Dear All,

We are building a large new hospital in Africa. It is a 16000m2 hospital comprising of 6 buildings each with 2 or 3 floors. We want to build our core network infrastructure using Mikrotik Routerboard Cloud Core Routers and Switches.

Biggest question of course is: when will the CCR1072-1G-8S+ be avaliable?

The idea is to have to main equipment rooms (one for redundancy) each fitted with one of those CCR1072-1G-8S+ routers. From each of these MER's we want to run fibre to the sub equipment rooms which will be based on more or less each floor. In total we want to have 2 MER's and 8 SER's so each SER will be connected to both MER's

In each SER we want to use a CRS226-24G-2S+RM switches (as it has two SPF+ cages) for the fibre links to the MER's. This way we will have a full 10GB redundant backbone.
The CRS226-24G-2S+RM will be connected to some access switches (most with POE) to connect to our Wireless AP's, VOIP Phones, IP Camera's and wired computers.

All in all we plan to have around 1000 copper points terminated in these 10 equipment rooms (Structured Cabling System, CAT 6A, F/FTP)

Most of the computers connected to this network will access our (browser based) in house hosted Hospital Management System.

Can any of the experts out there tell me if this setup would give me the performance I need? How would you advise to configure the routers for automatic failover?

Thanks for any feedback!

Without expected traffic loads for the application(s) in use it is hard to say what is adequate. That being said, A 10G backbone seems reasonable.

Some comments:

Based on the average floor size implied by the figures the distance between the distribution switches and access switches may sometimes be in the 100m region. The CRS mentioned does not have any additional optical capacity beyond the 2 SFP+ slots so bear that in mind.

Remember that the CRSs do not have the backplane capacity that one might see in more expensive distribution switches.

If the CCRs are mainly providing routing to/from the web apps you may be able to use a simple VRRP config to have one on standby. If doing that you may wish to provide any DHCP function elsewhere.

Thanks for your comments!

Based on the average floor size implied by the figures the distance between the distribution switches and access switches may sometimes be in the 100m region. The CRS mentioned does not have any additional optical capacity beyond the 2 SFP+ slots so bear that in mind.

Distribution switches and access switches will be in the same SER. We have position the SER's centrally as to not exceed copper lengths of 100m anywhere.

Remember that the CRSs do not have the backplane capacity that one might see in more expensive distribution switches.

That is a very good point. Where can we find technical details/benchmarks on this? Note that we will only use the switching functionality, no routing or any form of filtering on the CRS226-24G-2S+RM.

Would the backplane of these realistically be capable of switching at 10Gbps wire speed (as it has 2 SPF+ ports)?

If the CCRs are mainly providing routing to/from the web apps you may be able to use a simple VRRP config to have one on standby. If doing that you may wish to provide any DHCP function elsewhere.

Yes that sounds like a good solution to me.

Thanks again for your reply!