 Tom here from Orange Systems, and we're going to talk about Mikrotik Switch OS and Switch OS is an alternative to the router board software that comes on the Mikrotik now It comes with these switch OS as well It's nothing hacky you have to do here to try to figure out how to load it or swap it out We're going to show you how to change it. It's actually really easy. Now. Why does it exist? Well, even Mikrotik realized the same thing many users of Mikrotik have realized the router OS while powerful is also Complex and the complexities of it for people who go Hey, I just really want to use some switch functions and set up a couple vLands Is there an easier way to do this and going through all the config files inside of the router system? There is and that's what switch OS is we're going to see how to switch to it Which is really easy and a couple basic features on how it works and why I think it's a good idea I'm glad that Mikrotik did this because it's a good thing They've had it for a little while it has have never reviewed it I have talked about it when I reviewed this switch in particular And this is the one we're going to be demoing it on which is a CRS 305-1g-4s plus I n I'll leave a link to the review I did on this Mikrotik does have you know, rather long model names on there But it helps you identify which exactly switch is which one and it is a software that supported on many of them Before we dive into that Let's first feel like to learn more about me or my company head over to Lawrence systems calm If you like to hire short project There's a hires button right at the top if you like to help keep this channel sponsor-free and thank you to everyone who already has There is a join button here for YouTube and a patreon page. 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We're gonna be working from for this demo here And this is that mouthful that I had said before and I've reviewed this which works actually a really affordable 10 gig switch And part of the reason I'm bringing this up is because well This is also a really affordable 10 gig switch and a lot of people come up with this question when I know they're building their Home lab or building out small networks, and they're going hey I'm looking for something really affordable that has some 10 gig connectivity and me go tick really That's one of the things they've locked into and serve the home has done several reviews of different models They've had they have 10 even 40 gig switches that are at really good price points And especially for people learning and getting in a networking, you know When your home user you're not necessarily looking for the most expensive enterprise three-year warranty switch Or even longer warranties or even more bells and whistles and features you're going I just want some 10 gig for my home for some of the basic things I'm doing and me go tick I will completely admit fits these categories very well, and that being said the first challenge You've run into is what the interface looks like for the router board now There's a couple different ways to configure Microjix you can use the web interface which is ugly and they just kept bolting on more things is kind of how I feel There is the wind box software, and there's always learning the command line and for many people They're going wow that seems like a lot for someone who just wants to build a lab where their focus isn't network engineering But they do want 10 gig because maybe they have a video editing setup at home And they don't want to spend a lot of money These are all valid categories for why people may want to buy 10 gig switches and they go But I don't need BGP at home, and I don't need Wireless and you're probably saying but Tom does that little switch even have wireless on it and someone argued with me and insisted There was a wireless device in here on the review I did I don't think it exists and this is one of the challenges right away with router board OS is They pretty much just have the same feature set whether the switch has all the options or not all in here So whether or not all of these features are even supported on here I'm not exactly clear because they all show up and I found that kind of interesting and this is the Challenge with the router board OS is it does have a lot of features, but even if those features don't exist on that particular model Don't worry. They're still in here Which can cause at least in my opinion some confusion and the fact that there's so many things that you'll probably never use So we're gonna go here to system and we're gonna go to router board now right here's router board and right over here just down a little bit lower is switch OS This is also an example of one of the problems This does only have and has checked these five ports because it only has five But it still has all the checkbox to allow from other ports now This is where you can actually go in here and upgrade to the latest version of switch OS We're actually gonna switch to it because I've already done the upgrade part so from router board You can control switch some of the switch OS In terms of the settings when it comes to pushing things over for Firmware, but what you cannot control is anything you do in router board or switch OS seems to be independent of each other that has been All the testing I've done and I didn't find this in their documentation Definitively, but it does appear that if I change something in router board OS when it reboots in switch OS That isn't there and vice versa if I change something in switch OS It doesn't show up in router board. So they are two independent operating systems router board also takes a little bit longer to boot than switch OS anyways, let's go over here to router board settings and Boot OS we just choose switch OS apply and Then re-reboot it and it'll be into switch OS. That's it. That's all you have to do to get in here And while router board does boot up in about oh, I don't know probably 10 20 30 seconds depending on the model Switch OS boots up almost instantly. I probably say like five seconds It seems to boot really really fast when we have that in there when you do the switch No big deal and we're gonna go all the way back over to system because this is what the switch OS looks like which the default Asian name is just admin if we wanted to boot back over to Router OS we can just go here and switch back into it now You don't really have to do anything else once you've switched it once and you don't boot back in there every time You boot this up. It's gonna go into the switch OS now Over here. This is all left at default And I do have an all those point out in case you're wondering how I'm plugging things in I do have one of the RJ45 SFP plus adapters in here in order to plug it into my laptop for this demonstration This is probably not the best switch because if you're trying to get 10 gig over RJ45 they have models that are you know have that but I've done the review and shown that these RJ45 SFP plus they do get warm and as someone pointed out if you were to put four of them in here This switch may overheat that is an issue one doesn't seem to cause too many problems I've left that on for a while, but they do generate quite a bit more heat. So See just wanted to make sure that was clear back to over here. So by default everything's enabled and It tells me what SFP module I have in there. I've talked about that when I did the review port isolation is already set up Properly it does have the ability to set up lag But you can see how much easier it is to set things up in general when you're in here