CRS309-1G-8S+IN Switch

Update 23/04/2021: I'm still incredibly happy with my CRS309-1G-8S+IN, so much in fact that I bought another one to play around with and use as a spare. I have just been experimenting with RouterOS 7.1 beta 5 which now supports Hardware Offloaded Layer 3 for CRS3xxx devices! From my limited testing of Inter-VLAN routing with this firmware I'm able to achieve near wire-speed routing between VLANs using the CRS309 as a router. This is very impressive and I am seeing 10Gbps throughput between VLANs with the CPU barely changing from idle. Prior to this I would get a maximum of 3.2Gbps with one CPU core pegged at 50%. This means the hardware in the CRS309 is far more capable than RouterOS currently supports at the moment and, whilst the beta is very unstable and not really suitable for any kind of production use, it does demonstrate that in the very near future the CRS309 is going to be a powerful router too. Original Review: This is an incredibly good value 10GbE switch which is hard to beat at the moment. What makes this switch a no-brainer for me is that it's passively cooled and therefore it is silent in operation. It does get a little warm when under load but that's a small price to pay for silence! Despite being branded as a 'Cloud Router Switch' the CRS309-1G-8S+IN is a Layer 2 Switch and not a Router. It can run RouterOS so it can be used for routing and other layer 3 functionality but the 800MHz 32bit ARM CPU in the device simply isn't powerful enough and you will take a significant performance hit (by significant we're talking maybe a max of 2.5 Gbps throughput). That aside, the CRS309 is a very good layer 2 switch and essentially is able to offer full non-blocking throughput of 81 Gbps. I'm not actually able to verify that claim but I can easily max out out multiple 10GbE ports at a time with no issues at all. The switch has 8 SFP+ ports which seem to be highly compatible with a number of transceivers. I'm using 10GTek fiber transceivers in a few ports with no issues. I'm also using Mikrotik S+RJ10 transceivers for RJ45 connections because I've found other transceivers don't negotiate 2.5 GbE or 5.0 GbE properly on this switch and the Mikrotik modules have DDM built-in to monitor the temperature etc. which is really useful. You can run SwitchOS or RouterOS on the CRS309-1G-8S+IN. SwitchOS is a simpler interface and only exposes Layer 2 switch functionality, however it can only be managed via the web browser which isn't ideal. I'm using RouterOS because I am more familiar with that and I can use Winbox and SSH to manage it in a way that I prefer. There is a risk with RouterOS in that you can inadvertently turn on features that disable hardware offloading of the switch ports and fallback to the CPU but if you strictly use Layer 2 features this shouldn't be an issue. The lights are bright on this switch and blue power LED is like looking at the sun! You can turn pretty much all of the LEDs off, apart from the lights on the single RJ45 on the right hand-side of the front. This port is suggested to be used for management traffic but I was happily using it as an uplink with multiple VLANs at one point. If you don't use this port then the LEDs do not light up. A couple of users seemed to have massive trouble getting this device to work properly without it 'taking over' their network. Mine came preinstalled with RouterOS and also had a DHCP server enabled which means it probably would have interfered with my existing LAN. One thing you come to learn about MikroTik kit is that it nearly always comes with static IP Address of 192.168.88.1 configured as its default, so you need to connect to it standalone/directly and configure the device in a basic way before plugging it into your network. This alone means this device is not plug and play and requires some degree of networking knowledge to configure. This switch uses MikroTik's newer bridge method. In the most basic sense you add all of your ports to a bridge and they should be able to switch with each other with hardware offloading enabled. If you want to add VLANs, you need to add these to the bridge too and more importantly, you'll need to turn on VLAN filtering on the bridge, which is disabled by default. The tagging of VLANs is unlike any other brand I've used before but you essentially tag and un-tag the ports (and the bridge itself) in the Bridge > VLAN section. You should try to make sure that your routing is performed by another device on your network otherwise performance will suffer badly. I've found that not adding IP Addresses to my VLANs on this switch reduces the chance of me inadvertently falling back to CPU based switching. Overall it's a brilliant switch and offers incredible value for money. Whilst there is a steep learning curve at the start and it's definitely not plug and play, it's not really difficult to manage the switching config afterwards. I think you'll be hard pushed to find a similar feature-rich product in this price range. Pros: - Amazing value for money - Passively cooled (silent) - Excellent Layer 2 throughput (162 Gbps switching capacity/81 Gbps non-blocking throughput) - Compatible with lots of transceivers - Manageable with multiple means i.e. SSH, Winbox, WebFig - Can also be powered via PoE on the Ethernet port - Console port Cons: - Not plug and play and requires some networking knowledge to configure it - Layer 3 functionality has massive performance impact - No Console cable supplied

Great price, fast delivery, working great. Came with a UK power adapter. I'm just using it for L2 to get the best throughput and very pleased. Although the SFPs can be expensive, you can get SFP+/DAC cables for less than the cost of one SFP. I would recommend trying to avoid using SFP/RJ45 transceivers as they more power and can get very hot.

This switch offers a lot of bang for the buck. Simply brilliant.

Overall, great piece of kit. The usual Mikrotik OS which is very flexible and relatively easy to configure for those that are familiar with networking. A great way to learn for that aren't. Watch the temperature of the SFP+ modules though - the silence of passive cooling is great, but not when it comes at the cost of 40+% packet loss when the temperature of the modules goes up. Took the lid off mine and aimed a fan at the SFP modules.

