Hi All,

I've been deploying MikroTik routerboard systems for a while now, and have a fair number in the field. Recently, I started looking at the SwOS products. I decided not (at least for now) to move forward on deploying them. Perhaps my concerns are unwarranted (and therefore, my decision is alterable), but as a regular customer with no axe to grind, I wanted to share why I was reluctant to buy SwOS products. I hope that readers don't misunderstand my intention here - this is intended as a friendly "here's why I didn't end up buying this product even though I really wanted to" post, with no hostility intended whatsoever. (As a business owner, I would *love it* if I got this kind of feedback from my customers!)

*Scalability - Right now, there's only a 5 port (RB250GS) gigabit switch. That's great for some purposes, but I've seen threads asking about larger switches go unanswered. When I see a company not respond to demand, it makes me wonder if they have any intention to pursue that line of business further (which brings me to my next concern).
*Continuity - I've seen questions on the board as to the future of the SwOS products. These, too, have gone unanswered to great extent, or responded to (long ago) with answers along the lines of "Something neat is coming sometime probably/maybe/we can't comment on future products." Again, this undermines my confidence as a potential customer, and makes me wonder if I'm buying a product that will continue to be produced, developed, and supported.
*Functionality - There are bug reports about basic switch functionality - issues with responses on the wrong VLANS, IGMP flooding across interfaces regardless of VLAN membership, and apparently, the hardware is incapable of doing PVID + tagged VLANs.

I would love to be told that bigger, better switch-centric Mikrotik products are in the works, that Mikrotik intends to continue development and support of the SwOS lineup for the foreseeable future, and that the existing functionality issues are either due to user error or bugs that are being worked on. That would probably make me a SwOS customer.

Since I'm already making suggestions, I also wanted to drop in my 'pet feature request'. Netgear makes the GS108Tv2 8 port gigabit managed switch (does VLANs, IGMP, mirroring, DHCP filtering, MAC ACLs, SNMP, syslog, etc etc etc), which can be powered by POE (allowing for a single UPS to battery backup an entire star topology). I'd love to see something similar on SwOS devices.

These are good concerns, but you need to send these directly to support@mikrotik.com for better answers. They will at least give you an official answer.

If you receive an answer please post it here, I'm very curios what they are saying.
Thanks.

*Scalability - Right now, there's only a 5 port (RB250GS) gigabit switch. That's great for some purposes, but I've seen threads asking about larger switches go unanswered. When I see a company not respond to demand, it makes me wonder if they have any intention to pursue that line of business further.

Post subject: 16/32/48 ports

http://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=56442

Do we have any indication of the future of SwOS ? it seems as though it has been left in the dark

+1 how about it:)

swOS is a an important product line. We don't give new product info until we at least have confirmed dates for release.

Hi Normis,

thanks for give a short feedback to us. Could you have a look at my summary again and give feedback on the issues / feature requests ?
You find it at http://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=49646

Mikrotik should be somewhat more verbose to its customers, i think. From time to time some information or updated information and we all would be very happy.

Hope this will change in the future

Ronny

If Mikrotik were more open about the direction they're heading in, I'd be better able to sell these devices to my colleagues and boss.