Sorry for the obscure title, character limits and all. I'm considering buying myself a CRS125-24G-1S-2HnD-IN, unfortunately for me, I royally suck at all things networking/hardware (Unfortunately, sucking at it doesn't mean I don't require it still). This is for a home environment, and I already own one of your routers which I enjoy very much (Which is why I'm considering getting this switch from mikrotik). I do have two questions though:-

1. What sort of global throughput should I expect from this? As in, if I plug in 24 gigabit boxes in and blast communications throughout it, what would be the actual speed I should expect globally?

2. I don't suppose I'll be able to do any bonding with this, am I correct? I presume this because bonding on my current router (in balance_rr mode, with a Linux box) with the same CPU completely maxes out the CPU @ ~ 600MBit/s (Which is slower than just not bonding at all when using gigabit ports). The current router I have is a 'RB2011UAS-2HnD'.

I do understand question #1 (And #2, but less so) do depend hugely on what's actually being processed in the box, but let's say for now that it's only layer 2 switching & bonding.

Once again, sorry I'm so painfully unaware of how this stuff works,
Thanks.

It might be possible to do bonding on the switch chip. Managed switches can combine ports at wirespeed.
L2 performance would be wire performance because of the chip.
L3 performance would be limited by CPU to somewhere around 200Mb/s or less depending on the config.

1. What sort of global throughput should I expect from this? As in, if I plug in 24 gigabit boxes in and blast communications throughout it, what would be the actual speed I should expect globally?

2. I don't suppose I'll be able to do any bonding with this, am I correct? I presume this because bonding on my current router (in balance_rr mode, with a Linux box) with the same CPU completely maxes out the CPU @ ~ 600MBit/s (Which is slower than just not bonding at all when using gigabit ports). The current router I have is a 'RB2011UAS-2HnD'.

Once again, sorry I'm so painfully unaware of how this stuff works,

1. If all those ports are doing is hardware switching it will provide 24 ports of 1Gbps Full-Duplex throughput with almost no CPU load. The switch chip will handle all the traffic. So you would get 48Gbps in and out together, or 24Gbps of forwarded traffic if you really where able to load all ports at the same time.

2. I'm not surprised you didn't get more then the stated amount. Balance-rr is definitely not supported by any switch chip so will always have to be handled by the CPU. Try again using 802.3ad/LACP and be aware of the limitations of that standard. Such as that one computer to one other computer will always only provide 1 link (thus 1Gbps). Multiple computers to one computer will provide improved bandwith.

It's ok if you don't know how it all works, we all started that way. As long as you come here with an open attitude to learn, it's all good!

1. What sort of global throughput should I expect from this? As in, if I plug in 24 gigabit boxes in and blast communications throughout it, what would be the actual speed I should expect globally?

2. I don't suppose I'll be able to do any bonding with this, am I correct? I presume this because bonding on my current router (in balance_rr mode, with a Linux box) with the same CPU completely maxes out the CPU @ ~ 600MBit/s (Which is slower than just not bonding at all when using gigabit ports). The current router I have is a 'RB2011UAS-2HnD'.

Once again, sorry I'm so painfully unaware of how this stuff works,

1. If all those ports are doing is hardware switching it will provide 24 ports of 1Gbps Full-Duplex throughput with almost no CPU load. The switch chip will handle all the traffic. So you would get 48Gbps in and out together, or 24Gbps of forwarded traffic if you really where able to load all ports at the same time.

2. I'm not surprised you didn't get more then the stated amount. Balance-rr is definitely not supported by any switch chip so will always have to be handled by the CPU. Try again using 802.3ad/LACP and be aware of the limitations of that standard. Such as that one computer to one other computer will always only provide 1 link (thus 1Gbps). Multiple computers to one computer will provide improved bandwith.

It's ok if you don't know how it all works, we all started that way. As long as you come here with an open attitude to learn, it's all good!

Sorry for the delay in replying, been a little busy, saw your post but didn't have time to reply.

1. That sounds great, I guess I'll have to take your word for it until I actually purchase one.
2. The main reason I actually wanted to bond is because I wanted to buy two of these switches, one for the upstairs of my house, and one for the downstairs, then connect them together. Unfortunately, I felt the main bottle neck would be the connection going between the two (1Gbit/s for a few tens of devices? Eh...), assuming I were to plug four or five gigabit cables between the two, then did 802.ad/LACP, it would evenly distribute the connections, correct? So, let's say 20 computers in one switch communicating to 20 computers in the other, they'd be distributed per connection, not per packet, and I'd get roughly the speed of the actual throughput of the cable (assuming the connections actually maxed it, blah, blah, blah), correct? And the CPU load would be relatively low?

If so, I may go ahead with the purchase, they seem to do what I need, and they even have a WiFi chip thrown in as a little bonus (God knows I could probably use one downstairs).

If you want to link the switches together, you may want to look at using 10G Ethernet over fiber with different MikroTik switches.

http://routerboard.com/CRS210-8G-2SplusIN
or
http://routerboard.com/CRS226-24G-2SplusIN
or if you have a 19" rack:
http://routerboard.com/CRS226-24G-2SplusRM

There is no WiFi on those, though.