MikroTik Cloud Router Switch the master Cost-Effective for small and medium ISP environments
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We use MikroTik Cloud Router Switch as access switches and aggregation. We think that the throughput is enough for our operation as an ISP. Their features and flexibility allow us to deploy Edge and enterprise environments, especially where the cost-efficiency and feature density are very important. MikroTik Cloud Router Switch helps us to address several business problems:
1 - Cost.Effective Layer 3 Hardware offloading allows us to upgrade the utilization of a switch as an L3 Switch to use routing in scenarios where RSTP or MSTP are not ideal.
2 - Multibrand support, you could connect with other brand devices and keep standard protocols running perfectly.
3 - Flexible port configuration and vlan management, in this section we can find some interesting features like vlan segmentation, port isolation, LACP, trunk, access and hybrid configuration are available.
4 - Dual OS (Router OS and SwOS) Depending of the use case you can choose between this two operative systems. SwOS is very light with all features for a pure switching environment. RouterOS is a more complete system for special configurations like L3 HW.
Pros
- L3 Hardware Offloading
- Vlan segmentation
- Traffic troughput
- Port density
- Cost effective
- Port Isolation
- Trunk, access and hybrid configurations
Cons
- L3 features like firewall IPsec NAT
- LACP with more than 4 interfaces
- Centralized Management platflorm
- Limited Hardware offloading insight
- Outdated web interface
- CLI usability
Return on Investment
- Significant Cost Savings
- Rapid deployment and flexibility
- Bottlenecks in wrong scenario of use
- Manual configuration overhead
- Perception and vendor approval barriers
Usability
Other Software Used
Juniper MX Series, Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches, Aruba Instant On 1930 Switches