I use it for the home lab, where I have a one-armed router serving multiple VLANs, and I have 3x MacMinis running Linux as a "server farm" (The latter I use because they are quite a good gear power-management wise, scaling from ~18W at idle up to ~250W when all cores are busy, and because they are very very quiet, which is handy when the "lab" is next to the bedroom).
The biggest complain I have about this box is that the only way to manage is the Web UI, and especially the 802.1q configuration is a bit unintuitive (though I just learned the firmware is actually upgradable to something with decent IOS CLI, so I will try it out and update here the impressions).
Otherwise, needing just a very simple L2 switching and 802.1q trunking at gigabit speeds, and fanless operation - I am pretty happy with it.
8 ports works well in my setup (the main segmentation/trunking is really in the lab, the rest is either wireless, or directly connected to the "border router").
Where I needed to add more access ports, I used http://www.conrad.com/ce/en/product/976050/CE-Port-Network-S... to help. Also based on my experience seems to be quite a solid building block for a small home/lab network.
full disclosure: I do work for cisco.
EDIT: the upgrade to the latest firmware indeed unearthed the checkboxes to enable telnet/ssh, as well as quite a few new features, comparable if not more than the "bigger brothers". What's pleasant is a quite comprehensive IPv6 support.
My main hesitation is the proprietary firmware. Now I'm not going to disagree with anyone arguing that Cisco knows what they're doing and is competent at putting together firmware for the hardware they sell. Nor will I disagree with anyone arguing that open source is not a magical talisman ensuring quality. No, my main concerns are a) timeliness of critical updates, and useful lifetime of the hardware vs support lifetime.
Being open source cannot prevent bugs, but once found, fixes tend to become available quickly. Also, I have found that the useful lifetime of computing and networking hardware tends to exceed the period of time the vendor will offer support for it. I have gigabit ethernet switches I bought years ago that still work just fine, even though they're no longer sold. That's what I love about OpenWRT. The hardware my home router uses is discontinued, but still does the job just fine, and I can still get updates when I need to.
That said, I think I will be checking the SG300 out. Thanks for the recommendation.
+1 on the OpenWRT. Building a custom package that allows you to get a $20 specialised networked appliance is a breeze. That platform absolutely rocks.
But further tinkering revealed it seems to be a quite-close approximation of IOS, but not the same IOS you'd get on the "older brethen" boxes.
It's about 95% the same, with differences in small details - the format of the output, the behavior on "more" prompt, the look of that prompt, the way the certs are stored, etc.
Nonetheless should be close enough to be usable in a geek home environment.
I got the software here, looks like it allows to download w/o logging in: https://software.cisco.com/download/release.html?mdfid=28301...
Since the box I had ran a rather old version, I had to do the intermediate steps as described in http://serverfault.com/questions/622724/error-illegal-softwa...
One caveat I noticed is the ssh seems to not work when connecting from Ubuntu 14.04, works fine from OS X. When I have time, I'll debug it further. (I very rarely do any changes on it, the CLI was more an unexpected bonus I wanted to check out rather than a real need).
http://www.mikrotik.com/downloadterms.html
I mean, sure, asking for 45 USD for a CD with the source is technically complying with the GPL -- but it does seem a bit strange in this day and age. Not to mention that for the source code to be useful, one would hope one could build a working routerOS image from it -- and it doesn't appear that the CD will enable a user to build a running image -- and therefore not facilitate changing the product.
But apart from that, my first thought was -- can this thing run BSD -- because pf is quite a bit friendlier than iptables (even if the latter has gotten a lot better lately).
Does anyone know if there are any recommended alternatives to soekris for running a bsd switch/router (preferably running at ~gigabit speeds) ?
It's only a 3 port system though.
I'm with you about the GPL though. It's my biggest complaint about it. Apart from the proprietary hardware (which OK, I guess I can forgive it), they definitely seem to be playing it pretty loose with the terms of the GPL.