Took me all of 10 minutes to get set up to a point where I could see it on the network and passing traffic. 1) download WinBox from the Mikrotik website. 2) connect an RJ45 patch cable between the device and the Ethernet port of the PC that you downloaded the Winbox app onto. 3) populate the "Connect To:" dialogue box in the WinBox app with the E09 MAC address of the port (On the label affixed to base of the device) 4) Hit "Connect" and you are in. Set the IP address of the device and the gateway. That's all I did to get mine on my network. You can then log into the device from the IP address you gave it and configure it to your hearts content. "Art of Server" has uploaded some really good video's on Youtube on the device which prepped me for its arrival.

Before reading, understand I am (or was) a Mikrotik fanatic. I have promoted them in just about every place I have worked for many years, used them in my work, at home and advocated them to anybody who would listen. In a previous life I was a network engineer, I really know what I am doing with their kit and have been using it for about 20 years, long before most people had even heard of them. I Fought with this thing for a year, and it was a significant factor in actually caused a mental breakdown. I am still on the meds now. On the few occasions I did get it to work, it would last a week or two then suddenly take out the entire network. (Imagine what 8x10Gbps of data flooding every device does). It is broken by design - even the latest firmware still leaves fundamental issues, and the change log clearly shows this thing was and likely still is a LEMON! if you try and do anything other than use it as a switch, nothing else. Not a single IP packet should be processed. Even if the firmware is now fixed (which I doubt), the final, fundamental issues is that the only way to add storage is via the LAN. It has 1/16th of the storage of devices costing 1/10th as much. Go add storage via the LAN you need to include a package, and that package + the OS takes 16Mb and the device only has 16Mb storage. So, run for a day it WILL run out of disk space, then die. Despite the more than capable CPU having all the following features and more, and the device having plenty of RAM - and the fact that the OS is offering them, the designer failed to actually put them in the box and could not be bothered to turn the drivers off. There is NO Wireless, NO PCI/PCIe, NO USB, NO way to add storage. I tried for hundreds of hours to get iSCSI working - yep broken too, deep packet dives showed it does not actually talk the right protocol. It can't work. Even cheap memory such as CF or SD, eMMC - you are having a laugh. None of that either. It is so sad that the connectors for those cost each no more than about 30 pence in small volume. The box is empty (though to give it credit made of amazingly thick steel). I don't know who at Mikrotik designed this electronics, but please change your job. Take up painting or something. There are literally 13 year olds that could do a better job than you. I am not joking. eaithe No CF. The last one I can forgive as SFP is one of those standards that seem to cause problems for many. But this is also very sensitive to the types and brands and day of week when it comes to SFP+, I've wasted hundreds of UKP trying different makes. Lastly there is a lot of talk about the internal clock reference drifting to the point it packs up. As mine finally did - yay!! it's going in the after being smashed with a hammer just for the sheer therapy of it. It has cost more than I can calculate, after wasting a lot of money, sanity, time, blood, tears, multiple friendships and two close relationships. This is the router from hell. Why the F*** put 1G RAM in something that can only access 16Mb of data. (I seriously thought about hacking it to get the PCIe wires out from under the BGA, I even have the kit do do that, but why allow this thing to create exist any longer than it has)

Great 10G Switch for my home lab but it comes A. Configured as a router and B. with old software on it. So You have to update The router software, Configure it as a switch including making sure that you can access it as a switch which requires you to go an add bridging to the management port. Then reboot as a switch and update the switch software. None of this is clearly explained in the manuals but with a little help from popular search engines you can find what you need. Why not leave this as a router? Well the ARM processor is going to do packet inspection and it just isn't up to the job where as the switch piece is fine. So you won't get full throughput as a router. Once configured as a managed switch however this seems to be a great product and really well priced. It is working fine for me though I have yet to configure VLANS or anything else yet. It seems to work well with all of the transceivers I have used but even Fibre ones get pretty warm and this is a finless unit so it will be interesting to see how this copes long term. All-in-all a good purchase. If they make a QSFP28 switch I'd buy it like a shot - Then I could go to 100G!

This is an extremely full featured switch/router - certainly more than I need. The only issue I have is with powering the unit via POE it worked once - then nothing. Have since had to power it via the supplied DC power. ( yes my POE supply provide af/at at sufficient power - but the CRS309 POE input appears to have failed )

Come da oggetto, ho trovato l'apparecchio prestazionale e di buona fattura. Non ho a disposizione misurazioni effettive delle velocità di trasferimento dati, ma è silenzioso (il che non è poco) ed, al momento, affidabile

This is an older model in the mikrotik range. Yet it still offers spf+ in the mikrotik environment the fraction of the price. Mikrotik is not for the non experts but it offers so much options. I'm using it as a backend switch between a couple of test servers with multiple vlans etc.. It can be configured in the less compless switch os.

Australian power supply NOT provided

Una refrigeración excelente y mantiene las velocidades altas de manera sostenida. Se nota que es mikrotik

Just took few minutes to start using the switch. First switched to SwitchOS, then changed management IP to match my needs and that's all. Used Twinax DAC cables of different brands - All worked fine. On the server, had used ASUS XG-C100F.