Also, if we decide to go "all-mikrotik" - we get The Dude 😁
Not bad pricing. Sucks however as we had paid around $1300-1500 for an Arista 32x100g switch which could breakout into multiple 4x25g ports now they're around 10k each due to the market. This however is a great option for someone looking for something in their office or a small datacenter switch.
Love these for how easy to work with they are and the insane value... I previously work for for a small service provider that used these in our core, and the crs routers were great. Served UDP/voice so hit the packets per second limit real quick unfortunately. Check out the data sheet very carefully when comparing models...
I'm probably going to stay at 10Gbps for awhile at home. Currently using 10Gb BASE-T Trendnet S750 five port unmanaged switch to interconnect between my onboard RJ45 NICs smicro chassis systems.
I want a cheap 40GbE switch. 40GbE NICs are dirt cheap. Unfortunately, VMware dropped support for Mellanox ConnectX 3 in vSphere 8. I'm on 10GbE at the moment, but my next homelab update will be 2x40GbE Mellanox ConnectX-3 for the all-flash TrueNAS, and I guess the ESXi 8 servers will run at 2x10Gbps only.
Why did I just see a TechTechPotato video using this same set? I noticed that he has fewer than 100K subs but the YT plaque was still there, and then I realized it's the same place! Is Potato at STH or is it a creator studio from YT, or ???
He was staying with me in Austin. I have known Ian for probably a decade. I had him film on the set since it is super easy. Also gave him my old GH5 for his setup. You may have also seen Jeff Geerling's video on the STH set when he was out at the same time as Ian
This makes sense for businesses where they would want to have a new switch with support and warranty. But for homelab at that price might as well go with the Dell 25G switches have seen them go for around 1200-1800$ range they will 100% perform better and have better availability for spares
Very fair, and that is what I discussed at the end in the pricing and market section. The Dell 25GbE switches also use a lot more power. In Europe and elsewhere 50W can cost a LOT on an annual basis.
Dell switches could only dream of half the community support Mikrotik switches have. Pricing isn't everything buddy. About performance that's subject for another conversation. I've seen a lot of Tier 2 ISPs globally use these in production environments so when you suggest "100% perform better", you would need to be more articulate with your claims.
What i love about MikroTik ( and its silly but i like it ) is that they dont stop you doing dumb shit, like bridging a management port and a 100g port. MikroTiik knows you are a big boy now and you can look after yourself. Like the whole " critical " CVE they had , yeh well if you expose your management on the WAN its you that is the problem :D. The advantage of this is that if you have something stupid old and none standard you need to bodge in a crazy way , it wont stop you :)
@@h1n1worm RouterOS is much more flexible and powerful, and it's not uncommon for higher end L3 switch to have some routing functionality too. Note that this has hardware accelerated routing so it can route at line speed as well
@@h1n1worm the same way it can switch at line speed, by using dedicated silicon chipset (the marvell switch chipset). The L3 routing acceleration has some limitations on rule complexity and so on, but it's pretty good for the L3 switch job. It's not supposed to compete with real routers and firewalls.
0.05 second after clicking every STH video: My brain: "Say 'Hey guys, this is Patrick from STH!' " Me: "But why?" My brain: "JUST SAY IT" It's became an legendary earworm for me, especially when I watch it before bedtime
I had huge issues with RouterOS recently trying to set the 10GB version of this switch up as a basic switch (bridges suck). But, SwitchOS, RouterOS ignored sibling did the trick really easily.
thanks for reviewing this. However this only reminds how i am still waiting for your video series on MPO and running fiber in the wall to support these kind of switches lol -_-
the problem with CRS switches is u keep on hunting wiki or help regarding switch chip performance in different scenario. For instance crs-310 specs page " CRS310 supports hardware offloaded VLAN- filtering. And even some hardware offloaded Layer-3 routing.". Now what is supported ? not known. Performance of vxlan for varous switches etc etc
Soon. We have 3-4 of them now. We are just backlogged due to the shifts in the AMD EPYC Genoa and Intel Sapphire Rapids schedules. That will likely be the next MikroTik product reviewed.
These have not made it there yet, but we have had about 6x CRS switches in them. We now use multiple facilities, although we just decommissioned several racks that we used from Haswell to Skylake. twitter.com/Patrick1Kennedy/status/1603777975576559616?s=20&t=hWB39Qd7rS1IgGGQ5Zo35Q
48x port 25Gbps tray for my Cisco 9600 switch was around $18k -- For a bunch of L2-L3 switching -- I hate having to buy cisco, mostly for licensing renewal nightmare.
