So, with the new series of switches CRS which are Layer 3 switches, what is the main difference between them and a normal router? To what other Mikrotik Router can it be compared?
It is less powerful if used as a router only (which is not the main purpose anyway). It is like a RB911 in terms of processing power.
Thank you Normis. Can you briefly explain what is the difference between a Layer 3 Switch and a router?
It means that if you add ports to the switch group, you have a fully featured smart switch, and if you remove them, you have a router. In switch mode, you will get wire speed, just like with a regular switch, but you have the option to reconfigure each port, and you can use some of them outside the switch, for routing purposes. It’s like two devices in one.
What makes the CRS nice is for when you want traffic moving through it (multiple PC’s on a LAN) to be “managed” via RouterOS … the OS we all know and love.
Sorry, but that’s most emphatically not what a Layer 3 Switch is.
Generally a Layer 3 Switch is a very fast (usually wirespeed) router that lacks some advanced features, often MPLS, BGP, support for very large routing tables. A classic example is the cisco 3750.
What you describe is just a slow router with a large switch module added on.
Id have to agree with barkas on this. Normis, if you have 2 switch groups with different subnets on each group. Will traffic pass on the switch at wire speed between subnets ?
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Or what would be cool is to see the new ‘special switch menu’ thats mentioned on the crs product page
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So, it IS a router like I thought.
Same CPU as RB2011.
A nice step in the right direction. Next would be simultaneous dual band, PoE+ ports, and more powerful CPU, but keeping it compact and fanless.
It’s nice for our datacenter environment, will replace some of our other l2 switches.
In addition to the aforementioned improvements, I would like to see a narrower 16-port version.