MLAG and L3 HW Offload - Eventually In SwOS?

RouterOS RouterOS beta
1

I am very excited about the recent additions of MLAG and L3 Hardware Offload in v7 beta.

I have also recently become excited about how well SwOS works. I’d like to know: is there any expectation of implementing MLAG and/or L3 Hardware Offload in SwOS?

Thank you, Chris

2

SwOS is designed for very basic switching use cases - i’d be very surprised if MLAG and L3 made it in there. It might not be the best use of development resources considering it’s going to take a lot of work to get those features tested and stable in RouterOS.

3

I understand what you’re describing, but I think SwOS is particularly underrated. It seems to me the vast majority of tasks that are needed in hardware from a MikroTik switch can be done with SwOS (I only started using it about 2 months ago while I had been using RouterOS for many years prior).

I’m curious, what switching capabilities do you usually use or see used in RouterOS that are not available in SwOS (Excluding MLAG and L3, of course)?

4

I cannot speak for MLAG, but regarding L3HW: SWOS operates on L2 only; it does not support routing, and, therefore, it cannot do L3 HW offloading.

5

I thought SwOS was “hardware only” rather than “L2 only”. That is why I had hopes that the hardware based L3 features might be included. The only real difference between the CSS and CRS switches are the CPU capabilities as far as I understand, so all hardware switching features should technically be available in either.

6

LAG is supported already, I believe MLAG is a logical step for SwOS. However MLAG will require some basic L3 as well to be implemented …