I have a CRS317 (idk the numbers, 16x sfp+ and one 1gbe rj45). I’ve had it running SwOS for years with my esxi hosts connected to it. My home network is a router on stick setup and it’s been awesome for ~10 years.
But with all this pfsense plus fees and money garbage, I’m thinking about putting the microtik crs317 into routeros L3 mode so I can buy a netgate box like 1100/2100 (and get pfsense plus with the appliance).
Wondering what people’s real-world experience is with routeros on the crs317 switch? I can currently saturate 10gbe and part of my battery backup and shutdown procedure is based on the timing of those transfers/migrations, etc. so while I don’t need to absolutely keep every bit of 10GbE, I can’t go down to something like 2.5GbE.
Thanks.
I guess if the mikrotik won’t work: Should I buy a router? Should I buy a Cisco sx550x 10gbe switch? Thx.
Microtik publishes test results on their website. As you can see, the switch can achieve full 10Gbps for all 16 ports when doing level 2 switching, but when routing, the best case is a bit above 1 Gbps. See https://mikrotik.com/product/crs317_1g_16s_rm#fndtn-testresults
Why not just move to OPNsense?
Even if you stay with Pfsense, I don’t get what that has to do with moving to a level 3 switch.
I’m buying some hardware that I can run in parallel. I don’t want to just switch to OPNSense, I’d like to know and understand the differences in the software before I just deploy OPNsense.
Moving to a layer 3 switch: Right now I am doing firewall+router on the same appliance. A layer 3 switch will let me break out the firewall/router so that the L3 switch does routing (most of it) and the netgate appliance would do the firewall work.
Since ~2008 all I’ve used is pfsense so moving to opnsense is a little unknown. I’m buying a second piece of hardware so I can try a few different setups and run something in parallel for a few months so I can make an educated decision. I don’t know much about OPN so I don’t want to comment until it’s up and running.