MikroTik CRS317-1G-16S+RM
The MikroTik CRS317-1G-16S+RM is a rack-mountable manageable switch powered by a Marvell Prestera 98DX8216 switch chip. Due to the high port density and price-to-performance ratio, understanding its buffer capacity is critical when dealing with speed mismatches (like 10Gb to 1Gb traffic).
[!WARNING] Data Quality Warning: MikroTik and Marvell do not publicly document the exact hardware buffer sizes on their datasheets for these chips. The values below are approximations based on community inspection of the switch chip's memory allocation pool via the RouterOS command line.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Ports | 16x 10G SFP+, 1x 1G RJ45 |
| Total Buffer | ~4 MB (Estimated) |
| Architecture | Dynamically Shared |
Approximating the Buffer via CLI
The approximated value of ~4 MB (or roughly 32 Mbits) is observed by running a RouterOS CLI command on the device to query the Quality of Service hardware offload capability:
/interface ethernet switch qos monitor
Depending on the RouterOS version (especially v7+ with hardware offloading enabled), this command outputs a total-byte-cap and total-packet-cap variable representing the total memory allocated dynamically across the switch chip.
Architectural Note
Because the CRS317 uses a shared buffer, traffic burst handling relies heavily on enabling Flow Control (802.3x) to prevent instantaneous tail-drops when pushing bursts of 10G traffic out of a congested or slower port.