List of layer 3 switches

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

As far as I can tell no one has made a list of layer 3 switches supported by OpenWRT. A layer 3 switch is simply a switch that can do routing with reasonable performance. The idea is to do everything in one device so that you don't need a dedicated router. I realize that there is some overlap with all in one routers but I'm personally interested in devices with more than 5 ports.

My list so far:

  • Banana Pi BPI-R4
  • Banana Pi BPI-RV2
  • Ubiquiti USW-Flex
  • Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X
  • Ubiquiti EdgePoint R6
  • MikroTik RB5009UG+S+IN
  • Cisco vEdge 1000
  • Meraki MX65/MX65W
  • NXP LS2088ARDB
  • XikeStor SKS8300-8X
  • Mellonox Spectrum SN2100
  • Mellanox Spectrum SN2700
  • Mellanox Spectrum SN3700

Feel free to suggest other devices

2

Series of D-Link DGS-1210, Zyxel GS1900. Then Banana Pi BPI-R2, BPI-R64, BPI-R3. Just so you know devices stock firmware often utilize specialized hardware acceleration that openwrt can't fully leverage

3

https://toh.openwrt.org/?view=misc put "switch" in the device field ?

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4

Those switches can only do layer 2 as the hardware doesn't support hardware accelerated routing. For Banana Pi there are only a few devices that have more than 5 ports.

5

ah Zyxel GS1900 doesn't but D-Link DGS-1210 got basic Layer 3 features like static routing. Check ubiquiti edgeswitch and Juniper ex models

6

The D-link DGS-1210 uses the Realtek RTL8382M which doesn't support routing.

7

MikroTik RB5009ug+s+in
MikroTik RB5009upr+s+in (with PoE, PR pending)

8

Am I correct and saying that this can only do basic routing? I don't see support for NAT and the CPU probably isn't powerful enough to do it.

Edit: Never mind

9

The SoCs on the RB5009 are Cortex-A72 based - should be more then enough for Gb routing (except for OpenVpn)

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10

One more: Cisco Meraki MX65 (with 2x PoE via How to check PoE support and usage on Meraki MX65 - #2 by evs)

11

I guess that's one definition.

I am thinking more of it like a switch which can be programmed to make forwarding decisions based on L3 headers. Such devices will do line rate L3 forwarding without involving the management CPU at all. So the performance is better than just "reasonable". But the hardware L3 matching tables have fixed size, limiting the number of L3 rules the switch can handle.

The management CPU of such L3 switches is usually not powerful enough to do any sotware forwarding when the hardware tables are full. But it is often powerful enough to run routing protocols, making it possible to build a quite fancy and fast router as long as you don't need big routing tables.

From your list, things like the XikeStor SKS8300-8X and other rtl93xx devices might qualify as L3 switches with my definition. At least the hardware does. There is also some L3 offloading support in the driver, but I don't know how complete it is.

I wouldn't call a Banana Pi BPI-R4 a L3 switch. It might have a builtin switch with offloading capabilities, but the CPU is powerful enough to route without that. It can be used with huge routing tables and/or interfaces attached to external buses without any offloading.

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12

Ubiquiti USW-Flex and Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X can be scrapped from your list

Does that mean 100MBit/s ? Should penalty of Wireguard / OpenVpn / SQM be taken into account?

Several of your listed devices have a mix of RJ45 and SFP ports - do note that this requires additional compatible SFP Fiber Optic- or Copper modules

13

More additions
GL.iNet GL-MT6000
ASUS TUF-AX6000

14

I like the way you think. I have not seen offloading for PPPoE and NAT in the switch SoCs. So it works better if you can live without PPPoE and IPv4.

Then you can look at fun features like ECMP in the RTL931x series hardware and wonder how far software support is.

If your uplink is 50mbit/s or less the management CPU might be able to handle it in software. (Not sure if SQM to avoid buffer bloat can be done in hardware)

You are not with one of the 10g / 25g providers with static IPv6 by chance?