That’s another sweet thing about Mikrotik - no limits, no subscriptions/“license renewal”, DLCs. Even more surprising: even without “subscriptions”, they usually offer software support for longer than the alternatives.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo well Patrik i love that you always bring new Mikrotik gear on the channel and no one do that . I am a big advocate of mikrotik . And know the how powerful it can be . Looking forward for new gears review from you
One of our first videos on UA-cam in 2020 was the MikroTik CRS317. That is in the $400-500 range with discounts but is very low power ua-cam.com/video/rOHtXtuXPGA/v-deo.html
I mean you could put a QSFP+ to SFP+ adapter in. We covered those Mellanox adapters on the STH main site many years ago. It would be a waste of a 100GbE port though
Have you tried this with SwitchOS at all? I tried to use the CRS326-24S+2Q+RM with SwitchOS, however, it was so unreliable I wound up just sending it back as I really just didn't want to learn RouterOS as networking isn't my job. I also got one of them that was bad from the factory and just wouldn't boot/reboot without trying it 5+ times.
You either love RouteOS/SwitchOS or your hate it. I find that it is unnecessary complicated for what it does. But then again, that is probably until you have spend good amount of time with it.
My confusion right now is what constitutes a small network, I have to upgrade a company network from a flat 1G network to a 2-3 tier network, we require higher performance. Would this work as a base aggregation switch for a network that has up to 170 devices ( printers, mobiles, users, cnc equipment etc..
I recently purchased a netgear XS724EM 24 10GbE ports + 2 SFP+ ports - but I was surprised and disappointed that Netgear calls it “Smart Managed Plus” but to the test of the facts the operating system is incredibly lacking. There isn't even SNMP. Bad move of Netgear use a definition like Smart Managed Plus and then provide a terribly deficient device. It seems to me that this Microtik not only has a comparable price but has significantly higher performance (even a dual power supply) both hardware and software. I am as disappointed with Netgear as I am positively impressed with Microtik.
That's nice and all but only 1gbps connection to the CPU... Hardly any ram or horsepower... I'll just use the CCR2216-1G-12XS-2XQ instead, not really a whole lot more in price but it can do a ell of a lot more than just dumb switching. I think they keep the switches anemic hardware wise not because of much of a cost cutting method but rather as a way to prevent cannibalizing router sales as they will both run each others software.
Did they fix the issues with their horrible software not working properly with LACP, VLANs, and particularly both combined? I've never gotten a MikroTik device to play nice and stay stable with anything other than a very basic vanilla single-VLAN config.
Well, Cisco does FPGA and where it does not do FPGA, they have the entire software stack running on DPDK, it’s not just a UI for regular Linux tools and servers, like Mikrotik. Mikrotik is good where you don’t need that kind speed or can’t afford to spend that kind of money.
"home sysadmin" channel did an overview of this 3 days ago which he setup in his lab and it is pretty sweet. I like the idea of using breakout cables for 16x25GbE . He went into detail on setup. Check him out
I can't believe you don't recognize the old school card edge connector. If you unscrew it from the fan and pop the back cover off it just has self penetrating like an IDE cable. If you knew the pinout you could just clamp that right onto the new fans wiring and screw it back on.
It was used at the Intel Max series event the night before Supercomputing 2022 in Dallas. It is not just Xeon. The other side is the GPU Max series (Ponte Vecchio)
Mikrotiks are definite solid. We use them at my work a lot because their cheap and generally don't break, but if you are looking for something easy to use then Mikrotik whether GUI or CLI when you are first using them is completely different than any other piece of gear on the market. Once you get past the learning curve though it is generally fine.
Think of folks like video editors/ animation shops where they need fast storage access and they have maybe 10 systems. Those folks just need a flat network but high speeds and that is a fairly common use case.
Yeah very true! Would love to run a different NOS on it, though. SONiC for example would be amazing. I mean the marvel chipset should support switchdev, so it doesn't seem impossible
Management separated from your data ports? Gees you never heard of VLAN's? If you need emergency management then you need the serial console period so just get a serial console server. If you think the network management port will work just as well, been there got the tee shirt they don't. Serial console servers are astonishing cheap refurb on eBay.
