My Mikrotik router continues to Just Work. Unfortunately, it has five ethernet ports and I have six things I want to connect to it. So to get that one extra port, I've had an old 24-port switch (which I had lying around) sitting in the cupboard, sucking up power and generating heat for the sake of tying three ports together.

No longer!


SFP module providing a sixth ethernet port

As you can see in the picture, I've taken advantage of the Mikrotik's SFP slot to insert a module which provides one more copper ethernet port. SFP is more normally used to provide fibre interfaces, but you can use it for normal gigabit ethernet too.

I first tried this some years ago, procuring the cheapest copper ethernet SFP module I could find (I think it was made by Cisco). Unfortunately this particular standard isn't very, and it didn't work. So I eventually gave in and bought one made by Mikrotik themselves. This plugged straight in and provides 1Gbps to my NAS. So the 24 port switch is finally retired and things are a bit less toasty in the cupboard.