RB-4011 or CRS326 with CRS317 For Intervlan routing and the likes

RouterOS General
1

Hello everyone,

First post in the forums and 1st time a Mikrotik user.

To begin with my network topology with no vlans at all is as follows

  • An ASUS router with very limited vlan capabilities or shall i say not at all


  • A cisco SG200 l2 switch connected to that router providing connectivity to 2 servers and 2 workstations


  • When the Dac cables arrive from FS..com a CRS317 connected to 4 Mellanox MCX312A-XCBT (1 card per pc). As is i don’t think that it matters where i connect the CRS

In all the above i need to fit a device that’s capable of adequately handling at least intervlan routing and having the essential L3 capabilities.
I could do that with the CRS317 but i’ve read that with the router OS the switch has ssues (speed dropping,connection droppings etc.)
So
Scenario 1

  • Buy a RB4011 and connect 1 gigabit port to the SG200 and the SFP+ port on the CRS317 so the RB4011 can handle everything L3.But i’m not quite convinced that it can handle that and correct me if im wrong though

Scenario 2

  • Ideally buy a CRS 326 and do the above described on scenario 1 so the CRS326 can handle the vlans only .I am concerned though that the 326 might have the same problem with CRS 317 using RouterOS .

Considering all the above please enlighten/advise me.

Thnx in advance for your time.

2

Thnx for the answers they were quite helpfull.
I wonder if Mikrotiks support is just as good.

3

Try to be fair, random visitor of this forum will maybe know that CRS317 is switch and CRS326 is also switch. That’s what I know about the matter, so maybe the average could be even worse. In other words, questions about specific hardware tend to get less answers, because most people simply don’t have experience with it.

4

Whatever you decide, at first you need to know that MikroTik CRS router/swiches CANNOT BE COMPARED to other manufacturer’s L3 routing switches!
MikroTik CRS in fact are just VLAN capable switches (working at wirespeed) with a small Linux router (comparable to a Raspberry Pi) connected to it, that can perform routing for e.g. a management network or some exception path to connect some device to the internet, for example.
The CANNOT route at wirespeed! Typical max performance is below 100 Mbit/s in complicated setups, maybe double that when optimizing firewall for performance.

The RB4011 has more routing performance. But when you are after high performance L3 inter-vlan routing, I would advise you to go look elsewhere (Cisco, Aruba (formerly HP/Procurve/3com), etc).