Think about it this way. These days servers can use NC-SI to put a management interface over a higher speed network interface. Most servers use that. Also big 51.2T switches I have seen can all VLAN management, but almost everyone deploys them with a management network anyway.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo You missed the point. I still have a separate management network for my servers etc. but using a management interface for your network switches is great till the proverbial sh*t hits the fan and then it is as useful as a chocolate teapot as we found out the hard way. So now my management computer is plugged directly into the 200Gbps MLAG core (on a breakout at 10Gbps) on a bond. All the switches for the management network are also plugged directly into the core on a bond (again breakouts at 10Gbps). We can now maintain access to the management network in both fault and maintenance conditions. Normal "management" is done in band on a management VLAN which is carried over to the management network switches and also done in band. However the out of band management for when things go wrong the switches are all permanently connected to a serial console server which is directly plugged into the management server which can be reached with alternative networking if needed. A second hand 48 port Cyclades serial console server is under $100 on eBay here in the UK. It doesn't matter if there are no more firmware updates for it because it is plugged directly into the management server so any security issues are immaterial. If a hacker has access to my management server it is game over anyway. This might all seem overkill till the moment it's not.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo oh lol, I might've skipped that part, Weird question, but could you test if Breakout cables could be used to connect to multiple NIC's? Would be quite interesting if i'd be possible to run like 4 25gig servers off of one port on the CRS504
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Thanks for the reply. Between this and the CRS504 100gbe switch, is the switching processor this one more efficient (i.e. "better") at hardware offloading compared to the switching processor in the CRS504? About to pull the trigger on this one or the 504...
I really like mikrotik products. But over the years I've realized that their community is really toxic. I also don't think their documentation is that great and leaves a lot of questions and turning to their community will sometimes get you even more frustrated. Lastly, their experimentation with the inclusion of containerization in Router OS 7 is not great.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo I would still buy Mikrotik products in a heart beat though. Usually quality at very competitive price. You're just better off learning Router OS on your own and going to STH forums for help :D
. . . I'm old enough to remember when $1600 would get you a 16x100Mbps + 2x1Gbe. In a white box, from 3com.
I was in the old 3com building a week ago today.
Wow, 3com. Forgot about em. I have a Cisco HUB in the basement, soon it'll be like having a legit dinosaur bone, if it isn't already.. #"fast"ethernetnot
About three years ago I put two 24x100M switches in the dumpster because I couldn't find anyone who would take them for free... In 15 years they'll probably be worth $1000 again for "retro networking" or some such nonsense. 😂
@@d00dEEE you just had to convince some audiophiles that these switches have better power circuitry and will greatly improve sound from Spotify.
@@janisvaskevics93 🤣🤣🤣
I have a MikroTik Cloud Routerboard 1100hx2 that powers my home and lab. Other than software updates and a couple of power outages it has ran constantly 24/7 for 5+ years trouble free. It's good to see they are still making solid stuff.
I came here because this video was featured in Mikrotik's December newsletter. I'm a homelabber that upgraded my core network with this switch a few weeks ago. I had to also get a few new 25G NICs and SFPs to take advantage of it. I liked it so much that I pulled fiber from the rack to my office to get it to my desk too. This switch is awesome for the price tag!
Awesome! These are going in my home as well
This definitely makes sense in a lot of smaller environments who don't have/need Juniper/Cisco/etc. style gear/density and I really think you hit on a super important point which is the 100/25g trickling down and I can't wait for that to push prices down more as time goes on :)
I am also excited for the 400GbE. We have a 64x 400GbE switch in the lab that we will do a main site review (maybe a video but not sure) of in January 2023.
400gbe home lab!!
Been using MikroTik for about 2 years now and I can't say I'm disappointed.
Lots of bang for the buck.
Just their wifi that lags behind the competition a lot but can't have everything.
Totally agreed.
I think they added r/k/v for the wave2 devices in the latest builds. And released few AX models. Might be less lagging now. Need to check.
