Today, we are changing coverages because a switch we have been excited about has finally been announced. The MikroTik CRS520-4XS-16XQ-RM with 16 ports of 100GbE has been announced, marking a significant move upmarket for the company.
MikroTik CRS520-4XS-16XQ-RM 16-port 100GbE Switch Announced
We heard about the MikroTik CRS520-4XS-16XQ-RM a little bit ago and expect to have one to review in the coming weeks. On the front, one can see 16-port 100GbE and 4-port 25GbE. There is then a serial console port and two additional multi-gigabit 10Gbase-T ports. We guess that these 10Gbase-T ports are for out-of-band management duties.
The switch features a Marvell 98CX8410 switch chip. The CPU is the Annapurna Labs (now Amazon) AL52400 quad-core 64-bit Arm processor at 2GHz with 4GB of RAM. MikroTik says that it will be able to run things like OSPF/ BGP out-of-the-box and that its team is working on more L3 hardware offloads.
In the rear we see the company’s replaceable fans, and then redundant power supplies. Max power is listed at 123W without attachments and 183W maximum.
We also found the initial performance numbers on the company’s website. The Layer 1 3.4Tbps capacity number tells us that we have 16 ports of 100GbE and 4 ports of 25GbE, meaning it is unlikely that the 10Gbase-T ports are on the data path. Those are likely sitting off the Annapurna Labs Arm CPU instead. Still, until we get a block diagram and the system, we will just make a guess.
Final Words
Aside from higher-end features, the MikroTik CRS520-4XS-16XQ-RM will be a higher-priced switch at $2795. At that price range, it is going to offer something very unique. A new switch with a management web GUI for the price of a used Mellanox SN2100 16-port 100GbE switch with a bit less connectivity.
Here is a fun story on why this is going live today instead of the NVIDIA Grace Hopper system review we were planning (most likely, that will be after the July 4 holiday now.) This morning, Patrick sent me a screenshot since he was awake feeding the newborn when he saw a video from MikroTik announcing the switch, and something caught his eye.
That comment was the highlighted one on the video. Nobody does that for the guy writing the reviews. Still, that was funny enough to get this featured on the main site.
