Review on 🔌 MikroTik CRS312-4C+8XG-RM: High-Performance 12-Port 10G Switch with Dual Power Supply by Terry Herrera

Great level 3 switch! The L3 switch is a switch with routing capabilities, so its performance as a switch is equal or better than that of a Layer 2 switch with similar capabilities; Routing Performance Difference: Its performance is slightly lower than a pure router (with the same features). This is because the motherboard hardware of L3 switches is designed for high-performance switches. Router motherboard hardware is designed to perform routing tasks, so a router is better suited for these tasks than an L3 switch. To compare the performance of their routing software, just look at their software routing capabilities (L3 protocols, etc.). A router's performance is primarily measured by the performance of its routing hardware, not by the capabilities of its routing software, since software capabilities can be added simply by purchasing/installing/activating a software license and/or changing the NOS (Network Operating System ) to be added ). You can compare their hardware routing performance (between L3 switch and router) by using packet throughput (measured in pps (packets per second)) and total BW throughput (in Gbps) in each CRS312-4C+ brochure/ Each data sheet of the 8XG-RM finds a packet throughput of 178 Mpps (referred to as the forwarding rate) and a BW throughput of 120 Gbps. Switching performance is measured by switching bandwidth, also called bandwidth, 240Gbps for CRS312-4C+8XG-RM => It is good as a router and very good as a high-speed switch. L3 switches are a good "cheap" solution for small business or SOHO networks as they replace the functions of a router and a switch in one chassis. If you really need more performance, you can opt for a separate real router and a high-speed L2 or L3 switch. CRS312-4C+8XG-RM only has 12 physical interfaces available. Interfaces 8x10Gbps and 4+4 combos 10Gbps. There are physically 8 combo interfaces (4 RJ45 copper ports and 4 SFP+ modules) but you can only use 4 at a time, so you can only have 4 active channels. For example, if you plug a copper cable into 1T RJ45 combo port 1 and a SFP+ conduit into 1F SFP+ combo port 1, only the 1F port will be enabled. With combo interfaces, the SFP+ port has priority over the RJ45 jack port. If you remove an SFP+ module, the RJ45 connector port will be activated/active immediately. So 8 10Gb copper interfaces plus 4 x 10Gb copper/SFP+ interfaces, for a total of at most 12 enabled/active interfaces (only 12, never 16). I recommend updating your router firmware (use stable version 6.48.2 or higher) and packages, use stable version RouterOS 6.48.2 and never set the default configuration. As a professional network engineer, I ALWAYS use the command line to configure network devices, so I recommend using it. AFTER the default firmware update to 6.48.2, the fan noise is really quiet (like Ubiquiti routers); only every 2 hours approx. It starts a short cool down (a few minutes) with a louder noise (not annoying) and then continues in silent mode. This type of device belongs to the professional segment, i.e. for professional networks and is intended to be configured by professionals => not recommended for beginners because you need to know what you want, what network protocols you want and how they work. and then learn how to use the RouterOS interface (Winbox is good for hobbyists or for monitoring, but limited to advanced/expert configurations). That's why I recommend this dog for network engineers. If you know other clis like Cisco IOS etc. it's pretty easy and quick to learn! This is a small professional aggregation L3 switch. If you are new to networking and not feeling sick the learning curve can be long, but you can learn and practice many routing and switching functions/protocols and even network automation (yes! you can do network automation on MikroTik with Python! )