Really liked this particular review, and totally agree with your assessment, that many SoHo and mini Research Data labs are needing exactly this type of capability/capacity switch. They also can use the 4x100GbE version of the switch to connect their two MS WS-19 Servers and a AI Workstation to the networks all Native NVMe Flash 24-bay RAID Storage sitting on it's own 100GbE Communication Tier. I wish MikroTik also made a cheap and reliable 8-port 32/64Gbs Fiber Channel Switch. That would be great for the separate FC Communication Tier. So this would make it super easy to put together your co-low Oracle Server and co-low AI Edge Server in a small rack along with the 5000KVA UPS and Firewall Appliance. Really love the classic Triple Tier communication architecture 1-10Gbe, 25-100GbE and 32-64 Fiber Channel backbones. We're Hoping to move to 200-400GbE as a fourth Tier to support the 150Gbs capability between the External all Flash Storage and the AI Server.
We are going to take a look at the 4-port version, the CRS504 soon, although we have a few other pieces in progress. That 4-port version was in the background of this video :-)
I just got the router equivalent of this (CCR2216) for the office and loved the hole in the rack ear. It’s such a little thing but it’s so nice.
Amazing. Hope to have a review early next year
Uncompressed UHD video is ~12Gbps, so 25Gbps per port is great for a small broadcast studio IF this could handle that kind of multicast UDP traffic.
Sounds like it would be good for a CCTV / security camera hub too.
We moved and I finally emptied my old computer stuff. Found my old Hayes dial up modem. My son figured out how to send dial number so it makes sounds. In a few weeks at the family Christmas he is taking the modem and my old Motorola Microtac flip cell phone. That was not that long ago.
We enjoy your videos and happy holidays
Ha! Fun. Thank you.
We use them in our Datacenter without any Problem. Very stable very good to configure. Price is one of the topics. We always have two switches one running and one cold standby. It is much cheaper then a Cisco Solution and the performance is the same.
Patrick over here with the 3 LTT screwdriver flex in the background, nice!
Apparently this model supports MLAG, which could make it a compelling option for some use cases. I've only ever configured those kinds of features on Cisco and Aruba CX, so I'm curious how well it works on Mikrotik. Would you consider doing an article or video on the redundancy features of these switches? I'd love to have a fully redundant core for my homelab network, if just for the flex.
We might do that early next year. 2022 we are running out of days for and the team is super busy right now!
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Understandable. Keep up the great work!
@@CptPatch haha nice, would like to see it too! I'd love to have a redundant setup at home as well. I'd probably would just go L3 only and let BGP + BFD do the failover. Since my APs all run OpenWRT they could easily peer too!
yep, all 3x CRS series support MLAG. Works fine.
i've read their documentations and there's a bunch of caveats here.
* only supports 2 devices in an MLAG group
* MLAG is mutually exclusive to other advanced features, such as ASIC routing and controller bridge
it boils down to routerOS v7 still being heavily under development, every month they release a new version with a crap ton of fixed bugs and new features. if this feature is a deal breaker to you, i'd suggest holding off at least another year to see how their software matures and if the feature support improves for these.
Finally a switch worthy the 25 Gb/s plan of my ISP 🙂, i love Switzerland 😊.
Do you mean 25 Gb/s Internet connection?
@@dancalmusic yes :)
1 year too late, but anyway - regarding fan swap, you can do it (almost) toolless, definitely no wirecutters involved. If you look at that connector, there are small tabs on side. You can easily lift them up tiny bit and back end of that connector releases and then you can actually remove cable from self-crimping contacts. This style is quite common in many connectors for flat cables.
Cool stuff, although I'm not going to have it since it provides much more than I would need, at least for now.
For me, one of the coolest features in Mikrotik CRS switches is the possibility to simply run a network sniffer 😎
That's something that might really ease the diagnosis in any case of troubles.
What I like in Mikrotik and often can't find in quite recent switches from other vendors: if you put an SFP module, you immediately see all details - model, vendor, etc.
All these small details made me a great mikrotik fan - and I still remember how traumatized I was when I saw Webfig for the first time 🤣
Also, if we decide to go "all-mikrotik" - we get The Dude 😁
Not bad pricing.
Sucks however as we had paid around $1300-1500 for an Arista 32x100g switch which could breakout into multiple 4x25g ports now they're around 10k each due to the market.
This however is a great option for someone looking for something in their office or a small datacenter switch.
It is CRAZY to see used switch pricing these days. Arista has like 52 week lead times on many SKUs.
Finally something to be patriotic about. MikroTik, made in Latvia. :D
Tech going faster & faster. I still remember 10mbps switches as yesterday.
