Doubt about HW CRS

Hello people.

I would like to ask a question, can you help me?

I am studying the use of mikrotik as the end point of my vpn for small support offices.

The routerboards are fantastic and I want to know more about the CRS line.

Can I use them as a router and switch at the same time? I know that the routerboard can be created bridges, but it consumes CPU. I see the CRS line as something improved in this and I wanted to make sure of that.

For example, could you use the 109-8G-1S-2HnD-IN as a router to close ipsec vpn and use 5 stations connected to it as a switch as well?

I don’t know SWos and I’m wanting to know and study, does it have a version to be used in eve-ng or gns3?

Do I manage the SW on bridges in CRS versions or do we have a different feature than RouterOS for this CRS version?

And does the performance of the small office switch perform well?

PS: Forgive me if I opened the wrong topic, I ask you to be kind enough to direct me to the correct place.

Of course you can. However you can expect ~20Mbit of IPsec performance on that models.

SwitchOS only supports switching, nothing else.

For SwOS don’t worry. Always you can use RouterOS for switching and routing and is compatible with x86 platforms. SwOS I believe that can not be virtualized on Windows/Mac machines.

Regards.

@JoaoS, the said device has only RouterOS, so you can do everything in RouterOS.
All info on it you can find here, incl. performance numbers and also user manuals etc:
https://mikrotik.com/product/CRS109-8G-1S-2HnD-IN#fndtn-specifications

But I personally would recommend CRS3xx as these have IMO better Hardware Offloading capabilities in its ASIC switch-chip.
See some of the differences for example in these documents:
https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:CRS_Router
https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:CRS1xx/2xx_series_switches
https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:CRS3xx_series_switches

Thank you very much for taking the time to explain and send a documentation link.
you all took my doubt.