A project that I'm involved with is probably going to be approved soon, and as part of it, I'll need to get a DGS-1210-52 which I want to flash with OpenWrt, because I can (TM). (In all seriousness, it's because I can't find any unmanaged 42-port switch in stock for some reason)
OpenWrt Wiki has, AFAICT, two pages dedicated to the DGS-1210 series, one for hardware revs A1, B1, C1 and D1 and another for the subsequent G1, F1 and F2 revs using Realtek SoC. DGS-1210-52 is mentioned specifically on the first page, but not on the second page 1210 running on Realtek.
Given the context, my question is: does -52 have G/F revisions? D-Link website for my region lists firmware for C1 and B1 for download, but the datasheet mentions F1. I can't find -52 specifically on OpenWrt's ToH but firmware selector certainly lists builds for 1210-52, and the platform is supposedly realtek/rtl839x; I don't know if it encompasses the Realtek RTL8380M for rev F1 or RTL8382M for G1.
This is all very confusing to me. If you know about this matter, I ask you to kindly clarify this for me. I need to know if OpenWrt supports whatever hardware revision I might end up with.
PS I've never run OW on dedicated switches before, but how would the performance be like if I were to use it as a router, would the NAT performance be abysmal?
suggests that it exists, but it matters what you will actually receive - and there is an additional catch, they apparently migrated to 'encrypted' firmwares with v6.30 (and it is unclear if devices running that are -or can be- supported 'easily'; v6.20 and earlier should be fine).
ZxXEL gs1900-48 might be an easier option, albeit with seriously limited flash size.
Ugh. Well, I've seen and used one consumer-grade router that pulled the encryption thing. User s-2 here (not tagging him, since it'll likely send a notification) has actually patched OW build system's firmware-utils to automatically encrypt firmware using publickly available D-Link keys. I hope DGS-1012 can be covered by it.
Zyxel is a brand unfamiliar to me, doesn't appear to have any supplier or distributor in this country either. I found the model you refer to on the local Amazon, but it's an international shipment, and quite a bit more expensive than DGS-1210-52. Not an option.
Honestly, the project doesn't need managed switch at all, but since I can't find 48-port unmanaged available, DGS-1210-52 is by far the cheapest in the managed 48-port range. Every other brand are noticeably more expensive. I checked again for 48-port unmanaged on Amazon, and I see things like TP-Link that's somehow more expensive than 1012-52 despite being unmanaged...
It is only meant to run the switch admin interface, not the whole internet.
A switch is a switch and a router is a router, that is hardware based not firmware based.
The thing is that although we have made a switch support for some switches. That support isn’t the same as original firmware functionality!
Luci support is very basic for switches, you can setup the ports. But Luci is really built for 4-port routers. Not 52-port switches. So the only meaningful way to set them up is through cli or direct writing to config files.
We can’t even control mode switch and LED yet on D-link. We don’t have more complex switch function support either that original firmware has.
Just the task of port mirroring is not easy done.
So if you want to sell a network service solution to a customer, a change of firmware can work against you in the long run.
Not to mention future support is mostly depending on the manufacturer releasing publicly the open firmware if it is open...
It is, but as I said, strictly speaking, only a dumb switch is needed. In fact even an FE switch will do, but in the interest of not consigning it to e-waste in the near future, I've decided on GbE. Anyway, only because I can't find any decent unmanaged 48-port for some reason, DGS-1210-52 being considered at all. Installing OpenWrt is only because the opportunity presented itself, I simply wish to run open source firmware on a commercial-grade product, as a learning experience.
Of course if a 45-port dumb switch is available by the time the project is underway, I'll be most certainly be getting that instead.
No, under no circumstances.
That's an ethernet switch, not a (powerful) router nor a client.
Why would you want to install a VPN software on a switch with barely enough processing power to run the configuration GUI, instead of a router or single client?
Maybe he has some very-low-bandwidth usage workflow, like a low traffic mqtt link for some metrics/stats/whatnot. Or as a "last-resort" type of admin-access channel, to make sure, that remote access can be retained if other access means are reconfigured.
That's mostly it. The LAN will basically be 36 crypto mining rigs. So the use case for VPN here is to connect and then access the mining rig's web UI.
