It’s within my budget & it has enough PoE ports for my needs.
Now, before ordering, I decided to see how I would go about configuring the switch - mostly for my VLAN stuff.
What got me confused (and prompted me to write here), is perhaps, the naming.
The first thing I saw is that I’ll need to setup something called “RouterOS”. “But I don’t want a router, I already have one. I need a managed switch” was my first thought.
And then I saw that there’s also another thing, called “SwitchOS” And when I dug deeper - the general notion that I felt was - “Don’t use SwitchOS, just use RouterOS”.
And here comes my question (I know it sounds stupid, yet, I need to ask it):
Can this particular managed switch be used … as a managed switch that’ll be plugged in a router?
Does this depend on what I’ll be running? Can I run something called a “RouterOS” and just use the “managed switch” part of it?
Or would simply running SwitchOS be enough? Does this switch actually come with preinstalled SwitchOS, so I don’t have to do anything else, but plug in a cable, open the local IP address and configure my VLAN? I don’t need anything fancy - just 3 separate networks that I’ll setup on my existing router and then somehow manage on the switch.
And while I’m here, I’ll need wireless access points to wire to this particular switch. Those WAPs will also have 3 different networks, based on the VLANs. Can you recommend me something?
It’s a little bit similar to differences between a mobile phone and photo camera.
One is loaded with dedicated phoneOS (usually Android/iOS) and the second with dedicated cameraOS just for cameras.
You can use your phone as camera if you wish but the software allows you to make calls, edit documents, browse web etc.but it does not pushes you do use all functions except the ones you want. Some use phones just for listening to the music or watching films, others as AP for other devices … that phoneOS (ROS) is very elastic and convinient according to offered funcionalities, including switching functions.
CameraOS (SwitchOS) is on the opposite side as it is focused just on taking photos but it could give some extra functions as sending photos to the web, browse them as phoneOS does etc. That is why it is faster, more efficient but lacks most of full flagged functions of routers.
EDIT:
Some devices (routers) are offered only with ROS, some with ROS/SwitchOS boot ability depending on your needs/preferences and some just with SwitchOS (pure switches).
That device can be booted in both RouterOS and in SwitchOS (you can decide which one to use).
RouterOS is (essentially) command line (but there is Winbox and the webfig http interface, both are GUI “overlays”).
SwitchOS is GUI only (and overall more similar on how you would configure other common managed switches).
The device name begins with CRS that in Mikrotik parlance means Cloud Router Switch, in practice CRS devices are mainly switch devices with some (slow, only good for remote management or other minor traffic) router capabilities.
RouterOs is “more powerful” and very flexible, but it has a steep learning path, particularly for configuring a switch.
SwitchOS allows far less freedom, but it was designed specifically to manage switches.
Most people on the forum are familiar with RouterOS because they use Mikrotik routers and/or AP’s, so for them it is more “natural” to use RouterOS also on switches (the ones that support it) and SwitchOs is then considered less convenient, but for a switch it is just fine.
If that is the only Mikrotik device in your network, it would IMHO make sense to try configuring it in SwitchOS, and only if you cannot have it doing the whatever you want it to do think of changing the booting OS to RouterOS:
However, I have one another doubt about how CPU power is.
Is it possible to get up a L2TP VPN with some stability? It means the VPN doesn’t suffer some fall downs.
I think you need to be more honest and clear with your requirements.
You speak of switch on one hand and then talk about old pfsense router.
Then you speak more about switch and vlans and then talk handling VPN.
So you need to get your story straight.
Be advised you are buying a primarily designed switch but with mikrotik RoS you get a fully capable routing capability albeit, reduced throughput in routing mode as its designed for high speed switching.
And when I dug deeper - the general notion that I felt was - “Don’t use SwitchOS, just use RouterOS”.