There's just a one row of options across the top forwarding our TSP stats errors history VLAN options now sending VLANs is a multi-step process in RouterOS and a little bit more confusing or at least it was to me They do have over here through their documentation The really simplistic way you can set up VLANs and add very specific in VLAN and menus and entries and add Specify port memberships to certain VLANs. So you have all these options to really lock things down We're gonna show you just the really basic configuration But they do have extended configuration options in here for how to do things So there's they have a separate dedicated wiki for switch OS with a very few examples And this is something people have asked me about is doing more videos on this That is some weak point that they have you won't find a ton of documentation on Make or take there's people have really taken the time to learn it But it's not like they have the most I mean look how thin their documentation is they have all of three examples But back to the configuration here And showing you how to actually set it up So we have already defined beyond the scope of this particular video, but we'll make a few assumptions here We have some VLANs to find one of those VLANs is VLAN 69 So we have this the management port and we'll just show you what it looks like physically here This blue cable, which is also PoE by the way has all ports coming across all VLANs coming across all data So by default and this is actually a nice feature on me critic that it does this by default When you bring in all VLANs to it, even if you don't define those VLANs as in to find them out It will still by default pass all those VLANs So even if you just use this as a path to switch all the VLANs and all the tag traffic That's coming in it'll pass back out to the next port I'm bringing that up because that is not the default of all switches Some managed switches will not do that They will only pass what has been defined or the default I should say is to only pass defined You can say pass all as a option But that's a nice feature of them because it makes it really easy to configure because if I only want to split off One VLAN VLAN 69 and we're going to take this port which is the one we have the sfp plugged into is port one And we're just going to say go ahead and still send all the Standard traffic across and we're just going to apply all also that's it We had to apply it that fast and we're going to switch over to The terminal where we have no carrier and I'll show you that Applying it that fast. We're going to plug this in and in just a few seconds It's going to get an IP address from the dot 69 network Seize the link There we go. We got the IP address 172 1669 126 Now we're going to go ahead and unplug it. It's no carrier and we'll switch back over. It's going to lose the IP address What about another VLAN? 50 so apply all I think 50 is a defined one of my network. Okay. Yep did confirm I have 69 which is one I use for most that's where a lot of our test equipment goes 50 is internet of insecure things mostly for testing and 1337 is where we do cybersecurity testing For some other stuff. So we can plug in any of these 50 or 1337 So go back over here to the micro tick. We plugged in 50. We hit apply. We switch back over to here We plug it back in And in a few seconds, it's going to get a 192 168 50 network Anyway, we go 50.102 and we can go over here 1337 apply all Now this is me unplugging and plugging it back in is just so I will force my computer to grab a new address It won't if it didn't see a change in status. It won't necessarily grab a new address That's just dhcp going. Hey, I have an address. My lease isn't up So I'm not asked for another one. I could just do a dhcp refresh renew But it also will do that by unplugging it when it sees a link state change And now we're on the 10 dot 13 dot 37 102 network So that's really it. I mean you can go more advanced you can get into acl You can build all of these options in here But you know, do you need that it depends on what level you want to go through? So you still have a reasonable amount of features in switch os It does have options for like right here. It discovered some of the devices locally when you're looking for hosts IGNP SNMP a building acl information Or acl rules I should say on here System with the update trusted ports when you want certain things on whether or not you want to trust these for that Really the functions you need in a switch easy to do also Uh, it hasn't an update since february, but when you download install the upgrades Which it doesn't have one that said there wasn't any on there So I got the little error message so far all the updates I've tested on this always worked perfectly fine I never had any issues and it does have download backup and config So overall I really like switch os and I think it's a powerful Thing to add to the microtik line of switches to make them easier to use for a lot of people Who just want to use the switching functions? No, that doesn't use the routing functions at all because someone's going to point out Doesn't that switch have layer 3 routing and I'll refer you back to serve the home who did a review of this switch And it has layer 3 routing in spirit, but it's just not practical because of just how slow it is And this is one of those other things about microtik Everyone likes to tell me how many features they have and get all excited because they really do throw a lot in the switch os But how well do they work is it is a different thing So having a feature to check a box on the list to make the marketing people happy to say yes It does have layer 3 routing and you're like, well, what speed can it route at? Oh, we don't want to discuss that But I'll leave a link also to the serve the home review of this particular switch as well and my review I still think it's a great switch. I think it's a great switch Though I didn't say great router because it does have certain, you know Routing functions and been there. By the way, check out switch os You can see how quick and easy it was just to do one of the most common Requested features set up a vlan on there. I think it's a solid You know for the platform to have this on there It makes our switches that much more desirable And maybe I'll get around to reviewing or maybe microtik will reach out to me and send me one Because I don't really have a use case for them But I do like that switch I had mentioned in check out serve the home. They've reviewed a few different models They have some 40 gig options that are well surprisingly affordable with 40 gig Ports you can connect to servers and 10 gig ones you can Connect to desktops for people who need that high speed But don't really want to pay that high sticker price of some of the other, you know, larger brand name if you will Switches and I think for home users and for even some of the small people Business people who are just going I just don't need to go spend two grand on a switch But for 5.99 I can get one that has eight 10 gig ports or this one right here Which has four 10 gig ports and usually msrp because they sell out quite a bit But I've seen them going for around 129 to 150 dollars Four 10 gig ports for that kind of price and one one gig port for an uplink not bad at all So I still think for those of you that Would say would tom ever review a microtik switch. Yes. I did finally review one. Yes. I still like it I think it's a good product So I I will show some love towards the product and I really like it because of the switch os. All right. Thanks