OpenWRT on Zyxel POE switches

Installing and Using OpenWrt
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Hi - I am upgrading my home network to managed switches, and managed to get a good deal on a pair of Zyxel GS1900-24HP switches. One is v1, the other v2. I've upgraded their firmware to the latest OEM versions, but the v1 device is now out of support. Moving to OpenWRT is therefore tempting, both for ongoing support & security fixes, and also for the common admin user interface that would give me.

However, despite running OpenWRT on my routers and access points for many years, I have no experience of running OpenWRT on switches, so I have some questions, if any kind soul can help?

  1. Do I lose any native functionality by switching to OpenWRT?
  2. Is there any additional useful functionality "unlocked" by switching to OpenWRT?
  3. Does the PoE continue to work properly? I've seen some negative comments about the v2 device in particular when running OpenWRT.

Thanks for any insight.

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  1. it will be supporyed again? Softwarevfeatures like lldp or lacp or snmp need to be installed if needed, per-port qos is not available
  2. It can act as a very slow firewall like to hide ad-hoc hw management interfaces
  3. https://git.openwrt.org/?p=openwrt/openwrt.git;a=commit;h=a5ac8ad0ba9df50bdd0dda1dc26cf36f83006893
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This thread may be of some help: Support for RTL838x based managed switches

There are though some concerns whether support will continue atm.

I can’t speak to your specific questions on the Zyxel switches, but my Netgear GS308T on the RTL8380M has few issues afaict.

The TOH may also be some help: https://openwrt.org/toh/zyxel/gs1900-10hp

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Thank you both - useful information (that developers thread is going to take a while to read!).

Given what you've said, and especially that ongoing support appears to be in some doubt, I think I'll hold off making any changes, and just run with the OEM firmware for now.