Another is that I believe RPI-R2 can support the mainline Linux kernel with normal distributions (e.g. Ubuntu), do MikroTik and EdgerouterX support that as well in addition to OpenWRT?
Does BPI-R2 actually supports those distributions, or rather those distributions "can run" on that hardware? That's a difference. OpenWRT can be run on Mikrotik, yet Mikrotik doesn't support that. OpenBSD runs on Edgerouter, yet I doubt they support that. Will anyone that I will buy BPI-R2 from, fix my "normal distribution" if it fails to detect some hardware, or with a failed upgrade?
It's an awesome device but I think we are confusing a few important things here. Like the word "support" for a start.
For a switch, probably not. But it does open up a bunch of possibilities for some constrained environments.
I would use such a thing combined with a few other services aside from pure network switching. Off the top of my head, I'm thinking running pi-hole and Home Assistant.
Why? Because I live in a studio apartment, and it would be a single, small and quiet box. I'm currently doing this on a mini-ITX J3455, and while the setup is broadly OK, I'd love to be able to remove the switch I have lying around. Also, the integrated Realtek controllers suck, and I can't replace them with anything better (there's no PCIe port).
Of course, your other points absolutely matter, and are the reason why I'm still looking around for quiet x86 machines that I could expand.
Worked great until it died a few months back. Now it’s less expensive to just buy the equivalent Netgate appliance. It’s been great.
I also want to do some routing on a gigabit link, so the RPI doesn't scratch that itch. I'm also not comfortable with the various horror stories I've heard about SD cards dying in Pis (although I've run one with home assistant for several years with no issues).
I'd also like to avoid running external drives, the goal being to have a self-contained unit. I'd rather have a larger unit instead of multiple small ones that require cabling (mostly for esthetic reasons) and various dongles.
For example, the NanoPi NEO Core official images all still use a 4.14 kernel (2017-2018), while the ones at Armbian use the current mainline 5.10.
https://wiki.friendlyarm.com/wiki/index.php/NanoPi_NEO_Core#...
Glad to hear this. I went checking [0], and there's still a speed bump for me: mine is the PoE version, and its switch ports are not supported yet. The PoE version is also an orphan with respect to OpenWRT.
If switch and PoE support can be worked out, that may a way forward for my router.
I just run a Netgate appliance for that plus something less flaky than OpenWRT.
I also wonder what actual speeds you can get out of these NICs. So many cheap gigabit NICs aren’t really up to the task. And I’d guess that the switch plane runs at 1 gigabit total here.
I think the OS is a fork of Vyatta, so it should be Linux.
I'd also remind anyone considering this that your family will probably not thank you for any outages you introduce to their browsing. My LAN is something that has to "just work" all the time and home-brew solutions will often require you to do more update/maintenance tasks than an off the shelf Mikrotik/Ubiquiti/<enterprise style vendor> solution.
You can still add neat features to your network like VPNs, PiHole, encrypted DNS, etc etc without replacing the core router or switch - I use a device much like this Banana Pi to run those services in some containers alongside my <enterprise style vendor> router/switch- I get all the cool new features I want; family get an internet connection that's always on and "just works" thanks to me not having to maintain the core router.