It's $1265 on Getic, although you may have to pay import duties and taxes if you get it delivered to the USA, as they ship from Latvia.
ah, cheap
Love these for how easy to work with they are and the insane value...
I previously work for for a small service provider that used these in our core, and the crs routers were great. Served UDP/voice so hit the packets per second limit real quick unfortunately. Check out the data sheet very carefully when comparing models...
This for the private network on a 11plus-node ceph cluster in a homelab... one day
This could be a nice one as a back haul for all servers in a rack to a 100G all flash storage server.
I'm probably going to stay at 10Gbps for awhile at home. Currently using 10Gb BASE-T Trendnet S750 five port unmanaged switch to interconnect between my onboard RJ45 NICs smicro chassis systems.
I want a cheap 40GbE switch. 40GbE NICs are dirt cheap. Unfortunately, VMware dropped support for Mellanox ConnectX 3 in vSphere 8. I'm on 10GbE at the moment, but my next homelab update will be 2x40GbE Mellanox ConnectX-3 for the all-flash TrueNAS, and I guess the ESXi 8 servers will run at 2x10Gbps only.
I love MikroTik's products.
Mikrotik is looking hella enticing. After seeing how Ubiquiti is treating the UDM Pro I'll definitely look into Mikrotik gear
Why did I just see a TechTechPotato video using this same set? I noticed that he has fewer than 100K subs but the YT plaque was still there, and then I realized it's the same place! Is Potato at STH or is it a creator studio from YT, or ???
He was staying with me in Austin. I have known Ian for probably a decade. I had him film on the set since it is super easy. Also gave him my old GH5 for his setup. You may have also seen Jeff Geerling's video on the STH set when he was out at the same time as Ian
@craftcomputing this is your moment to upgrade!
Thanks for the review! This is on my radar now. :)
Hope you enjoyed it!
This makes sense for businesses where they would want to have a new switch with support and warranty. But for homelab at that price might as well go with the Dell 25G switches have seen them go for around 1200-1800$ range they will 100% perform better and have better availability for spares
Very fair, and that is what I discussed at the end in the pricing and market section. The Dell 25GbE switches also use a lot more power. In Europe and elsewhere 50W can cost a LOT on an annual basis.
Dell switches could only dream of half the community support Mikrotik switches have. Pricing isn't everything buddy. About performance that's subject for another conversation. I've seen a lot of Tier 2 ISPs globally use these in production environments so when you suggest "100% perform better", you would need to be more articulate with your claims.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo True I guess I take power for granted here in Vancouver the only thing which is still affordable here xD
@@cephas2009 I was referring to L3 performance I didn’t want to go deep into it because well STH has done videos on it already
@@Agent_Crimson Oh fair enough. What model were you referring to for the Dell 25G switches. I'ld have to go look those up as well. Thanks.
What i love about MikroTik ( and its silly but i like it ) is that they dont stop you doing dumb shit, like bridging a management port and a 100g port. MikroTiik knows you are a big boy now and you can look after yourself. Like the whole " critical " CVE they had , yeh well if you expose your management on the WAN its you that is the problem :D.
The advantage of this is that if you have something stupid old and none standard you need to bodge in a crazy way , it wont stop you :)
i dunno why you need routerOS on a SWITCH... mikrotik has SwOS for switches.
@@h1n1worm RouterOS is much more flexible and powerful, and it's not uncommon for higher end L3 switch to have some routing functionality too. Note that this has hardware accelerated routing so it can route at line speed as well
@@h1n1worm They have RouterOS on a PCI card as well :)
@@marcogenovesi8570 look at 2.55 and try to answer how he can route(and other l3) at line speed.
@@h1n1worm the same way it can switch at line speed, by using dedicated silicon chipset (the marvell switch chipset). The L3 routing acceleration has some limitations on rule complexity and so on, but it's pretty good for the L3 switch job. It's not supposed to compete with real routers and firewalls.
Mikrotik has a huge learning curve. I couldn't do it
that's true, definitely not for novice users that just want some basic setup without any hassle of learning complex networking.
This is Patrick from Sth and i do amazing review 👍👍
Patrick, nice presentation but OCD me cannot unsee "Hardware Overiew", 1:40.
Typo at 1:42 :) Missing the second v. Now says Overiew ;)
Ooops! I did not see that! I will let Alex know for next time.
Came here to check and was not disappointed that someone noticed and commented already.
Pricing is good.
