Hello
I have a router that has an I2C bus (not native, but hackable) and no internal switch (just a single ethernet port). Actually I have a few different models, for the example let's say I would use the TP-LINK MR-3020 one.
I also have some external switches (standalone cheap TP-LINK switches) with 5 and 8 ports, models TP-SG1005D and TP-SG1008D, and they use chipsets Realtek RTL-8367 and RTL-8370, respectively. These chips are manageable, they can do VLANs and other stuff, but they have to be programmed to do so. Originally the switches have an i2c memory onboard that maps all the ports to a single vlan without tags. There is a header on the boards of both switch types to get access to the i2c bus, and talk both to the memory chip and also to the realtek processor (which starts as a i2c master, reads the memory chip and then turns into i2c slave to be controlled by the i2c bus receiving more external commands afterwards).
I know that there are models of routers supported by OpenWRT that use those switch chips inside them. For this to work, would it just be a matter of connecting the i2c bus on the switch to the i2c bus of the router and control it with swconfig?
Thank you!
Andre
Edit: ASUS RT-N56U is such a router with rtl8367.
(Last edited by token on 23 Nov 2015, 21:21)