[AusNOG] Fwd: Re: 12V Gigabit Switch suggestions

[Paul Gear]

On 02/07/2013 09:06 PM, Alexander Neilson wrote:
> These features are awesome to have.
>
> And as long as your needs are not too intensive then the Mikrotik gear
> is wonderful to use.
>
> Just note it isn't a pure hardware switch across all ports. Maximum
> throughput with bridging is about 4Gbps (on the AHx2 model).
>
> It has two five port "switch groups" that you can use for wire speed
> switching only. But if you want all 12 you are limited. (Can do switch
> chip and bridge the switch chips together along with the none switch
> ports but I haven't tested the throughput benefits of this)
>
> Still wonderful boxes but always be aware of the limitations of your hardware.

I was doing some testing a few weeks back on the older version (RB1100) 
and found that even within the switch groups, it was nowhere near line 
rate.  Admittedly this is a different Atheros switch chip than the 
RB1100AH(x2), but i was surprised at the lack of difference between the 
switched performance and the bridged performance.  I was unpleasantly 
surprised at the former, and pleasantly surprised at the latter.

I'm sure my test conditions could have been improved (I was using two 
ThinkPad laptops running Linux, one with an Intel 82579LM NIC and the 
other with an 82567LM NIC, and using ping floods with a 1500-byte packet 
size to test), but there was only about a 20% performance hit when going 
from switching to bridging.

I won't get into how painful configuring VLAN tagging is with Mikrotik - 
suffice it to say i would pick even a Netgear GS108T or an HP ProCurve 
1810G over Mikrotik if i needed tagged VLANs (not that either of them is 
suitable for the 12V environment which is the topic of this 
discussion).  Hopefully Mike from Duxtel isn't lurking on this list as 
well as SAGE-AU, and won't take this as my second flamebait in a couple 
of weeks. :-)

Paul