It's got an AL32400. At least my exemplar, I have removed the heatsink once.
Also you normally don´t have to worry about the lifecycle of a Mikrotik product. Almost everything they released since they were founded is still usable and you can install a currently supported RouterOS version on it.
Review: A Dive into Mikrotik's Weird SmartNIC (2022)
21–30 of 47 posts
Re: Review: A Dive into Mikrotik's Weird SmartNIC (2022)
#22I just bought this the other day to setup a VPN to guard the IPMI interface in a 2U server I could cheaply house in some otherwise unmanaged rackspace. It's a pretty nifty piece of kit, but I still have to get better at understanding RouterOS.
I love RouterOS and have been using it extensively for home and soho. And I absolutely agree: it can bee a pain to set it up. Every little part of it is complicated enough to spend hours on.
Setting up networks can take long long hours. But documentation has improved lately and you can also watch their own YouTube channel, which has some useful videos. Also you should try using their forum, which is full of helpful guys.
Don´t let yourself get scared, if someone gets very rough with you, though!
On the other hand you can tune it in endless ways.
Re: Review: A Dive into Mikrotik's Weird SmartNIC (2022)
#23Just got one of these in for my home lab. Haven’t tossed it in to play with it yet, but this is one of the few reviews out there for it. Fits my use case perfectly.
Re: Review: A Dive into Mikrotik's Weird SmartNIC (2022)
#24It's got an AL32400. At least my exemplar, I have removed the heatsink once. Also you normally don´t have to worry about the lifecycle of a Mikrotik product. Almost everything they released since they were founded is still usable and you can install a currently supported RouterOS version on it.
One more addition, as I've just seen the addendum of the review mentions that there is almost nothing in the user manual: the Manuals in the Mikrotik world only describe HW specific quirks.
You have to go to: help.mikrotik.com
Then study it for a few hours, days...
Here is the description for passthrough: https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/display/ROS/Ethernet#:~:text=...
Re: Review: A Dive into Mikrotik's Weird SmartNIC (2022)
#25It seems that Jeff already has this SmartNIC tested with CM4 but not the latest RPi 5 new PCIe [1].
RPi 5 set up will make a poor man's high speed multi-port router with in-network computing capability, nice!
[1] Raspberry Pi PCIe Database: MikroTik CCR2004-1G-2XS-PCIe:
https://pipci.jeffgeerling.com/cards_network/mikrotik-ccr200...
Re: Review: A Dive into Mikrotik's Weird SmartNIC (2022)
#26Looks like these are now in stock at Getic for $160 each.
https://www.getic.com/product/mikrotik-ccr2004-1g-2xs-pcie
I've bought Mikrotik gear from them before. They ship to the USA.
Re: Review: A Dive into Mikrotik's Weird SmartNIC (2022)
#27It seems that Jeff already has this SmartNIC tested with CM4 but not the latest RPi 5 new PCIe [1]. RPi 5 set up will make a poor man's high speed multi-port router with in-network computing capability, nice! [1] Raspberry Pi PCIe Database: MikroTik CCR2004-1G-2XS-PCIe: https://pipci.jeffgeerling.com/cards_network/mikrotik-ccr200...
While a cool experiment. I don't understand why you'd use this on a RPi unless your poor-man's server was already the RPi. Isn't that the beauty of this device is it's a router/firewall on a board that takes up 0-U space?
Re: Review: A Dive into Mikrotik's Weird SmartNIC (2022)
#28I just bought this the other day to setup a VPN to guard the IPMI interface in a 2U server I could cheaply house in some otherwise unmanaged rackspace. It's a pretty nifty piece of kit, but I still have to get better at understanding RouterOS.
Does it support DPDK for fast packet processing or maybe SR-IOV ?. Given the price tag, I suppose it doesn't, but the documentation is sparse.
I dont think you can install your own OS on this, yet? :) , in order to do 25GBPS on ARM, I am sure they are doing some sort of DPDK ( I mean user space networking.). I would love to learn more on how do they achieve 25GBPS on this little arm64.
Re: Review: A Dive into Mikrotik's Weird SmartNIC (2022)
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also either network people get it wrong, or the optics modules really are DACs? Now I am confused too haha : https://serverlabs.blogspot.com/2019/10/a-study-about-sfp-mo... Tangentially… you could build a SFP module that uses a digital to analog converter, outputting the data as a range of voltages vs 1/0s. Hook it up to a speaker for terrible audio. Then listen to it with a microphone hooked up to an Analog to digit…
99% of the time when someone is talking about 'DAC' in a physical networking context it will be direct attached cable. These types of cables are literally just copper wire connecting pins at either end. In comparison to fibre optics which require transceivers with their own logic and encoding circuitry within the SFP modules themselves. Edit: I think this article is actually pretty harmful, I don't think people would…
Yeah I totally agree with this as well.
Re: Review: A Dive into Mikrotik's Weird SmartNIC (2022)
#30The only odd thing is the price: Given it is the cheapest NIC in its class it should be a mass market product in high demand. The fact you get a free router built in is a cherry on top for the few who need it. If so why is it in such limited supply? Alternatively it is a way to save rack space for people who need to squeeze in a router that doesn't fit. But if this is a niche marker router why is it so cheep?
Maybe they're only given a limited supply of basically overstock chips from AWS. When AWS is building out data centers they need all the chips. Just speculating.
(Annapurna is the CPU company Amazon bought)