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GuJack20
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CRS Switches License Levels

Fri Jul 30, 2021 10:48 am

Hello

After many years working with MikroTik equipment, I find myself wandering about the fact that it seems different switches, have different RouterOS license levels. Funny but I have never checked before.

For example:
CRS328-24P-4S+RM has Level5: https://mikrotik.com/product/crs328_24p_4s_rm
CRS354-48P-4S+2Q+RM Level5 also: https://mikrotik.com/product/crs354_48p_4s_2q_rm
CRS317-1G-16S+RM Level6: https://mikrotik.com/product/crs317_1g_16s_rm
and so on..

Since the CRS Switches are capable for Layer3, BUT still their capabilities are limited in this layer, and keeping in mind that the difference between Level4 and level5 is for example a change in the number of tunnels active, 200 for Level4 and 500 for level5, does this difference imply that these switches are capable on keeping this number of tunnels UP?
This would make the CRS317 capable (on special circumstances I understand) to be able to terminate more than 500 tunnels?

Is this the idea behind of the change in License on the switches??
 
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mkx
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Re: CRS Switches License Levels

Fri Jul 30, 2021 1:05 pm

Those switches have capacity of servicing large number of users/tunnels/etc because they typically come with decent amount of RAM. And their CPU performance can easily exceed the CPU performance of some older SOHO and mid-end professional routers. However, their CPU is too weak to route traffic at throughput anything near wire speed, let alone running some tunnels wire speed since they typically lack HW for encryption/decryption.

Please, differentiate between capability and capacity/performance. Any device running ROS is (in theory) capable of performing same set of functions, but low-end devices will do it with much lower capacity or [oi]performance[/i]. So yes, CRS317 is capable of terminating 500 tunnels, but their combined throughput would probably be less than 300Mbps (or something). Some decent router (e.g. CCR2004) would offer combined throughput of those tunnels at around 1.5Gbps.

So again: CRS are switches with L3 capabilities. However, their L3 capacity is pretty limited compared to proper routers.

I've no idea if license level table applies to non-CHR as well. So I don't have slightest idea why MT chose license level 6 for e.g. CRS317 over some lower level for some other switch. It might have something to do with price tag or amount of RAM / flash or something completely different.
 
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GuJack20
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Re: CRS Switches License Levels

Fri Jul 30, 2021 3:13 pm


I've no idea if license level table applies to non-CHR as well. So I don't have slightest idea why MT chose license level 6 for e.g. CRS317 over some lower level for some other switch. It might have something to do with price tag or amount of RAM / flash or something completely different.
Yes. The licenses were there, much sooner than CHR even existed (and even RouterBOARDs existed for that matter). Also MT made it clear the difference by naming the license levels of RouterBOARDs to Level1-6 (without 2) and CHRs by P1, P10, P. In many RouterBOARDs I always found the logic of their included license in the hardware capabilities, for example a hAP (any model) would need to be Level4 because it needs to be an AP, even though I would never terminate 200 tunnels in one of them.

In the switches I am not realising the reason of the different license levels.

Maybe someone from MikroTik can shed some light?? :) :)

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