Hey guys,

I am a voip engineer in Germany and currently own no proper homelab. Thats something I wanna change, due to several different pbx providers I support and different sip phones, Teams phones etc. - its quite hard to fit all this stuff on my desk. So I will start my voip lab on a ikea shelf in my room.

I thought about the networking hardware I want to use and saw my Mikrotik book in the shelf. Several years ago, I wanted to use more Mikrotik, but it went into nowhere, due to the birth of my son. Now I wanna start again. Maybe some basic stuff like a switch and an additional access point in the future ...

I definitly need a PoE switch with some power. I cant work with a 50w device, more than 100W would be a nice thing. The device I currently have in my mind is this one: https://mikrotik.com/product/crs112_8p_4s_in

... but is it a good idea, to start with a crs device? I've been working with the hap ac lite some years ago, but that device wouldn't fit my needs. Any thoughts regarding this?

Best regards

Jan

Does no one have a clue or am I the only one with plans like this?

Hi, I am a Computer engineer working on the VoIP field too. So I got interested on your post.

For Labs it will depend on how many devices you wish to connect? and what kind of PoE will use?

I just want to use 802.3af poe, nothing special. Just some SIP phones, Teams phones … u know.

But it seems like my request was more a niche topic.

If this is for a home lab I would highly recommend getting the CRS328, 2 main reason for this is 1 the CRS range of devices improve on their switch chip with each 'series' and the CRS3xx series has the most configuration options you can get in the CRS range.
The second reason would be the PoE out, this will support active af/at so you can power pretty much anything from one power source.

Getting anything less will mean that you would not be able to lab both basic and advanced set ups both in the configuration and the PoE aspects of the project, if that makes sense?