Used Cisco/juniper/Aruba 25g is like 10k€.
I would rather like to see a Mikrotik 40gbe (/10gbe breakout) 6 to 8 port switch for
0.05 second after clicking every STH video:
My brain: "Say 'Hey guys, this is Patrick from STH!' "
Me: "But why?"
My brain: "JUST SAY IT"
It's became an legendary earworm for me, especially when I watch it before bedtime
I had huge issues with RouterOS recently trying to set the 10GB version of this switch up as a basic switch (bridges suck). But, SwitchOS, RouterOS ignored sibling did the trick really easily.
Love Mikrotik stuff! Strong Stable !!
And really affordable for what you get.
Software (especially SwOS) is kinda "meh" but can't have everything.
This is not a SwOS switch. RouterOS only
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Yep.
Welp, time for an upgrade
Any plans to sell your old gear? What are you currently on?
Welp, time for prices to go up again after this video :)
thanks for reviewing this. However this only reminds how i am still waiting for your video series on MPO and running fiber in the wall to support these kind of switches lol -_-
This is such a good video, thank you so much! This had everything I needed to hear to buy it
Fantastic, was looking for a new switch for the boat house, this fits the budget.
the problem with CRS switches is u keep on hunting wiki or help regarding switch chip performance in different scenario. For instance crs-310 specs page " CRS310 supports hardware offloaded VLAN- filtering. And even some hardware offloaded Layer-3 routing.". Now what is supported ? not known. Performance of vxlan for varous switches etc etc
I have 2 pci-e dual spf ports that are 8GB. Got them from the server I got from ebay. I would love to convert server and computer to fiber.
Where is the review for CRS504-4XQ-IN? Been waiting for it from you guys before purchasing.
Soon. We have 3-4 of them now. We are just backlogged due to the shifts in the AMD EPYC Genoa and Intel Sapphire Rapids schedules. That will likely be the next MikroTik product reviewed.
Thanks for all your videos!
Patrick, are you using these in your co-lo? Time for a co-lo update video?
These have not made it there yet, but we have had about 6x CRS switches in them. We now use multiple facilities, although we just decommissioned several racks that we used from Haswell to Skylake. twitter.com/Patrick1Kennedy/status/1603777975576559616?s=20&t=hWB39Qd7rS1IgGGQ5Zo35Q
48x port 25Gbps tray for my Cisco 9600 switch was around $18k -- For a bunch of L2-L3 switching -- I hate having to buy cisco, mostly for licensing renewal nightmare.
That’s another sweet thing about Mikrotik - no limits, no subscriptions/“license renewal”, DLCs. Even more surprising: even without “subscriptions”, they usually offer software support for longer than the alternatives.
Well behind Patrik is CRS504 4XQ-IN
Good catch! I mention that later in the video.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo well Patrik i love that you always bring new Mikrotik gear on the channel and no one do that . I am a big advocate of mikrotik . And know the how powerful it can be . Looking forward for new gears review from you
Hello, nice introduction. Does this switch support RoCEv2?
Are there any sub $300 10Gb home switches with at least 16 ports yet? I can't seem to find any.
One of our first videos on UA-cam in 2020 was the MikroTik CRS317. That is in the $400-500 range with discounts but is very low power ua-cam.com/video/rOHtXtuXPGA/v-deo.html
Wait, they sell 10GbE transceivers that fit in those 100GbE ports?
I mean you could put a QSFP+ to SFP+ adapter in. We covered those Mellanox adapters on the STH main site many years ago. It would be a waste of a 100GbE port though
The CRS518-16XS-2XQ, codename AVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVAVA (AVA26 for short)
Have you tried this with SwitchOS at all?
I tried to use the CRS326-24S+2Q+RM with SwitchOS, however, it was so unreliable I wound up just sending it back as I really just didn't want to learn RouterOS as networking isn't my job.
I also got one of them that was bad from the factory and just wouldn't boot/reboot without trying it 5+ times.
This is RouterOS only as of when we tested them.
You either love RouteOS/SwitchOS or your hate it. I find that it is unnecessary complicated for what it does. But then again, that is probably until you have spend good amount of time with it.
Ugh you’re going to make me buy this
My confusion right now is what constitutes a small network, I have to upgrade a company network from a flat 1G network to a 2-3 tier network, we require higher performance. Would this work as a base aggregation switch for a network that has up to 170 devices ( printers, mobiles, users, cnc equipment etc..
