Adam, have you tried the 300 series of CRS. Supposedly they are a lot less
obtuse on configs for VLANs etc.
We just bought some and are going to put a couple in next week.
Paul
From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> On Behalf Of Adam Moffett
Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2019 10:38 AM
To: af@af.afmug.com
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] SFP Switches
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.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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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