Openwrt on Zyxel gs1900 for a managed L2 switch

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

Hi all.

I’ve been using openwrt on all of my access points. So as soon I needed more switch ports I searched for an openwrt supported switch and bought an used Zyxel GS1900-24E v1.

I read some posts in the forum and I realized that flashing openwrt 24.x Is an almost one-way choice with almost no easy way back to stock.

So I’m asking here if with openwrt I will get a good L2 managed switch without missing features from the stock firmware.

So far now I need Vlans, trunking, spanning tree and some qos setting (for voip and multimedia vlans, igmp snooping…) and some performance/availability monitor capabilities or metrics collection.

What do you think about It?

Thanks,

Mario

2

Must admit that I haven't tried in a few years, but I don't understand why flashing back to stock should be a problem. Isn't that simply sysupgrade -F oem-image.bix?

3

See this post by @slh about reverting to stock.

Anyway , I meant to ask if gs1900 owners are satisfied about openwrt switching features or there are some missing from stock firmware.

I really would adopt openwrt for my switches and never go back

4

No one here? Someone Who share his experience using Openwrt on a managed switch? @slh ?

5

I am using a Zyxel GS1900-24E running latest and greatest OpenWrt (24.10.4) with Vlans and it runs fine in my environment with a Bananapi BPI-R3, a Netgear Wax 206 - all on OpenWrt.

6

I’m running a GS1900-10HPv2 on OpenWRT with working PoE control, and it’s been operating reliably as my core switch for quite a while. It’s currently switching 6 VLANs to and from 3 downstream switches, a multi-network WiFi AP (also running OpenWRT), and numerous other devices as well as handling the incoming fiber trunk line from the edge devices/servers.

Other than needing a version of the PoE control not present in the stock firmware as of 24.10.3, it’s been more reliable than any other non-enterprise-grade switch I’ve tried to deploy in such an environment.