Hi there, I was looking for combinations of switching hardware and open source switching software. Stratum and Cumulus Linux caught my attention, but these seem to be focussed towards the industry and would likely be very difficult to run in a homelab. I’m not going to touch the likes of Ubiquity, but as of now the only choice seems to be closed-source software from TPLink and/or Cisco. I’m going to try and harden the inside of my network too with ACLs and any other features I find on the switches, and having an open source OS with regular updates would be very nice to have.
Any suggestions? I was trying to find something to run on a MikroTik switch, since I find their L2 OS a bit lacking.
Cheers!
Edit: a kind user mentioned OpenWRT, which I should have looked into more seriously before posting this. I’m going through it right now, any suggestions are welcome!
Stratum, Cumulus, Vyos, openwrt, and pfsense are all the most router focused options I can think of. You also have options of just using Network Manager (NM) to do static routes, and network bonding, and using FRRouting for more advanced routing options.
Personally, on the lower level stuff like network bonding and such, I prefer the NM over trying to do the same things on openwrt so far. Just hard to beat Redhat Docs on a lot of things that are more “enterprise” like. I haven’t had any reason to mess with the others, though. My research had Vyos as the more powerful option compared to pfsense, and some feature of cumulus like supporting Multichassis Link Aggregation Groups (MLAG) are really cool, and something I’d like to play with more.
Thanks for the answer! I am not looking for something too complicated (just some security features in my LAN like ACLs, sticky ports etc). The main focus is to be able to do it with FOSS software. I love your answer, but would I accomplish what you mention in your post? I need to be able to run Linux on a switch: and I have yet to find an affordable switch which will operate with a custom OS.
I am even considering purchasing a Qotom box and bridging the ports together through software, although I really don’t like that approach (I want a switch with dedicated switching hardware in my homelab, not another router). Haven’t found any solutions yet
I will say openwrt is great for running on home routers. It’s more specialized for that purpose, being made to fit on the small flashes of some of them.
Thank you, I did consider OpenWRT (thanks for the mention, I’ll add it to the post). Since OpenWRT is mostly considered a “router-first” OS, I didn’t think it would suit a switching-only landscape: but now that you mention it, OpenWRT should be able to run very well as a switch with plenty of L3 features. And it’s linux!
Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll go read up on it a bit
theres a reason you wont find many L2 “software” its extremely inefficient and kills processors. Switches use purpose built hardware to be able to hit millions of I/Os without using a lot of power because of this. If you are trying to use a generic x86 processor for this, well you will have a bad time.
Hi, I’m not looking for L2 features - I’m specifically looking for software that is L3 or above. I would like to run said software on dedicated switching hardware. Unfortunately, OpenWRT does not seem to have builds for the newer Mikrotik devices.
I understand what you mean. Unfortunately, I need a switch to link different parts of my homelab together, and most routers on the market that I can run a custom OS on simply do not have the network backplane like dedicated switches. I was looking at Mikrotik’s offerings and whilst they have great hardware, there is no OpenWRT support for their newer models. Same with the TPLink ER series.
If something like a Qotom box had a dedicated switching controller and ports switched through hardware instead of me having to do it via software, I’d likely purchase one of those anyway
A number of their switches do run or dualboot RouterOS not just SwitchOS. Your performance at routing might be crap and it might make the performance of the L2 stuff be limited by the crap CPU, but it is possible, haha.
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Stratum, Cumulus, Vyos, openwrt, and pfsense are all the most router focused options I can think of. You also have options of just using Network Manager (NM) to do static routes, and network bonding, and using FRRouting for more advanced routing options.
Personally, on the lower level stuff like network bonding and such, I prefer the NM over trying to do the same things on openwrt so far. Just hard to beat Redhat Docs on a lot of things that are more “enterprise” like. I haven’t had any reason to mess with the others, though. My research had Vyos as the more powerful option compared to pfsense, and some feature of cumulus like supporting Multichassis Link Aggregation Groups (MLAG) are really cool, and something I’d like to play with more.
Thanks for the answer! I am not looking for something too complicated (just some security features in my LAN like ACLs, sticky ports etc). The main focus is to be able to do it with FOSS software. I love your answer, but would I accomplish what you mention in your post? I need to be able to run Linux on a switch: and I have yet to find an affordable switch which will operate with a custom OS.
I am even considering purchasing a Qotom box and bridging the ports together through software, although I really don’t like that approach (I want a switch with dedicated switching hardware in my homelab, not another router). Haven’t found any solutions yet
I will say openwrt is great for running on home routers. It’s more specialized for that purpose, being made to fit on the small flashes of some of them.
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Thank you, did so!
OpenWRT?
Thank you, I did consider OpenWRT (thanks for the mention, I’ll add it to the post). Since OpenWRT is mostly considered a “router-first” OS, I didn’t think it would suit a switching-only landscape: but now that you mention it, OpenWRT should be able to run very well as a switch with plenty of L3 features. And it’s linux!
Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll go read up on it a bit
theres a reason you wont find many L2 “software” its extremely inefficient and kills processors. Switches use purpose built hardware to be able to hit millions of I/Os without using a lot of power because of this. If you are trying to use a generic x86 processor for this, well you will have a bad time.
Hi, I’m not looking for L2 features - I’m specifically looking for software that is L3 or above. I would like to run said software on dedicated switching hardware. Unfortunately, OpenWRT does not seem to have builds for the newer Mikrotik devices.
https://vyos.io/
Seems x86 only, is there COTS x86 with switching fabric?
If you want L3 features you want a router, not a switch. </pedantry>
I understand what you mean. Unfortunately, I need a switch to link different parts of my homelab together, and most routers on the market that I can run a custom OS on simply do not have the network backplane like dedicated switches. I was looking at Mikrotik’s offerings and whilst they have great hardware, there is no OpenWRT support for their newer models. Same with the TPLink ER series.
If something like a Qotom box had a dedicated switching controller and ports switched through hardware instead of me having to do it via software, I’d likely purchase one of those anyway
A number of their switches do run or dualboot RouterOS not just SwitchOS. Your performance at routing might be crap and it might make the performance of the L2 stuff be limited by the crap CPU, but it is possible, haha.