How to make a 16 or 24 port MT L-3 Switch

RouterOS General
1

I am wanting to find a 16 or 24 port Hardware device that I can load MT onto to be a L3 switch/router
The biggest routerboard has is the RB493

Anybody done this or know where to find such hardware?

Thanks
Steve

2

PoweRouter 22xx ? =) http://www.mikrotikrouter.com/

3

Not what I am looking for.
Thanks

4

Your best option would be to combine RouterOS and a vlan capable switch, then just set each port on the switch to be a vlan.

5

That is what I am trying to find.
Any Thoughts?

6

We can setup a solution like this for you and ship it with a high-end MT system. We have done several PowerRouter 732 with 24 and 48 port managed switches all setup ready to go out of the box. Don’t know if this will help, else any MT consultant should be able to do this for you as well.

7

link a 433ah with a HP procurve 2524 or like managed switch.

On the switch:
Setup 23 vlans starting with vlan id 2, set port 1 to be tagged for all the vlans. Set ports 2-24 to be untagged for their respective matching vlan ids.

On the MT
Setup all the vlan subinterfaces (one for each id), on the ethernet interface that plugs into switchport 1.

It’s real easy 2 steps on the switch, one on the mikrotik. HP’s documenation is suprising clear about explaining vlans and how to set them up.

Then not only do you get lots of ports, you get the nice features of the switch, like port counters, additional speed/negotiation settings, broadcast control, lifetime warrant, fast switching backplane, etc… And you get the mikrotik features you want like routing and layer 3+ features.

8

Why would you want to use MT as a layer 2 or 3 switch? RouterOS doesn’t provide any ethernet error stats which makes it not very capable. A much better solution would be a Cisco or HP switch which is designed to be a switch and has all the features needed on a switch.

Tom

9

Why doesn’t MT offer to “master” third party hardware like HP Procurve? This would allow you to build a data center solution using one interface.

10

By interface I mean user interface not physical interface…

11

Unfortunately there is no serious level2 switching support inside Mikrotik yet.

So do not expect to see switching on Mikrotik get the level of functions you can have on big names manufacturers.

This is mainly because Linux concentrate about level3, not level2.

Bridging inside Linux seems like added tools, and there is no support for 802.1ah Provider Backbone Bridge.

802.1ah (Mac in Mac) is an extension to 802.1ad (QinQ)

So i think we can clearly say that VLAN and level2 management inside Linux and Mikrotik is not at a professional level.


I hope this will change is the futur, but i’m afraid a lot of code must be written from the ground up to rise at the level of big names boxes.

This is terrible to see that the Linux kernel get great attention to get nice Gui desktop distributions like Ubuntu that almost nobody use in the field, and still almost nothing for level2 modern switching support.

(Mikrotik router OS is Linux kernel based).

I’m afraid that big names companies are influencing Linux kernel developement towards Desktop GUI rather than Network Computing, so that they don’t get market competition for their level2 switching products.