I appreciate the recommendation but that's kind of a gap from the EdgeRouter Infinity (ER-8-XG). The Infinity has 8x10Gbps SFP+ ports, a single copper 1Gbps port, 16GB of RAM, and a multi-core processor because it's designed as an inexpensive core router for a mid-sized network.
Where I work, we use one of them as our main router with multiple peering sessions and two transit uplinks. According to Cacti, right now we're pushing about 30Gbps through the router.
That's what I'm looking to eventually replace, if Ubiquiti doesn't start up with software updates to the EdgeRouter line again. But I think that's the problem: the EdgeRouter line is so amazingly inexpensive for all of the power you get, there's no financial incentive for Ubiquiti to invest in it and all of the players with the "proper" routers--the Junipers and Ciscos and the like--start at three times the price of an ER-8-XG.
Have look at Mikrotik CCR2004-1G-12S+2XS (1G-12S+2XS means 1x1Gbps RJ45, 12xSFP+, 2xSFP28) or CCR2116-12G-4S+ (12G-4S+ = 12x1Gbps RJ45, 4xSFP+), depending how many ports and what kind of routing performance you need (check the block diagrams, they tell the story).
However, neither of them will route 80 Gbps full duplex.
Then there is CCR2216-1G-12XS-2XQ (1x1Gbps, 12xSFP28, 2xQSPF28); this one is supposedly capable of routing shy of 200 Gbps @1518 packet size.
Edit: another thing on Mikrotik naming conventions: CRS = switches; CCR = routers.
If people have anywhere near 80 to 200 Gbps of real world IP traffic and are thinking of using a mikrotik for it, they seriously need to re-examine the revenue from customers that's going through that >50Gbps of traffic, business risk profile and how serious they are about things...
At that scale you'd better have a redundant identical twin pair of routers with 1+1 or N+1 redundant everything (fans, power supplies, routing engines, etc) 24x7x365 service contract, and so on. Not something you can or should do with mikrotik.
> Have look at Mikrotik CCR2004-1G-12S+2XS (1G-12S+2XS means 1x1Gbps RJ45, 12xSFP+, 2xSFP28) or CCR2116-12G-4S+
Both of these look fantastic. The second one, with the four SFP+ ports, looks like an almost drop-in replacement for the Infinity, particularly with its 16GB of RAM. (We use soft-reconfiguration inbound which bloats the amount of RAM needed for the tables.)
> However, neither of them will route 80 Gbps full duplex.
That's actually fine, at least for our needs. We only have 50Gbps of connectivity between peer, IXP, and transit links and today's 30Gbps is high because of end-of-month activities. We got the Infinity largely because it was the only EdgeRouter that could do what we needed. Like the gap between EdgeRouter Infinity and "every other router that can do what it does," there's a rather large gap in Ubiquiti's EdgeRouter line. The next one down in the list is the EdgeRouter-12 that is a small fraction of the capability of the Infinity.
> another thing on Mikrotik naming conventions: CRS = switches; CCR = routers
That's good to know. I hadn't started down the Mikrotik path yet but I'll give it a look. We have a leaf router at a small office where we experiment and maybe I can put one in there to start.
> that's kind of a gap from the EdgeRouter Infinity (ER-8-XG)
Indeed, not least on price. How much was your ER-8-XG? My CRS305-1G-4S+IN were about USD180 each.
EDIT: If there were a silent version of the CRS326-24S+2Q+RM[0][1] I'd have bought one already...
"The MikroTik CRS326-24S+2Q+RM is an insane switch. Its specs are relatively mundane by modern standards. It has 24x SFP+ 10GbE ports and 2x QSFP+ 40GbE ports making it not even as powerful as mainstream previous-generation switches like the QCT QuantaMesh T3048-LY8 that we installed in our lab years ago. Instead what makes the switch insane is that it offers all of that performance at $475"
For what it's worth - there is a healthy "modding" community for some of these Mikrotik switches. People convert them into fanless/silent units pretty regularly, or swap the fans for higher flow / lower rpm fans, etc.
a crs326 is a layer 2 switch - not comparable with a router. you could categorize it as more like a cisco 3750G from ten years ago in capability of 24 ports of copper gigabit in one place.
any mikrotik CRS series has very limited routing/layer 3 ability compared to a CCR series. Different things for different purposes.
look at the logical block diagrams mikrotik provides of their crs series equipment. it's all a bunch of ethernet switch chips in a few blocks of 8 ports and then something like a single 1GbE link to the CPU. the moment you start telling it to do layer 3 things its capability is very limited.
Where I work, we use one of them as our main router with multiple peering sessions and two transit uplinks. According to Cacti, right now we're pushing about 30Gbps through the router.
That's what I'm looking to eventually replace, if Ubiquiti doesn't start up with software updates to the EdgeRouter line again. But I think that's the problem: the EdgeRouter line is so amazingly inexpensive for all of the power you get, there's no financial incentive for Ubiquiti to invest in it and all of the players with the "proper" routers--the Junipers and Ciscos and the like--start at three times the price of an ER-8-XG.