OpenWrt on a PoE Switch

[Purevok]

I'm planning on buying the Zyxel GS1900-24EP PoE switch to power all my network devices at my house.

I chose this device specifically because it was compatible with OpenWrt. I have never used OpenWrt on a PoE switch before, only on a router. Will I lose any features if I switch from the OEM firmware? Is there any other reason I shouldn't install OpenWrt on this PoE switch?

[ncompact]

@Purevok

Will I lose any features if I switch from the OEM firmware?

first of all I don't have this switch

I view this note on its reference page, so if you intend to use it as POE maybe it's better that you don't switch to Openwrt (I hope to be proven wrong by someone who has this device)

[OpenWrt Wiki] ZyXEL GS1900-24EP

To have absolute certainty I suggest you try to contact the author of this post:

Zyxel GS1900-24EP support, production ready?

I am guessing /etc/config/poe should look like this for the gs1900-24ep: config global option budget '130' config port option enable '1' option id '1' option name 'lan1' option poe_plus '1' option priority '2' config port option enable '1' option id '2' option name 'lan2' option poe_plus '1' option priority '2' config port option enable '1' option id '3' option name 'lan3' option poe_plus '1' option priority '2' config port option enable '1' option id '4' option name 'lan4' …

[stragies]

@Purevok

Will I lose any features if I switch from the OEM firmware?

I would love to be corrected on this from someone with newer facts, but AFAIK, LAG/Bonding does not work, so you'll be stuck with 1GB upstream to whatever router device for the other 23 devices connected to the 24EP. See also this thread from the Developer section: About hardware bonding support in switch chip - #3 by stragies

Also, POE support/management can be problematic for newer devices, if they use don't use broadcom PSE controller, but instead the in-house Realtek PSE.

[Purevok]

@ncompact

To have absolute certainty I suggest you try to contact the author of this post:

Zyxel GS1900-24EP support, production ready? - #22 by Klaas

I'm not too opposed to being a little bit of a guinea pig, then I could report back and confirm if it works or not. It looks like I should be able to just install the "realtek-poe" package. Is it more difficult than this?

@stragies

I would love to be corrected on this from someone with newer facts, but AFAIK, LAG/Bonding does not work, so you'll be stuck with 1GB upstream to whatever router device for the other 23 devices connected to the 24EP. See also this thread from the Developer section: About hardware bonding support in switch chip - #3 by stragies

Thanks for the info, I should be fine without those features as I don't need that much throughput anyway.

@stragies

Also, POE support/management can be problematic for newer devices, if they use don't use broadcom PSE controller, but instead the in-house Realtek PSE.

What do you mean by problematic? Do you think the PoE functionality will work at all or no? Also, do you have a suggestion for a PoE switch that might be supported better?

[stragies]

@Purevok

What do you mean by problematic? Do you think the PoE functionality will work at all or no?

On the realtek switches, POE support is (for most/all? devices) handled by either a Broadcom or a Realtek controller chip. They "speak" similar dialects. The Broadcoms have been supported for ages, first by a LUA script implementation, then the C-version in realtek-poe. User Hurricos has/had? been working with User MrNuke on an enhanced version here, where the PSE dialects are both supported. But AFAIK, that is still in the experimental PR state with some unknowns to figure out. The linux kernel proper has some sort of support for POE in general, that will/might(?) obsolete realtek-poe at some point in the future, iirc in v 6.13 or something, once OpenWrt will use that kernel version.

Now the problem is, Zyxel had been using Broadcom PSEs for most/all of their switches, but switched to Realtek PSE for Revision 2/B on most/all models. On the Realtek PSEe, power is delivered by default to the ports, but you can't toggle it ON/OFF, nor can you read the power consumption for each port.

All my in-use-devices are V1, and thus realtek-poe works fine for POE management/measuring, but if you buy a new device, you'll most likely get one of the later board revisions, where it doesn't.

I've been a bit out the loop these last few months, so there may be some recent developments I missed.