Re:A PCIe network interface card that adds full router capab...
by Alupis on Monday March 28, 2022 @03:14PM
(#30834399)
For what it's worth - there is a healthy "modding" community for some of these Mikrotik switches. People convert them into fanless/silent units pretty regularly, or swap the fans for higher flow / lower rpm fans, etc.
Re:A PCIe network interface card that adds full router capab...
by walrus01 on Monday March 28, 2022 @03:28PM
(#30834561)
a crs326 is a layer 2 switch - not comparable with a router. you could categorize it as more like a cisco 3750G from ten years ago in capability of 24 ports of copper gigabit in one place.
any mikrotik CRS series has very limited routing/layer 3 ability compared to a CCR series. Different things for different purposes.
look at the logical block diagrams mikrotik provides of their crs series equipment. it's all a bunch of ethernet switch chips in a few blocks of 8 ports and then something like a single 1GbE link to the CPU. the moment you start telling it to do layer 3 things its capability is very limited.
Indeed, not least on price. How much was your ER-8-XG? My CRS305-1G-4S+IN were about USD180 each.
EDIT: If there were a silent version of the CRS326-24S+2Q+RM[0][1] I'd have bought one already...
"The MikroTik CRS326-24S+2Q+RM is an insane switch. Its specs are relatively mundane by modern standards. It has 24x SFP+ 10GbE ports and 2x QSFP+ 40GbE ports making it not even as powerful as mainstream previous-generation switches like the QCT QuantaMesh T3048-LY8 that we installed in our lab years ago. Instead what makes the switch insane is that it offers all of that performance at $475"
[0] https://mikrotik.com/product/crs326_24s_2q_rm [1] https://www.servethehome.com/mikrotik-crs326-24s2qrm-review-...