Hi all,

Looking for some feedback before biting the bullet on buying a new switch.

Currently using a lot of Mikrotik around me (router and wireless; RB1100AHx2, RB850Gx2, RB951G-2HPnD, RB912UAG-5HPnD + R11e-2HPnD) and the time has come for me to upgrade my switching appliance. Currently my switches are all HP based but I would love to be able to manage everything from WinBox, however I'm having some reservations as to whether Mikrotik will deliver in the switching department. The lack of positive reviews and experiences (or any besides configuration issues on these forums really) on the CRS226 doesn't help either.

The alternative buy would be the HP V1910-24G (pricewise virtually no difference) which I have successfully deployed next to some units from the 1810-series elsewhere in the network, but basically I'm looking for an excuse to buy the Mikrotik. Please note I will use this as a pure switch, not as some hybrid router/switch.

Biggest issue for me is the lack of LACP support on the CRS-series for my Synology NAS. For the short term this doesn't matter because I have a bottleneck elsewhere which I need to solve before reaping any benefit from such a configuration, however when I will be re-cabling parts of my network it will become an issue. An indication that this feature is on the roadmap for the foreseeable future would lower barrier into ordering the CRS significantly.
Second thing I need is rock solid VLAN.
ACL is a nice to have (hence the 226 rather than the 125). Any other issues I can probably deal with or solve elsewhere in the network.

Experiences and/or buying advice would be much appreciated.

Cheers, Magchiel

Hi,

one of my project was 16x CRS226-24G-2S+ IN (on that time was not yet available RM version, so we improvised ) on one place, all connected with SFP+ (10Gbit), 300m, Multi Mode trancivers. Ring network, all port in bridge, rstp with priority.

All working very well more than 9 months.

Depends on your network and your expectations ... We use a few of CRS125 in our networks together with Mikrotik routers and DELL and Allied Telesis switches and they work as expected, but I don't use any sophisticated configs on them. They are mainly used as edge switches, as they do not support RSTP and IGMP snooping. HP 1910 as I recall does support RSTP (even MSTP) and IGMP snooping but these functions will (hopefully) be also supported by CRS in the future.

JF.

Thanks for the replies. Encouraging that they seem stable and be able to scale, less encouraging that featurewise they are used in relatively simple setups. I don't need the SFP and in that light it seems a bit light on switch features for the money to be honest.

As I was forced to temporary move a small HP1810-8G from my desktop to the server closet where I wanted the CRS226 (due to some issues with current ROS and my RB1100AHx2) and this is working fine for the meantime, I think I will just buy a CRS109 or CRS210 to replace the HP1810 to pilot the CRS-hardware and see where that leads me before committing any further.

G'day, I've been running 2 x 1910-16G units in my home lab for the better part of the last year, and I'll be replacing them. Whilst they are feature rich, they are just too damn noisy! I'm going to be replacing them with the 1810-24G v2 units, fanless.

G'day, I've been running 2 x 1910-16G units in my home lab for the better part of the last year, and I'll be replacing them. Whilst they are feature rich, they are just too damn noisy! I'm going to be replacing them with the 1810-24G v2 units, fanless.

thanks for the headsup! I was under the impression that the 1910 would be a lot quieter than the PoE version I have elsewhere but after your warning and a quick look on the internet it seems that this is false hope.

CRS on the other hand, is completely silent, because it has no active cooling (fans)