Reviewing the Mikrotik CRS328 Layer 3 PoE Switch 

Thanks for posting your take. I didn’t have to do any manual PoE configuration for the Ubiquiti APs, but that’s good to know some will require it. Mine’s been running without a hitch ever since posting this review…love this switch.

Glad to hear it's working well for you! I wish I would have played around with SwitchOS before switching the whole network over to it. At this point though, I wouldn't want to take everyone offline just to learn what SwitchOS has to offer. How is the Ubiquiti ER4 treating you? I was tempted to take the Ubiquiti route because I have a few of their APs and they work great.

@@mike_pj I love the ER4, I can do pretty much anything I want either using the GUI or the command line or both! I really like the community support and the fact that the documentation is extensive on their web site. You can find pretty much anything you would like to do. I thought I could have been limited with the number of ports but you can run multiple VLANs on each port so that's not an issue. I wish the FSP was 10Gb though for future use but for now it really fills my needs.

@@cyrilasfrenchyaz Cool. I've been happy with pfSense for the time being, but the Ubiquiti EdgeRouters are definitely appealing.

Glad to hear it!

Thanks!

I shopped between this one and one of the UniFi switches. I decided to go with this one because I liked the extra functionality. The UI for the UniFi models is great, but I've heard there are limitations. I wanted something with full routing abilities just in case I ever needed to use it for that. But assuming the UniFi has all the features you're looking for, that's not a bad way to go either.

I've setup VLANs two different ways on this switch so far. First I used inter-VLAN routing to have a single VLAN between the switch and my router, with other VLANs also attached to the switch. The switch had a xx.xx.xx.1 interface on each VLAN. This might be the setup you're looking for, and it works fine with the CRS328. I was able to perform an iperf between VLANs at around 850mbps. The way I have it setup now has a more traditional trunk for all the VLANs between the switch and the router, with the router forwarding traffic between the VLANs. I migrated to this setup because I wanted to start adding filtering rules between the VLANs (to lock off a DMZ), and I've heard that as soon as you start inspecting traffic, the inter-VLAN throughput on the CRS328 will drop dramatically. I should have probably tested before making the change though to see what the throughput would have been.

For the Ubiquiti APs, I have a separate Unifi controller running. It's pretty lightweight just running as a separate VM, but you do lose some integration if all your hardware isn't Ubiquiti (from the router inward). The controller has worked fine for what I want to use though. As for your question about bandwidth…though you can use the CRS328 as a firewall, I wouldn't recommend it. Once you enable packet filtering, the speed will slow down quite a bit and I don't think it'd keep up with your 1Gb connection.

Unfortunately I don't have experience with any of the hardware you mentioned. Hopefully someone else can chime in here though!

I wouldn't use this switch as a router. It handles inter VLAN routing well, but as soon as you start adding filters, performance would slow down quite a bit. Keep both and use a router to route and a switch to switch.

@@mike_pj I left the EdgeRouter in place and am using the CRS328 as a switch. It's a beast and doing a great job. Also powering 2 Ubiquiti WiFi-6 APs with no problem. Thanks Mike, I appreciate the advice. Great job and please keep the reviews coming!

@@wiredm Cool, glad to hear it!

It can act as a firewall by using RouterOS, but I wouldn't recommend it. It's a great switch, but enabling firewall duties on it will slow things down quite a bit.

@@mike_pj thank you for you suggestion

You'll definitely have some future-proofing there, and especially with the 10Gb ports. Good luck for a shorter wait! There's so much hardware that's hard to get these days…

I actually have a router running pfSense and do the VLAN routing there. The Mikrotik can route packets at wire speed if you don't have filters, but I wanted to make sure some VLANs were isolated and I didn't want to take a performance hit. I ended up posting a couple of videos on my pfSense setup. First was an unboxing here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-_x84qTSfsU0.html and then I posted a follow-up here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-OBNnVC7FmHU.html

I never tried. RouterOS has all the same features and more, and from what I've read you don't lose any performance with RouterOS as long as you use just the switching or hardware-accelerated routing features (like inter-VLAN routing).

Mike Piatek-Jimenez I’ve been trying to boot into switchOS but have been unsuccessful. I just like the simplicity of the OS compared to routerOS. I’m just going to return it and order another. Maybe I’ll get lucky and the OS won’t be corrupted on it.

That's odd. Have you tried installing a fresh copy of the firmware? Otherwise, yeah I would return it.

As for routers, are you open to something like an HP slim 290? I am using that with a dual port SFP+ NIC in it and that is what I have connected to the switch via a DAC cable. It is running untangle.

The slim looks like a good option, but other than the faster SFP+ ports, it wouldn't give me much over the mini I'm currently using. My top choice right now would be something like the Supermicro E300-9D, with a ton of front-facing network ports in a 1U package, but I'd have to find it for the right price. Untangle looks intriguing…how do you like it?

Nope… It's somewhat loud during the initial boot, but quiets right down. It's not completely silent, but reasonable.

I’m not sure, TBH. I’ve also heard it pronounced Meek.

My rack isn't quiet by any means, but I've never heard this switch make much noise. There are fans in it, and I believe they ramp up when the switch is first turned on and booting, but during active use I never really hear them. I only put about 40W of POE load on the switch though, so if you're using more of the 500W of capacity you might start hearing the fans spin up.

@@mike_pj Thank you for your response. My use case with PoE is not crazy. I guess I might use at most around 40W as well. ( some RPi + UniFi AP ) In the video, you used CRS328 switch. In your opinion, what do you think about using it as Router including little firewall feature?

@@gatsbylee2773 I would shy away from using it as any kind of router. I didn't do speed tests to verify, but I've heard that adding any kind of filtering will push you out of the hardware accelerated mode and slow things down. It can do things like VLAN routing okay, assuming you don't need packet filtering.

@@mike_pj thank you!!

Appreciate the comment. Is there any feature in particular that you're curious about?