25g is meh. You can get 40g/100g aristas all day long on eBay
I recently purchased a netgear XS724EM 24 10GbE ports + 2 SFP+ ports - but I was surprised and disappointed that Netgear calls it “Smart Managed Plus” but to the test of the facts the operating system is incredibly lacking. There isn't even SNMP. Bad move of Netgear use a definition like Smart Managed Plus and then provide a terribly deficient device. It seems to me that this Microtik not only has a comparable price but has significantly higher performance (even a dual power supply) both hardware and software. I am as disappointed with Netgear as I am positively impressed with Microtik.
Stupid question, but can the thing also be used as a firewall with PfSense or OPNsense?
You would have another box for pfSense or OPNsense and then use this as a switch to get more ports.
That's nice and all but only 1gbps connection to the CPU... Hardly any ram or horsepower... I'll just use the CCR2216-1G-12XS-2XQ instead, not really a whole lot more in price but it can do a ell of a lot more than just dumb switching. I think they keep the switches anemic hardware wise not because of much of a cost cutting method but rather as a way to prevent cannibalizing router sales as they will both run each others software.
Hopefully we will look at the CCR2216 early next year
Will this MikroTik CRS518-16XS-2XQ be better than crs504-4xq-in in terms of latency and bandwidth?
Did they fix the issues with their horrible software not working properly with LACP, VLANs, and particularly both combined? I've never gotten a MikroTik device to play nice and stay stable with anything other than a very basic vanilla single-VLAN config.
I like microtic, but my boss likes C**. 🤣. What C*** does well and we miss with other brands is stacking via a fast dedicated interface and density.
Well, Cisco does FPGA and where it does not do FPGA, they have the entire software stack running on DPDK, it’s not just a UI for regular Linux tools and servers, like Mikrotik.
Mikrotik is good where you don’t need that kind speed or can’t afford to spend that kind of money.
But how's the routing performance? In theory it would make a great leaf and the one a good spine switch!
If you really want routing, CCR2216-1G-12XS-2XQ is the version of this for that. Maybe a review early next year ;-)
"Cheap" is relative, apparently.
"home sysadmin" channel did an overview of this 3 days ago which he setup in his lab and it is pretty sweet. I like the idea of using breakout cables for 16x25GbE . He went into detail on setup. Check him out
I could see using it in a lab where I work.
We are 100% going to be using these in our labs.
Hmmm I do want to make steaming inhome better then the RoG Rapture.
I can't believe you don't recognize the old school card edge connector. If you unscrew it from the fan and pop the back cover off it just has self penetrating like an IDE cable.
If you knew the pinout you could just clamp that right onto the new fans wiring and screw it back on.
It is totally possible, and not really that hard, but it is not just plugging in different 4-pin PWM connectors already on most fans.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo I think one pin on the edge connector is just for the fan LED.
Does it support the new Container feature?
Let's check if we could make something special based on it!
I got rid of my Cisco tax crap..
I take 1/10th of this please 😊 (16x 2.5G/2x 10G would be nice)
I think even 2x 25G + many 2.5GbE would be nice
might be nice too 🤔
Yes, looking into a switch for my new house for next year and would really like 2.5g + 25g with the capabilities of mikrotik
What is the chipset inside compared to Dell S5224F-ON
Dell is using Broadcom IIRC. This is Marvell but a different line than the Dell S5100 series.
Can you plug 40Gbe QSFP+s into the 100Gbps QSFP28 ports?
Yes, but they will work at 40Gbps speeds
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Of course. Thanks.
Did anybody replace ccr1072 with CCR2216-1G-12XS-2XQ and what is experience with this new mikrotik device ?
Small? This can use in entire district
Where can I get the Xeon pillow?
It was used at the Intel Max series event the night before Supercomputing 2022 in Dallas. It is not just Xeon. The other side is the GPU Max series (Ponte Vecchio)
does this Switch support Link Aggregation???
Muggles are not even on 10gbe yet, ive been for 12 years, now movin on up to 25gbe. 😀😀😀
25, 100Gbps, today i decided to trash the 16 port 10/100 switches we did hold as spare in the serverroom..... must be the "textil-industry"-syndrom
Are these solid enough company for a consultant like myself to suggest for my clients?
