Is it possible two use 2 of those switches connected over fiber on port 2 to act as a media converter for video, where the other sfp ports would be populated with sdi sfps. I think that each port would need its own VLAN because otherwise how would Input sfp on switch 1 know how to find the right output sfp on switch 2. So trunk Port 2, VLAN separate Ports 3-5 on both Switches correspondingly so that they can see each other and only each other. And finally use port one as a management and loopthrough port for a different lan. Does that work? I am unfortunately really a beginner, I have so far only small Mikrotik routers and I tried to read about all that and it’s really hard to understand. What i basically need is a 3 or more channel bidirectional media converter from sdi to fiber and back and on top of that Ethernet. There are Embrionix sdi sfps but I am not sure if I can use them in a switch like that. Does anyone know?
Thanks
Chris
When it comes to connecting the two CRSes back-to-back and transfer ethernet frames through trunk so that they can be separated/merged consistently on each end … yes, that’s possible with Mikrotik and VLANs are solution of the problem.
I guess the best approach would be to go with port-based VLANs. Set port 3 as untagged port of VLAN X, set port 4 as untagged port of VLAN Y and set port 5 as untagged port of VLAN Z, set port 1 as untagged port of VLAN W (management), set port 2 as tagged port of VLANs X, Y, Z and W, set bridge as tagged port of VLAN W, on top of bridge add vlan interface with VID set to W and add IP setup to that vlan interface … which gives you management access to both switches through port 1 on any of devices (just be sure to set different IP addresses on both switches. VLAN IDs X, Y, Z and W can be anything between 1 and 4094, but I strongly suggest not to use 1 as it is used as default VID for many settings and if any of those defaults are left as they are and they don’t really apply to your case, then you can have problems which are hard to troubleshoot (default settings are not shown in CLI without too much trouble which makes them hard to spot).
What might prove bigger problem are SDI SFPs … Mikrotik gear is notoriously picky about SFPs (they might or might not work), so you really should test interoperability between those SDI SFPs and CRS305 … most of times, interoperability between MT gear and SFPs is general (e.g. any MT device with SFP port will work equally good or bad with certain type of SFPs), but sometimes certain types of MT devices are different. Which means that ideally you would test the setup (you can do it with single SDI stream) with exact type of SDI SFPs plugged in CR305 units … before you make any purchases.
Thank you for that detailed answer. Allow me some questions:
Which ports are in the bridge?
If I use bridge, will it limit bandwidth? For routing video I will need a lot.
Now I was told those sdi sfps only work with dedicated equipment and not with any switch or router in general as the device needs to encode or decode video to ip. Is that true? And if so, would it Still work if it is just very basic switching?
Thank you
Chris
I’m not familiar with default setup of CRS305 units as I don’t have any. However, CRS3xx units are essentially switches which should be configured via bridge setup. Almost all operations are HW offloaded, hence configuring bridge (not only it’s the only way of doing it) allows for wire-speed switching between ports (including VLAN). And that should offer you plenty of bandwidth for SDI (should go up to 3G).
I’ve no idea how video and IP network built from Embrionix components should look like. Hence I have no idea which Embrionix SFPs should be used where in order to get your video signals from point A to point B and make them available there. I can guess that video SFPs can convert video to ethernet and those ethernet frames could be (with some luck) successfully transferred by an ethernet switch (such as CRS305). But what kind of equipment should be receiving those ethernet frames on the other end? If you want to convert them back to video stream … then are those video SFPs able to do conversion in both ways? And if yes, how do you configure them? If they are plugged directly to some PC, then appropriate software may be able to reconfigure those SFPs. This is not possible, if they are plugged in a switch. If it’s some other equipment needed, what is it? With some luck you could connect “the other CRS305” using a SFP+/DAC connection to a PC and appropriate software would be receiving video as if Embrionix video SFP would be plugged directly to that PC. But it all depends on how these SFPs were designed. I guess you’ll have to discuss these questions on an Embrionix-orineted forum (if there is one).
Thanks for the good reply again. I will ask Embrionix. They shall go back to video with the same transceiver module.
As you talk of frames, will your above described Setup remain a layer 2 thing and hence give the chance for the video to pass through maybe without any ip conversion or am I now mixing everything up? Just to find the right words for the Embrionix guys…
Thanks a lot for your good help.
Chris
Now I was told those sdi sfps only work with dedicated equipment and not with any switch or router in general as the device needs to encode or decode video to ip. Is that true?
Yes. The SFP/SFP+ physical form factor, pinout and power supply may be common, but the serial data stream is specific to the communication standards for the application.
Ethernet, Fibre Channel, GPON, SONET/SDH & SDI all have differing data rates and encodings, the device has to support the type of SFP/SFP+ you wish to use.
would it Still work if it is just very basic switching?
No, ethernet/IP equipment is likely to only support Ethernet SFP/SFP+. You will need something specifically designed for SDI, likely more expensive than ethernet/IP kit as it is a much smaller market.