File this under one that we are crazy excited about. The MikroTik CCR2216-1G-12XS-2XQ brings 25GbE and 100GbE routing to a lower cost and power footprint. With RouterOS 7, we also get L3 hardware offloads on the device.
MikroTik CCR2216-1G-12XS-2XQ Readied as a 25GbE and 100GbE Router
As one can see, we have a router with two 100GbE (XQ?) ports, twelve 25GbE (XS?) ports, and then a console/ gigabit management port stack. There are redundant 150W power supplies in the rear as well as a new thermal solution. This is a far cry from some of the lower-end switches we have seen.
In terms of specs, we have an Annapurna Labs (now Amazon) AL73400 2GHz 16-core CPU, a Marvell Prestera ALDRIN2 DX8525 switch chip. What is fun here is that the heatsink for the Annapurna Labs chip you can see is the larger heatsink with the DRAM packages above and the two M.2 slots on the side. The switch chip is actually under the smaller of the two heatsinks.
Just to give some sense of why that is different, here is a Dell S5248F-ON from our recent review.
Here is a 10GbE and 100GbE FS S5860-48SC we reviewed:
That FS switch has roughly the same amount of switch bandwidth as the MikroTik, yet it has a massive heatsink on its Broadcom switch chip versus the small heatsink on the Marvell Prestera. As a router, we expect there to be a bit more emphasis outside of the switch chip, so the CPU being more powerful so makes sense, but we are a bit shocked at how small MikroTik’s Prestera heatsink is.
What is very interesting as well is that the switch chip gets a 4x 25Gbps connection to the CPU. Some designs use only a 10Gbps link in 25GbE switches, but usually, those are common with higher-end switch ASICs.
Power consumption is rated at 80-121W max which is more lab-friendly. We do wish that there was SODIMM rather than soldered memory so that could be expandable as well.
Final Words
There are a few questions. First, when and what will the pricing be? Second, and most importantly, will it be stable? Third, will there be additional options/ SKUs?
Overall, this is something we are very excited about. MikroTik coming into this space at an affordable price is awesome. We will get one of these as soon as we can. In 2022, we are going to see a lot more 25GbE gear come out so stay tuned to STH for that.
Interesting product, although feels a little out of place until they upgrade their switch offerings, which right now top out with 40gb/10gb uplinks.
Hopefully this is coming soon – would also be good if they brought in some 2.5gb/5gb ethernet options at a more affordable price point.
It can have throttling or thermal issues if there is a small heatsink on the Marvell Prestera ALDRIN2 DX8525 ?
Amazing to see them entering this space. Imagine 100gbe switch for 2-3k?? Amazing!
Need to see routing perf test here, is, ospf, bgp. Stability is a major concern
Looking at this, depending on the price, it might be time to retire my QDR Infiniband lab network.
Hopefully, we get some SFP28 switches from Mikrotik and really a general modernisation of their products.
RRP is $2795USD :-)
Located my preferred retailer on pre-order for $2600 USD
https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/mikrotik-core-router-to-do-direct-routing-and-switching-for-servers.35668/
I’m gonna guess S is single and Q is quad. Not sure why X represents 25gbps tho.
Until today I’ve also wondered about those port count letter assignments, and now I bothered to look it up and will share.
The MikroTik help site has a Product Naming page that confirms the XQ and XS are indeed for 100G QSFP+ and 25G SFP+ ports, respectively. https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/display/ROS/Product+Naming – The X doesn’t strictly apply to only the 25gbps ports.
$2,300 + tax from my dealer ^_^
I was going to CRS518-16XS-2XQ but why bother?