Pf is indeed nice and it'd be cool to run OpenBSD on it. That said, as I mentioned I really like their configuration tools and they make iptables actually quite easy to configure.
Your best bet for a BSD router is probably to pick up a cheapish computer and put in one of the Intel or HP quad-port ethernet cards and then plug into a dumb switch. They can be had for surprisingly reasonable prices, I saw some on Amazon for ~$80 (the quad-port cards, that is).
[0]: http://www.maxxwave.com/solutions/security/routermaxx-6-port...
I'm also scared that I'm going to open up my home intranet to the world every time I tweak some of the advanced settings.
Not trying to dissuade anyone from using them, but it's light years away from a DD-WRT-based router.
OTOH, the ability to run VMs on your router is magical. I have yet to do that, but I'm itching to do something like putting the unifi management tools on it.
That said, RouterOS pretty well documented and isn't hard as long as you know the basics. Mikrotik actually has a pretty vibrant little community around their wiki.
I've been looking at trying to control some of my devices a bit more (eg, SmartTVs).
PFSense looks good, but the dedicated hardware boxes are kinda pricy[1], and I don't really want to build something myself.
A switch with a built in firewall at that price is an interesting option.
I've heard people say it's not really powerful enough CPU wise to cope with a ton of rules (>hundreds), but I have a fairly involved firewall config on mine and it's no trouble.
Funny story, we use a firewall rule to punish roommates for not doing their share of the chores. If they get too far overdue on chores, we have an iptables rule to randomly drop a certain percentage of packets to their machine.
the 15W consumption seems to hint it could be, but the datasheet does not mention it.
I have 1 2port VLAN that connects my cable modem to my router on the TP-Link. From that switch I have 1 port cables to a machine with wireshark, and I can configure that port to monitor various VLANs for whatever reason.
I run MRTG for several things, including basic traffic graphing. I display the graphs from the router uplink port and a couple of other key ports in a window on the VMS that also has security cameras on it. From that monitor I can keep on eye on key things (cameras, Internet I/O, some home automation stuff).
Anyway, I haven't found an affordable "perfect" switch for home stuff, but there are a lot of cheap, decent managed switches that give you a lot more flexibility beyond "everything on 1 network".
My home net is essentially segmented into Primary LAN, Security Devices, Guest LAN (mostly just a wifi bridge) and LAB LAN.
I think what would be ideal is something in the vein of the Linksys SFE2000, with an open-source firmware akin to OpenWRT. AFAIK, that, or something approaching that isn't available. However, I would love to be wrong in that regard.
See the bottom of this page for models the 24 and 8 switches are what you are looking for. http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/switches/catalyst-2960...
Also, if you want a cheaper options the Dell Basic switches are fully managed and have just about any feature you could want.
http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/powerconnect-2800/fs
Unless I'm missing something that you are looking for.
http://www.ubnt.com/accessories/toughswitch/
and
http://www.ubnt.com/unifi-switching-routing/unifi-switch/
That's exactly what you are looking for. SOHO friendly (fanless, cheap, supports vlans).
That said, I do hope other developments in network gear that will be useful in other markets emerge from this effort.
From my perspective, there's a gap in network gear between the unmanaged, low port-count switches in plastic enclosures, targeted to home and small office consumers, and the lower tiers of Cisco's catalog, targeted toward top-of-rack or wiring-closet-of-a-larger-building type uses. I would love to see a managed switch with say, 8-24 ports, supporting features such 802.11Q VLANs. I would love to be able segment my network at home so different devices with different performance and security needs aren't all stepping on each other's toes. And I'd like the firmware and hardware designs to be open source, so it can readily patched when bugs are found, and easily adapted to new use cases.
I realize that I'm an outlier and that my needs are not common, or there'd probably be equipment on the market that met them. But it is my hope that as a result of Facebook's work here, and similar efforts, that building such a device will become feasible.