What managed switch are you using, and why? Are there open source alternatives, or even open hardware switches?
What managed switch are you using, and why? Are there open source alternatives, or even open hardware switches?
Anything running open wrt. I have 4 different devices with ooenwrt on them and they justseamlessly works greatt .
I'm currently running pfsense, and then mikrotik and ubiquiti switched and ubiquiti AP's. I'm slowly removing the ubiquiti switches and moving to mikrotik as I'm upgrading to 10gbe. Mikrotik switches have a reputation of being reliable, capable, and cheap-ish. So far I like them. While I love ubiquiti's single pane of glass approach with the unifi controller, I wanted to get away from that a bit. I work in IT, and most things I encounter don't have that... And are configured via cli and or web interface. When I built my home network I jumped into ubiquiti for the ease. Now I'm back tracking for more learning.
I use OPNSense with some older Aruba I got from a local IT guy that upgraded an office. I had to update the firmware and learn CLI for HP, but not bad considering price was nice. I would recommend to get something not consumer if you really want to get invested.
At home I use opnsense for firewalling, and behind that I have a mixture of switches:
Frankly, I've had good luck with anything except for the tp-link. unifi tends to oversimplify in their ui IMHO (e.g. there's no manual LAG settings, you get LACP only), and I trust pretty much all of them fairly well except for the tp-link. I know a lot of folks use other smallbusiness/homeoffice switches (netgear, tplink, etc) and frankly I stay away from them as much as i can nowadays.
There are some open source switching firmwares and opensource virtualized switching. To get there you need to be willing to make some serious sacrifices, though, in budget, performance, flexibility, and power bill...
Opnsense as a VM in my VMware env, for physical switch I like my Cisco Nexus, can be a bit loud and a bit much , but it’s reliable and I can find parts easily. Ubiquity was my go to, but offerings, firmware, and management have gone down the toilet.
I might cop some flack but I use Cisco, they’re rock solid, last for years and just work with minimal issues and I’ve not run into problems with hardware under performing or firmware bugs like I have on others.
That said, Ubiquiti makes fantastic hardware, I believe Mikrotik does too.
You can absolutely buy open hardware that allows you to install custom switching OS; Dell and Mellanox make them as do many other manufacturers (I think even Facebook has a hardware switch, not that I’d buy it lol). One of the more common OS to install on them is Cumulus Linux and a lot of these use “spine leaf” topologies.
Thank you for the insight. Other comments mention Mikrotik a lot, but as I understand they don't offer open hardware … I will research some more in the direction of open hardware, thank you!
I used to be a big netgear fan. But they had a lot of connections with the nsa. So now I use tplink for everything since they're a great cheaper brand. But they're chinese, so I traded one invasive country for another
I have been using corporate surplus HP switches for years. My wireless equipment is Ubiquti. Only complaint so far is fan noise from the switches, but that's an easy fix with $50 worth of better fans. I bought the Ubiquiti stuff specifically for wireless roaming, and it works flawlessly.