Mikrotik (Hex vs RB4011) + switch questions
I have a need to add a few more switch ports and would like to take this as an opportunity to both replace a couple of small unmanaged switches with a more powerful/capable router + switch combo. I've got a 1Gb/100Mb internet connection coming in, and am looking at mainly a pair of options. At a high level i want to basically keep my existing single subnet "home" network as is, but add an internally routed "server" network and a non-routed "dmz" style network to expose a couple vms externally. These new networks will become the bones of my homelab i want to start building, just for playing and learning.
The two main options i've been mulling over are thus:
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Mikrotik Hex + CSS326-24G-2S+RM. Main internet feed will go to the Hex, one port for each vlan mentioned above would go to the CSS as an uplink.
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RB4011iGS+RM + CSS326-24G-2S+RM + 10GB SFP+ direct attach cable. Main internet feed would go to port 1 on the RB4011, all vlans would be trunked down to the CSS via the SFP+ port.
Obviously option 2 is the much higher performing option(and cooler!), but my main question is, do i really need that? How well will the Hex hold up with a couple devices streaming netflix/etc on the home vlan while i'm doing my thing on the others. how much of a difference might i see between individual 1GB uplinks vs the shared 10GB trunk?
Any other recommendations? i need a minimum of 14 ports for devices. Option 2 is basically double the price of Option 1. I don't really want to go the route of a building a pfsense/Opnsense box at this time(and would still need the switch anyway).
Posted Feb 20, 2019, 6:01 AM UTC
I use a RB3011UiAS router and the CSS326 switch in my homelab. The switch can serve 10 Gbit on both ports without an issue. I mainly use the 10 Gbit vor an iSCSI SSD pool and copy tasks and I can definitely recommend this switch. As the RB3011UiAS is an older model and does not have a sfp+ port I can not tell about routing with 10gbit speed. But it manages basic firewall rules and vlans and the cpu load is still quite low. I expect the RB4011iGS to behave the same at 10gbit.
Whether going for the hex or the RB4011iGS, mikrotik themselves also did some speed testing:
https://mikrotik.com/product/rb4011igs_rm#fndtn-testresults
https://mikrotik.com/product/RB750Gr3#fndtn-testresults
I would go for the RB4011iGS because of the sfp+ port alone.
Interesting, what does your topology look like? I always figured it was a bad idea to rely on a switch, even a 10G switch to handle SAN / storage network routing? Any reason you didn't isolate 10G routing to a L3 switch?
I'm very new to the concept of L3 switches, they're awesome, I'm just trying to say I'm probably wrong and more than okay being corrected :)