The upstream router is some ISP-provided Oppo router using 5G connection. Never heard of Oppo making routers before, not sure who might be the ODM, if OWrt might possibly run on it.
From a purely technical point of view, 'it's possible', but as pointed out before, this is a switch, not a router - and the 'companion SOC' is very much on the slow(est) end, designed to just deal with displaying the webinterface. For plain routing (no encryption involved), the most it can do is around 15 MBit/s of throughput, I don't even want to imagine how bad it would be at doing encryption (something its mips 4k SOC really isn't meant to do) - but, please, do test it and report back.
But just to be very clear, the results should be very, very bad (if at all) - maybe that suffices for your use case, but more probably it wouldn't.
Normal sane small business class network have a admin vlan controlled by the router to admin the network, not a VPN server in the switch. So you only need to connect to the router with a vpn and rout that connection to admin vlan and then you can connect to the switch.
But OpenWrt support of these switches are basic at best. And luci support is even less supported.
Statistics and similar found in original firmware, well you will probably be surprised in many different ways.
At least compared to what to expect compared to original firmware functions.
OpenWrt have been developed many years to run very small home routers with usually 4 or 5 external ports. Not a massive amount of ports, SFP/SFP+, POE and other normal switch function. So switches are a new “market” under development.
My desire and expectation of it running on switches is predicated on the Linux bit. Yes, I understand adding OWrt support to this class of devices is brand new, but for functions it already has for switches like DSA should perfectly fine. As I mentioned before, I don't want to switch out factory firmware because "OWrt is superior" for managed switches, I'm doing it as a learning experience and because I want to give a middle-finger to proprietary stacks which I abhor.
I also understand that OWrt has nothing to offer in way of what managed switches have, at least UCI and LuCi are not designed to handle them yet, even if the underlying kernel can. But I do hope and expect one day, with switches and routers running OWrt, OpenWISP can let us have a proper managed network, just like Ubiquiti, Meraki, Aruba, etc. Because it's certainly not a technical limitation. I hope to also contribute to that effort.
If you're looking for an OpenWrt supported switch that might provide some rudimentary routing capability then there are only 3 Ubiquit based devices available (USW-Flex, ToughSwitch 5, and EdgeSwitch 8). Still remember these were designed as switches not routers!
No, I don't need routing at all—there's an upstream router—I was just curious about that aspect. And also, 48-ports are required here so your suggestion, unfortunately, are inapplicable. Besides any Ubiquiti gear will be far more expensive.
OTOH, I will be needing a VPN server running, but just like routing it's going to be far too budensome for a switch CPU to handle.
Well if I compare my old Ubi Edgeswitch ES-8-150 with D-Link DGS-1210-10MP and their respective built-in PSU.
In hardware lifetime I can now say that I got what I paid for.
You're right, but I'm part of this small project as an outside IT guy for a mid-sized group of companies which doesn't have a single IT on staff. They apparently used to have a team that developed several in-house software too, but the entire department got laid off because I heard they pissed off the owner somehow.
So yeah, no amount of benefits will be comprehensible to the same owner who's actually signing off on the proposals.
Oh, nah, that's entirely separate story years ago. They're probably about a decade since that IT dept was laid off, but colleagues who worked with them are still there. I was just using that as an example of futility in trying to convince the head honcho the benefits of superior tech. Also, culturally in general, this locale are into buying cheap shit and replacing things down the line.
I personally got to interact with this org maybe about 4-5 years ago. They use outside IT techs like myself for one-off works like if something broke, or a project where this switch will be needed. As broken and messy as it is, that's been working out for them, so they don't get any IT hires. The owner can be stubborn AF if he convinced himself he's "right". Few years back, they moved to a new building and asked us to wire it up for APs and only APs. We were like, look you have phones on every desk, we can just have Ethernet cables pulled at each desk alongside the phone line. But no. They have internal mail and some real estate accounting backend servers, wire them up? Nope. Accounting dept separately had their own switch which connected to their accountant desktops. At first they got me to install Wi-Fi adapter on the mail Windows Server, which I somehow managed, and eventually they ended up moving it to accounting dept area, and plugged it into that switch.