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Teaching a cheap ethernet switch new tricks (2019)

blog.benjojo.co.uk

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Re: Teaching a cheap ethernet switch new tricks (2019)

#11

Post by rusk »

Damogran6 wrote: post #7

I'm not seeing them on this side of the pond for less than about $425...did the author drop a zero in the price?

Sadly since the majority of these [ONIE] switches are aimed at datacenter deployments they are generally unsuitable for use on my desk. ... On top these switches would be aggressively priced out of my budget ... That was until I found the Dell N1100 series, ... And I found a cheap vendor that sold refurbished ones for around 85 GBP.

> did the author drop a zero in the price?

Not far off ...

Re: Teaching a cheap ethernet switch new tricks (2019)

#12

Post by bserge »

rusk wrote: post #9

Minor Quibble: £85 is not a cheap ethernet switch. It's an entertaining and informative read, but it's more like low-end datacentre hardware than that cheap €25 switch I've got in my home office. A little disappointing as I was hoping I'd have a cheeky high-bandwidth raspberry-pi alternative on my hands ...

My favorites are TP-Link's WDR3600/4300, AC1200 and AC1750. Yeah, not switches per se, but $20-40, Gigabit Ethernet, dual band Wifi, very stable and fast with OpenWRT, can do anything. You can daisy chain a few of them if you need more ports, it's rather fun.

Re: Teaching a cheap ethernet switch new tricks (2019)

#13

Post by myself248 »

geenew wrote: post #4

My main thought reading this as a non-network admin was of Mr Robot, and all the Linux installs on low level hardware used for hacks on that show. Very interesting read and lots of upside to what is discussed, but the thought of the uncountable, almost invisible operating systems running in a large network give me a odd feeling in the pit of my stomach. So many potential places for malfeasance to hide.

Keep that feeling in the pit of your stomach for a few years. Watch as a multitude of forces (mostly related to surveillance capitalism) foist billions of such devices on unsuspecting consumers. Tell anyone who'll listen, how shortsighted this is, how much of a fall it's setting us up for.

Watch it happen anyway. Watch it accelerate. Watch the devices grow in complexity, capability, connectivity, and vulnerability. Watch innumerable manufacturers go out of business with no software-update succession plan, no code escrow, no upgrade path for victi^H^H^H^H^H end users.

The pit of your stomach gets pretty damn sick of the state of things.

Re: Teaching a cheap ethernet switch new tricks (2019)

#14

Post by inetknght »

geenew wrote: post #4

My main thought reading this as a non-network admin was of Mr Robot, and all the Linux installs on low level hardware used for hacks on that show. Very interesting read and lots of upside to what is discussed, but the thought of the uncountable, almost invisible operating systems running in a large network give me a odd feeling in the pit of my stomach. So many potential places for malfeasance to hide.

Wait until you hear about the Internet of Things

Re: Teaching a cheap ethernet switch new tricks (2019)

#16

Post by benjojo12 »

rusk wrote: post #11
Damogran6 wrote: post #7

I'm not seeing them on this side of the pond for less than about $425...did the author drop a zero in the price?

Sadly since the majority of these [ONIE] switches are aimed at datacenter deployments they are generally unsuitable for use on my desk. ... On top these switches would be aggressively priced out of my budget ... That was until I found the Dell N1100 series, ... And I found a cheap vendor that sold refurbished ones for around 85 GBP. > did the author drop a zero in the price? Not far off ...

(Author here) These switches got a lot more expensive at the start of the pandemic, I think the chipsets became hard to source.

Re: Teaching a cheap ethernet switch new tricks (2019)

#17

Post by dhess »

baybal2 wrote: post #3

You don't need ONIE, nor any of that "Open" Compute stuff. Linux has recently got native framework for control of switching chips called "Distributed Switch Architecture." This turns a lot of very cheap hardware with very basic hardware switching chips into high performance routers.

Interesting! Is there a site that documents which off-the-shelf switch models work with DSA?

Re: Teaching a cheap ethernet switch new tricks (2019)

#19

Post by throwaway35i2 »

rusk wrote: post #9

Minor Quibble: £85 is not a cheap ethernet switch. It's an entertaining and informative read, but it's more like low-end datacentre hardware than that cheap €25 switch I've got in my home office. A little disappointing as I was hoping I'd have a cheeky high-bandwidth raspberry-pi alternative on my hands ...

it's cheap compared to the £3,000 one normally pays for datacenter switches.

Re: Teaching a cheap ethernet switch new tricks (2019)

#20

Post by hosteur »

wyager wrote: post #18

The author mentioned that 10gig switches were expensive and loud, but these days you can get fanless 10gig switches for pretty cheap. I have a fanless mikrotik switch at home with 4 10Gb SFP+ ports that cost like $130 (and has excellent industrial design).

Cool. Which one?
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