4 is kind of on the low side for even a server cluster (3-5 machines).

8/12/16 would work, but 4 leave 3 the moment you take one out for an uplink.
8 would work. Leaves 7 for internal use and one for uplink, or a way to handle 7 clusters down and one uplink for external traffic.
But cudos for finally giving us the "Missing link" with a 100g switch - it is definitely an amazing start. I wondered whether you would touch that one and when. Now it is clear - you did. A small only 4 port, but a 100 gigabit switch, finally moving into the area of high performance switches.
THANKS A LOT - those around are insanely expensive and it is good to see a start into this area of the "mikrotik treatment".

i believe up to 10-12 port 100g switch very feasible in terms of density in MikroTik at least this year, we must be patient, i think MikroTik is doing a great job

10 to 12 port at 100g will be enough for a small core

i think 4 x 100g is very well suited to build some simple ring implementation

if you need more than 10-12 port at 100g we are talking almost about 100g access and high density, i dont think MikroTik will be there soon

I am acutally perfectly ok with 8 ports - that is 7 ports down to 7 servers and one either up to a TOR level switch or a breakout for external connectivity. 100 gbit are a nice backbone for distributed storage 3 is just a little on the low side.

Yeah, I hope for a 8-16 port switch - that would put Mikrotik right in the nose of extremely high end switches. Yeah, those may be a lot better, but they cost like BRUTALLY more, putting pressure on the complete provider ecosystem

8-16 port switch - that would put Mikrotik right in the nose of extremely high end switches

i love MikroTik but we have to look at the big picture, i think we are very far from high end, in high end we are seing about 32 x 100g in 1 rack unit in a standalone switch, in modular chassis there are 32 x 100g interface in 1 rack unit slot + 32 x 100g towards the back plane

In hig end there are chassis with 200+ tbps

MikroTik serves us very well but Big Players are 100-200 times ahead

8-16 port switch - that would put Mikrotik right in the nose of extremely high end switches

i love MikroTik but we have to look at the big picture, i think we are very far from high end, in high end we are seing about 32 x 100g in 1 rack unit in a standalone switch, in modular chassis there are 32 x 100g interface in 1 rack unit slot + 32 x 100g towards the back plane

In hig end there are chassis with 200+ tbps

MikroTik serves us very well but Big Players are 100-200 times ahead

Yeah, the really big players make their own silicon, though merchant silicon is quite good nowadays. I suspect that the best merchant silicon is defacto tied to certain large customers, leaving only older silicon for the rest.

Probably not a coincidence this switch showed up shortly after Qnap's M5216-1T (16 port 25GbE + 1 10GbE, also from Marvell). The 16 port SFP28 silicon group probably got cheaper and more available around now. Looking at it, probably internally similar to a line card setup. That's just a guess from me, though.

So excited to see this. Already have 2 x CCR2216 in my lab and going to add a few of these as soon as I can get my hands on them.

This will be a great inexpensive breakout switch for peering and transit where 100G physical is required but the actual throughput purchased is less. Also great for small rings as previously mentioned.

I suspect we will see 8 to 12 port 100G switches/routers from MikroTik in the next 12 months or sooner

It's indeed a very nice backbone/ring product. ETSI-format, 48-volts. etc.

"ToR" 10/25/40/100G datacenter switches is a completly different product category.

i think 4 x 100g is very well suited to build some simple ring implementation

any examples in mind?

This will be a great inexpensive breakout switch for peering and transit where 100G physical is required but the actual throughput purchased is less. Also great for small rings as previously mentioned.

Coming back to that thread. I fail to see what you mean by "small ring" there. In my mind ring topology means servers are connected each others. So what do you mean ther?

example of simple "ring" implementation each pop has a CRS 504 switch to build the "ring" i put a ccr2216 as example of network in each POP, can be routers, switches, both etc

example of simple "ring" implementation each pop has a CRS 504 switch to build the "ring" i put a ccr2216 as example of network in each POP, can be routers, switches, both etc


RING-CRS-504.png

oh right. Thanks for the diagram. I didn't think about putting the switches in the ring.