One port is fine

Posted Nov 4, 2024 16:44 UTC (Mon) by paulj (subscriber, #341)
In reply to: One port is fine by Trelane
Parent article: The OpenWrt One system

Many (or... pretty much /all/ these days?) of them already run Linux.

E.g. the market leader in the mid-range+, Broadcom, ship a Linux switch OS in their dev kit to vendors I think. Unfortunately, Broadcom are also utter ba*ds on any kind of open support - inc docs. You can however buy "white box" switches that give you full access to the Linux host, and let you manage them as Linux machines and/or run OpenWRT - even if you have to tolerate a huge binary-blob of a Broadcom driver (and sometimes a binary blob user-space bit too, depending on the approach).

However, the market leader in the lower-end, RealTek, either are a bit better and/or the chips are easier to rev-eng (simpler?) and there is some open-source support now for their switch chips. Some of these switches are fairly capable, inc 10G:

https://svanheule.net/switches

One port is fine

Posted Nov 5, 2024 13:24 UTC (Tue) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link] (4 responses)

Do you have some examples of white box switches that are decent?

One port is fine

Posted Nov 5, 2024 13:51 UTC (Tue) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (3 responses)

Personally, for my uses, I'd avoid the binary-blob Broadcom switches. I'd go for a decent RealTeks.

If you need the performance (or L3 features) of the Broadcom chips, I guess you're stuck and have to accept big (and sometimes buggy) blobs. I don't have a specific recommendation there. You are paying a lot more, so I assume most are good quality. I have played with Edgecore Networks ones a long time ago - they worked. And Edgecore's have been OEM resold by some very large "enterprise" hardware companies. The likes of Foxconn, Lanner, Quanta and Celestica are OEMs for a number of western brands - and some of those also are also the manufacturers for the "own design" network switches of FAANGs.

You kind of have to do your research if you need one of those higher-end switches: What software stack do you want to run on your higher-end "white box" switch, and then see which switches they support.

For the lower-end L2 RealTeks, they're cheap enough you can just buy one or two and experiment.

One port is fine

Posted Nov 6, 2024 16:18 UTC (Wed) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link] (2 responses)

Hmm. The RealTek options are compelling. I'm a bit hesitant to run sone random code on it though, rather than e.g OpenWRT. Is this a well established project or such?

One port is fine

Posted Nov 6, 2024 18:12 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (1 responses)

Well, it's a project to add device support within OpenWRT. The "upstream" the patches are going to is OpenWRT. You can download images from OpenWRT for those that are upstream. Though, as per the project page, a lot of devices are still far from fully supported! Caveat Emptor.

Have a look around https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/23.05.5/targets/re... to see what's there.

I don't know how well it works, havn't tried myself yet. On my TODO list to buy one of the ones documented as reasonably well supported.

OpenWrt switches

Posted Dec 2, 2024 12:43 UTC (Mon) by tim_small (guest, #35401) [Link]

The HPE or HP 1920 series are some cheap options for used gigabit switches with external console ports. These were produced by a Chinese part-owned HP subsidiary "H3C" which they acquired when they purchased 3Com and sold by HP and later HPE.

GPL sources aren't available (despite requests!) but nevertheless many models have mainline or snapshot OpenWrt support.

The PoE models aren't fully supported (e.g. fan speed control is lacking so the fans default to full-speed and the stock fans are noisy on full power), but development is active and ongoing. Some models (non PoE up to 24 port) and the smaller PoE models do not have fans so that's not a problem. Link aggregation doesn't yet work on any Realteks in OpenWrt as far as I know.

Locally the 24 port (+ 4x SFP) non-PoE version is available used from about £20 (€25 / $25).