MikroTik CRS354-48G-4S+2Q+RM Switch Review 

I GOTTA know if Monasucks refers to Mona from Persona 5. I hate that cat.

@Monasucks how do you do this?

@@grandpixel by using cables designed for that purpose..

@@Monasucks I found some short ones that split into four sfp+ but is it possible to plug in Ethernet cat 6a cable and go 10G to another room?

@@grandpixel yes if you use a sfp+ to rj45 transceiver ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-4qM9dyEuaS4.html

I see a use of me blowing a paycheck for some cool numbers on my computer

Sure does.

We just got the POE version into the lab this week. A review will come soon. We would love to hear your thoughts in the meantime.

Hi STHV, as I wrote above, these unit (with and without poe) are great and I personaly waited for these units sice their announcment on 2018 MUM. I work for large comany as network admin and 99% our network is based on Mikrotik, because of me. I am using Mikrotik devices since 2008 and cannot be happier with quality (hw and sw) of mk devices. For crs354 line-up I would like have stronger CPU but...these are switches. Nobody should buying this for L3.... Also crs354 line-up (at least imho) first hw not made in Lithuania - which is not so good for me. I have my doubts about "made in china" stuffs. I will use this in heavy duty work and we will see. I think it is gonna be ok. Also crs354 are on louder side of this category but it mented to be used in server room, so it is actually fine. Also I like to see more QSFP accesories... Sorry for my poor eng.

Great feedback. We need to get Rohit some help with the networking reviews so we can expand more. We just increased networking focus in Q4'19. I get the frustration with how fast this is going, but we have to look at it like it is a process to get there.

Well the PoE variant is still

you definitely dont want to route anything through it, it's a L2 switch. though they've started implementing some L3 functions in their 300 series switches, so MAYBE it could support L3 stuff in the future.

I just found that there is a PoE version as well CRS354-48P-4S+2Q+RM but it lacks redundant Power Supply

Agreed. At 8-10x the cost, and some different features, we excluded that as an alternative "low cost" switch.

This switch is cheaper than a single cisco branded SFP+ transceiver...

mikrotik products are definitely not Enterprise grade in terms of hardware quality, that includes their CCR and CRS lineup, but still, they're a steal for the price and they just work. I've been using various mikrotik products for more than 10 years now. the only problem I had was with the RB951 units, they failed me 3 times and needed a restart in a hot environment (37 c with no active cooling), but I can't complain since these units are not meant to be running in such an environment. other than that, their products run perfectly fine, I've had units run for 2+ years without a single downtime.

Well, yes. Why not? I'am using switches (and not only switches) from Cisco, HPE/3com, Dlink, SMC, Ubiquiti and Mikrotik and there are indeed differences... Cisco has specific implementations of some protocols and technologies (i.e. proprietary and not compatible with others) and sometimes automaticly disables random ports. And I still don't count Linksys as a Cisco devices ;-) HPE/3com (and yes, I have a few 3com branded switches still running) sometimes resets to default. Dlink devices has tons of security bugs. SMC switches dies on daily basis (but yes, they are old). Ubiquiti switches is thermal hell (at least some of them). Mikrotik switches are slow in L3 / RouterOS, but it's known and documented. So I see Mikrotik as good as others, but yeah Cisco and HPE has "name", "support", PRICE and funny certificates :-D Ofcourse all of then has many more pros and I wrote just cons. You must compare switches in the same segment and not Cisco 7xxx vs. Mikrotik CRS. Let's say Cisco SG200 and Mikrotik CRS are in the same league. Cheap/expensive doesn't allways mean bad/good.

We have Dmitrij testing routers now with a pretty fancy setup on the main site. We have not made videos of those though.

@@ServeTheHomeVideo Cool, hope he shws a direct comparison, it might make a few certain fanboys jaw drop, I know mine did when I saw the 354..... has about the same pps/backplane as some of the more heavily used Junipers - just without the price tag :) which incidentally looks on paper to have much more than cataylsts

All a process. Just know this is not going to be the plateau and it will improve.

This is certainly a step below Cisco. Ours have worked surprisingly well (I think we have 6 or so of them running.) Still, these are really lower cost for those that do not need everything Cisco offers.

They put the information for that online the day we went live with the video and review!

YIKES! An extra $400 (USD), but it does offer up to 800W.

@@fcinecinin1 700w of POE, not 800. 800w is the switch's maximum power utilization.

There is a 24 port SFP+, 2 QSFP+ router/switch available.

@Benny T That would be it.

@Benny T The specs of this are also faster - higher switching throughput

Here you go CRS326-24S+2Q+RM

Yes, they're 4 pin.

All CRS 3xx models can boot to either Router or SWOS.

@@heyjacleu Yes today. Not yet at that time.

I’ve used a lot of Mikrotik gear at work and never found the config convoluted or had random instability issues. The main issues we experienced were a higher failure rate than our Cisco or juniper kit, but the Mikrotik gear is so cheap you just bin the old unit a slam a new one in the hole, and the BGP convergence time is very slow if you have a large routing table. The advice we were given when we started to bring Mikrotik gear into our mix was to keep the configuration simple and not turn on too many features at once. If you want to firewall with it, just make it a firewall, if you want to do bgp with it just do bgp. That’s on top of your normal bridges and vlans. Anywho, I’m sure different peoples mileage will vary.

@@Alan.livingston I think the big issue is that they are trying to do switches using the same config methods as a layer-3 router and it just doesn't work. There is no easy way to set up VLANs, for example. I have not really messed with anything other than the switches, but the experience has made me pretty much put Mikrotik on the "never buy" list. At least until they fix their configurations and make it usable. Making a switch should not be all that difficult. The amount of extraneous crap in the config is just so overwhelming. I returned the Mikrotik and got a Juniper switch. It took me about 5 minutes to it configured the way I needed for multiple VLANs and it has been happily running ever since. No random lockups or strange issues with configs stopping working (which happened with all 3 Mikrotik switches I tried). I suppose if you need a dumb L2 switch with no configs, then the mikrotik are fine and the price is good. But if you need anything more advanced at all, you should just step up to a real brand with proper configurations.

It's a bit of a big deal for the capabilities.

@@thomasbonse Sure, but did it HAVE to be said every 30 seconds in a 17 minute video ? (Exaggerated, i know - but repeating it as many times as here, is too)

@@eidodk Yes... Yes it did 😁

RouterOS terrible? You must be joking, especially considering the price of the devices it comes with.