Mikrotiks are definite solid. We use them at my work a lot because their cheap and generally don't break, but if you are looking for something easy to use then Mikrotik whether GUI or CLI when you are first using them is completely different than any other piece of gear on the market. Once you get past the learning curve though it is generally fine.
I'd argue that if you aren't sophisticated enough to use a CLI, you aren't sophisticated enough to design and implement a network of this kind.
Think of folks like video editors/ animation shops where they need fast storage access and they have maybe 10 systems. Those folks just need a flat network but high speeds and that is a fairly common use case.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo But that doesn't obviate the need for best practices in security and reliability.
Just got this for my Christmas from Getic aka EuroDK lol
Nice! Congratulations!
but ram and cpu it so small?
now time to explain the need of this to the wife
There is always the old "the old one broke" and inflation reason :-)
Tell her they bring the family together.
Disconnect the power cable inside of yours and then say you need a new one simple
Awesome switch, just a bummer that Mikrotik doesn't do EVPN VXLAN :(
Also things like PFC. These do not have every feature and that is part of the trade-off.
Yeah very true! Would love to run a different NOS on it, though. SONiC for example would be amazing. I mean the marvel chipset should support switchdev, so it doesn't seem impossible
Am I crazy, when he did the B Roll showing the front of the switch, the Chevron pattern for the front air vents looks like it says Avaya.
Ha! We specifically have never reviewed Avaya products since my father used to run that company
I thought "avaya" immediately :)
Management separated from your data ports? Gees you never heard of VLAN's? If you need emergency management then you need the serial console period so just get a serial console server. If you think the network management port will work just as well, been there got the tee shirt they don't. Serial console servers are astonishing cheap refurb on eBay.
Think about it this way. These days servers can use NC-SI to put a management interface over a higher speed network interface. Most servers use that. Also big 51.2T switches I have seen can all VLAN management, but almost everyone deploys them with a management network anyway.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo You missed the point. I still have a separate management network for my servers etc. but using a management interface for your network switches is great till the proverbial sh*t hits the fan and then it is as useful as a chocolate teapot as we found out the hard way. So now my management computer is plugged directly into the 200Gbps MLAG core (on a breakout at 10Gbps) on a bond. All the switches for the management network are also plugged directly into the core on a bond (again breakouts at 10Gbps). We can now maintain access to the management network in both fault and maintenance conditions. Normal "management" is done in band on a management VLAN which is carried over to the management network switches and also done in band.
However the out of band management for when things go wrong the switches are all permanently connected to a serial console server which is directly plugged into the management server which can be reached with alternative networking if needed. A second hand 48 port Cyclades serial console server is under $100 on eBay here in the UK. It doesn't matter if there are no more firmware updates for it because it is plugged directly into the management server so any security issues are immaterial. If a hacker has access to my management server it is game over anyway.
This might all seem overkill till the moment it's not.
*sees the brand MikroTik*
Yeah... Cheap sounds about right.
The CRS504 is like half the price, but only has 4x100gig, but it can be used with breakout cables into 4x25gig each..
Can you review that too?
Yes. It is in the background of this video and I mentioned that review is coming and the relative positioning versus this one. Stay tuned
@@ServeTheHomeVideo oh lol, I might've skipped that part,
Weird question, but could you test if Breakout cables could be used to connect to multiple NIC's? Would be quite interesting if i'd be possible to run like 4 25gig servers off of one port on the CRS504
Does this switch support RDMA/RoCE?
It does not support features like DCB and PFC.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Thanks for the reply. Between this and the CRS504 100gbe switch, is the switching processor this one more efficient (i.e. "better") at hardware offloading compared to the switching processor in the CRS504? About to pull the trigger on this one or the 504...
that first frame though
ahaha
I am here for the guabolity dodo
I really like mikrotik products. But over the years I've realized that their community is really toxic. I also don't think their documentation is that great and leaves a lot of questions and turning to their community will sometimes get you even more frustrated. Lastly, their experimentation with the inclusion of containerization in Router OS 7 is not great.
That is good feedback
@@ServeTheHomeVideo I would still buy Mikrotik products in a heart beat though. Usually quality at very competitive price. You're just better off learning Router OS on your own and going to STH forums for help :D
How do I wife factor this? Asking for a friend
Inflation adjusted networking! Also, we will have the CRS504 soon-ish which is about half the cost for 4x 100GbE (can breakout to 25GbE)
Can u trunck ?