That could be a whole thread in and of itself. I've probably got 100 or
so CRS's in the field right now, plus 50-100 Mikrotik routers of one
type or another. Usually Tilera or MIPS BE.
First, so you know I'm not a hater I'll list the pros:
* Generally every ROS feature is available on every Mikrotik. When I
lived in Cisco land, it was sometimes frustrated to read about a
feature that I wanted to implement and then find out that it didn't
exist on this platform, or only worked if you had a certain module
installed, or required a different IOS feature track, etc.
* They have two GUI's (Winbox and Web) and a CLI and they're all very
consistent with each other. Clicking Routing->OSPF->Neighbors is
equivalent to typing /routing ospf neighbors. Cisco sucked at this
kind of usability and convenience.
* Almost all models have an industrial temperature spec -40C to +65C.
I sometimes wonder whether it could be an honest spec given their
price point.....but I also never had one die due to temperature as
far as I know.
* Low price
* More or less every feature is there. If ROS can't do something,
then it's something esoteric and you probably don't need it.
* Physically they have low power consumption, wide range DC input
(typically 10-60V), and small size.
Below are the problems that have me questioning my faith in the pride of
Latvian electronics:
* Mysterious problems solved by reboot. It is by no means /common/,
but put enough of these things out there and I promise you'll see
it. Typically there's not enough information to troubleshoot with.
o SNMP stopped working on one unit yesterday. Reboot fixed.
Probably the snmpd stopped, but there was no log message about
it and nothing to indicate what was wrong, and no way to recover
except reboot.
o I've mentioned before, but the CRS will sometimes decide one day
that it doesn't want to pass any traffic to one or more ports.
Reboot fixes. Again no indication of what's wrong other than
it's not working. I have only seen this on 2xx models, but they
may be because that's mostly what we have.
o Other such incidents. And it's pretty much always the switches,
not the routers, doing these things.
* L2 features are obtuse. You now have Interface->VLAN, Switch->VLAN,
and Bridge->VLAN menus. In any given combination of hardware and
software two of these menus are not what you want, but all three are
always present. There are other examples of duplicate
functionality. If you use the wrong menus it may not work at all,
or (worse) it may function as expected but perform poorly. At least
Cisco took away the "wrong" options.
* Documentation tends to be terse. That can be a positive thing when
you already know what you need to do and just need to know the
syntax (as an example), but sometimes I'd appreciate a deeper dive.
Queue trees for example is something where you really want to
experiment to understand what you're dealing with. I'd appreciate
more detailed info on that.
* No central management except whatever scripts you write yourself.
I'm not sure how far I'm willing to test scaling with just pexpect
and some copy pasta, but I think I'm near the limit already. I
realize there's an API, but I'm not inclined to DIY an NMS.
Upgrading ROS on 200 devices is currently a project requiring
multiple maintenance windows across several days. I would pay for
software that automates this.....but such software doesn't seem to
exist.
* Support seems to only be via the forum. I haven't needed much help
with usability, but I wouldn't mind getting assistance with some of
the "mysterious problems solved by reboot" mentioned above.
Also no MEF. I'm reaching a point where some layer2 diagnostics might
be desirable. For example I ran across an ethernet segment where one
customer couldn't get above 50mbps. I was able to narrow it down to a
particular device by a process of elimination, but I'm betting some of
the proper carrier switches have better ways to trouble shoot something
like that (which is why I was looking at Adtran). I still have feelers
out on that.
I guess none of my Mikrotik complaints are insurmountable, but it's
enough to make me look around and check how green the neighbors' grass
looks.
-Adam
On 11/13/2019 9:36 AM, Josh Luthman wrote:
What complaints? What don't you like about that solution that has you
looking elsewhere?
Josh Luthman
Office: 937-552-2340
Direct: 937-552-2343
1100 Wayne St
Suite 1337
Troy, OH 45373
On Wed, Nov 13, 2019 at 9:32 AM Adam Moffett <dmmoff...@gmail.com
<mailto:dmmoff...@gmail.com>> wrote:
It's hard to argue with those Mikrotik CRS switches for what you
get for the money, but I have my complaints.
I'd like to explore other switches with:
* at least 4 SFP+ ports
* at least 4 SFP ports
* DC input
* Extended temperature range (doesn't have to be -40, but does
need to operate below freezing)
* Smallish size (1/4 depth 1U, or possibly DIN rail)
I have feature wishes too, but just the size and temperature spec
takes 99% of switches out of the mix. What options are there? I
looked at an Adtran Netvanta and loved it.....but the price tag
will knock you out of your chair. Rather than talk to every
switch vendor in the world, I wonder if any of you guys already
found something you like.
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