I have been using a CRS125-24G-1S-2HnD-IN for some time now and have outgrown the available ports.
I had added an old Netgear 24 port switch I had laying around just to expand the capacity, but of course I didn’t have control over the individual ports. After a lightning storm last week that took out the Netgear, I am exploring my options for a replacement.
I apologize but I'm not sure what you are saying. I am not a Mikrotik or a networking expert which is why I'm asking for advice.
My Master device is a CRS125-24G-1S-2HnD-IN.
I just took the model of the slave device from the example in the link I posted. (CRS326-24G-2S+RM)
If this isn't a suitable switch, could you recommend one?
and manage the ports using Winbox, as if they were all the same unit?
The controller Bridge and Port extender is about virtually extending the ports.
You can expand the capacity of your network without using this particular function.
If this is correct, would you consider this the logical way to expand my capacity?
You can’t apply this particular function with the CRS1xx..
Can this be done through standard ethernet cables, or do I need to use an SFP+ cable?
Sure… but not again with the CRS1xx…
So, in general yes…
I feel like I may not be accomplished enough to get the support I need here.
We were sold our existing Mikrotik equipment as part of the POS system we purchased and though I’m not completely clueless, I don’t live and breath networking or all the associated technologies. This can make it difficult to communicate with people who just know this stuff in their bones, and don’t know how to talk to people not on the same level.
Our network has outgrown the 24 available ports of the CRS125-24G-1S-2HnD-IN and the Netgear switch I had been using had the smoke genie escape in a recent lightning storm.
I realize I can just do what I did before and have an unmanaged switched to add dumb ports to expand the network, and I may end up doing that in the end. I was just inquiring about finding the easiest way to expand my network and have granular control of the expanded ports so I can manage them from the Web GUI or Winbox as I do now. I may not have an exact need for any of these features now, but would like the flexibility should I ever need it.
I wanted a 24 port switch so I would never have to worry about expansion again, which led me to these 3 models.
With all this in mind, could anyone recommend which model to choose and why.
My needs are fairly simple.
I do some simple port forwarding so our web store can access our POS system.
I’m using the supplied DDNS since we have a dynamic IP.
I manage our wifi network and a guest wifi network.
I also wanted to do an automated failover to DSL, but was never able to get enough help to get that done.
(Our store is in the Outer Banks and the weather here brings down internet quite often. I ended up just making a set of instructions to swap the cables of the 2 modems and have them log in and refresh the IP in the WebGUI instead.)
I did a comparison between the IN and the RM variants but the only difference I could find was the RM consumed more power and did not have an IP rating.
The only real difference between -IN and -RM models is form factor … RM being rack-mount and IN a “desktop” switch, with this model it means it’s narrower.
The main difference between CRS and CSS is that former can run ROS (some models can run both ROS and SwOS) while the later only runs SwOS. SwOS offers simpler web UI, also lacks some advanced functionality (if we focus only on switching tasks).