Hi Guys,

I've been running Cisco equipment very happily until the last few months where we have moved to Fibre internet (200Mbps), I had to switch from the Cisco to some customer router that isn't cutting the mustard.

I am looking at purchasing one of these: http://routerboard.com/CRS125-24G-1S-IN as I have around 20 Ethernet jacks in the premesis.

but I have a few questions before I do:
- The routing/bridging speeds shown on similar devices look like they are at most 150Mbps - is this going to limit the maximum speed of my connection? Doesn't sound right, I would have expected it would easily route well over that, can anyone else confirm?

- Assume this device has no PoE ports - the specs don't mention anything about them.

- I am considering the Wifi version of this device, but it will be sitting in a cupboard, so I'm not sure how good the range will be - does anyone have any comments around that?

It's really just the speed concern that I need knocked out before I buy one, but anything else will be good to know.

Cheers
Henry

A lot is going to depend on your exact network topology. The CRS's are really great products, but their primary function is as a switch. Their routing and other layer 3 capabilities are not what I would call robust - nor are they intended to be. If your network is pretty flat, i.e. a single subnet, then a CRS should be easily up to the task, as you're not asking it to do any serious routing. If you have multiple subnets that need to talk to each other, you'll be pushing its capabilities and would be better off with a dedicated router in addition to the CRS. It all comes down to just how much layer 3 work you need it to do.

Okay, so I picked up the CRS125-24G-1S-IN Cloud Router Switch.

Wasn't great when it restarted itself 3 times on first boot. It seemed to do that on all cold boots. Got it setup - took me an hour or so to get my head around the config and UI.

The routing performance is abysmal. You can't really use this for anything except a switch. I've got a simple network setup with PPPoE over VLAN10 (as per ISP requirements) for my Internet connection on Port1. Then all other ports are on the switch with a NAT between the switched ports and Port1.

The maximum throughput LAN to WAN is 50Mbps. It was slightly better than that ~60Mbps, until I upgraded the firmware and software. CPU usage doesn't max out at all, it hovers around 40% when it's at it's maximum speed.

Does anyone have any suggestions how I can improve the performance?

MTU's are all set around the 1500 mark.

Thanks

Okay, so turns out some muppet had the ethernet set to 100mpbs half duplex on the test machine. After changing that, it gets 89-91mpbs. The Fritzbox still slightly outperforms it with 93-94mpbs and I checked all the MTUs on the fritz and set them to be the same on the microtik. So not sure why the microtik is a bit slower, but I can live with a few mpbs slower if it never crashes and handles a lot of connections.

Open to any tweaks or optimizations you may have.

Put a router in front of the switch (e.g. RB2011). If you can deal with only eight gigabit ports then go for a CCR eliminating the need for a CRS.

As mentioned by mpreissner - the CRS aren't intended to be used for routing. Did you test the performance in regards to switching? E.g. file transfer between two hosts connected to the switch w/o routing?