which switch/router for around £600

So my plan was to get a mikrotik crs 309 8 port sfp+ switch/mini router and a 4 port version with an asus router for the wifi and ont input. the lan was to have about 3 vlans. I had planed for 3 to 5 pcs with 10gb sfp+ nics ..

All of that seemed reasonable. But i ended up buying some dual port sfp+ nics, and given i want speed, i realised 2x ports lets aggregate them to 20gb but the serverathome review and a redditor suggested only to use the microtiks as switches otherwise the 309 will crawl .

I was looking at the qnap QSW-M1204-4C which have enough ports for the time being but am i just going from one underpowered unit to another?

i only need vlan and link aggregation on the l2 feature list

Any suggestions ? 😁

(trying avoid ubiquity)

Anyone who pays £600 for a router for the home need their head read.
If they need it for a business then maybe the price is worth it depending on what they are using it for, but for a home , it is crazy money, and they have more money than sense.

In reply to a post by Taras:

So my plan was to get a mikrotik crs 309 8 port sfp+ switch/mini router and a 4 port version with an asus router for the wifi and ont input. the lan was to have about 3 vlans. I had planed for 3 to 5 pcs with 10gb sfp+ nics ..

You are correct that the CRS309 will be terrible as a router. It has a dual core 800MHz MIPS CPU - the same as the $50 hEX router.

However for layer 2 only it will be fine, as it switches in hardware (check the Block Diagram under "Support & Downloads") and you can have a separate box as a router as you suggest. You can choose that depending on how much external routing and/or inter-VLAN routing throughput you need.

The RB5009 has a fairly decent 4-core ARM CPU, and one 10G and one 2.5G port. If you use the 2.5G for WAN, and trunk the 10G into a switch, it should suit you well.

The CCR2004-1G-12S-2XS+ is a one-box solution which is just within your price range. However it doesn't have a built-in switch chip, just port expanders, so even switching will be done in the CPU.

I would forget about bonding 2 x 10G to get 20G. The load balancing algorithm will use a hash of source/destination IP, port and/or MAC address. For a single bulk stream, it will likely all be sent down one link.

For a sophisticated setup like you are proposing, I'd strongly suggest you go for separate wireless APs like Unifi U6-Lite, rather than a combo router+wireless.

For my much smaller network I have the RB4011 and am very happy with it. However, I found that the PoE Out on port 10 doesn't seem to be enough to power my Unifi AC Lites. I connect them to a hEX PoE instead, and they work fine there.

I only need basic vlan tagging for at most 4 vlans. I've tried some solarflare s7122fs, direct pc to pc and i'm getting woeful speeds. I don't know what is wrong with it and because its my first time into sfp land i'm like a diabolical newb. I don't know if its the cards or the pcie lane restrictions on the am4/5 platform - sfp and two graphics cards push the platform to the limit.

I've gone and ordered a mellonx card to see if its a card issue.. Speed is the reason its complex, i need hdd to near ssd speeds over lan and thats what is causing the headache. if i didn't need that then 2.5gbe would be enough

the wifi side only needs one extra unit to cover the house, so i'm leaving that alone as i know which 4 units i want to choose from. I really don't need to do that side till 2.5gb fttp comes to me.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

Anyone who pays £600 for a router for the home need their head read.
If they need it for a business then maybe the price is worth it depending on what they are using it for, but for a home , it is crazy money, and they have more money than sense.

a 2.5gbit lan is more than enough for most people. If I use smoke aka cfd in 3d rendering i can see 4 to 8gb data files per frame. If i want to network render you can see the problem that comes along, even with a 2.5gbit lan. Atm i'm only using one machine in smoke/fire renders because of this restriction.

In reply to a post by Taras:

I only need basic vlan tagging for at most 4 vlans. I've tried some solarflare s7122fs, direct pc to pc and i'm getting woeful speeds.

You want Intel X520-DA2 or compatible. Always worked solidly for me, albeit on Linux servers.

Crank the MTU up to 9000 for lowest CPU usage / highest throughput. Of course you have to do this on both ends, and on your switches too (decent ones will give a L2 frame size of up to 9216)

I'd look at pfSense or OPNsense on a mini PC for the router.

Thanks
Dan

In reply to a post by danielhyde:

I'd look at pfSense or OPNsense on a mini PC for the router.

Thanks
Dan

Err why, the only level 2 routing i need is vlan aware equipment that is why i put switch/router - it really is managed switch.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

For my much smaller network I have the RB4011 and am very happy with it. However, I found that the PoE Out on port 10 doesn't seem to be enough to power my Unifi AC Lites.

Update: this appears to have been fixed in RouterOS 6.49.11+. I am running one of my AC Lites quite happily off ether10 right now.

Changelog:

*) poe-out - improved "auto-on" mode for devices with single PoE-out port;

Aside: I also note that Unifi have updated the U6-Lite to U6-Plus, apparently at the same price. This would likely be my go-to for a future upgrade. Wifi 6 only though, not 6E, and only a 1Gbps ethernet port.

That Poe issue would normally indicate a port issue, glad it was a software one!