Teaching a cheap ethernet switch new tricks (2019)
blog.benjojo.co.uk
blog.benjojo.co.uk
Below is my survey response to their support feedback request:
1) The products should not have a built-in time-bomb that causes them to stop working after only a few years.
2) Dell should have informed us of this issue by email. Instead they left a very "phishing" like voicemail on a manager's phone. (Not the phone of the registered point-of-contract for the cluster.) Perhaps this was done to avoid leaving evidence of #1 above?
3) I spent over an hour on hold when I returned the call, and was then disconnected. After trying again (to an extension other than the one given in the message), I reached somebody who confirmed the issue. I spent another four hours on the phone resolving it.
4) Shortly after all of the above, I discovered a new issue that severely impacted the cluster. The n3048 switch would no longer auto-negotiate a 100Mbps Ethernet link. Our network watchdog device (iBoot) was continuously cycling the power on our Internet Ingress (ONT+ASA).
5) I spent even more time troubleshooting and resolving this issue (by locking the iBoot port to 100Mbps instead of leaving it on Auto).
6) I did not waste any more of my time by reporting this issue. The technician I worked with to upgrade these switches assured me that the firmware releases we used were "stable".
The non POE N1100's are fanless, Thankfully don't really contain any features that would require licencing, that being said also has no hardware Layer 3 capability, so not really in the same class as the N3XXX or N2XXX's
The licencing thing does suck though, that's poor from Dell who normally (at least switches wise) do a reasonably good job for the price.
First Turtle Beach bricked my Audiotron by abandoning the web site required for it to function, then Grace Digital bricked my three GD streaming devices for the same reason.
If you are referring to a Reciva based internet radio the web site which powers them was shut down by the owner of that site, not by Grace Digital. Also, if it is similar to my CC Wifi Reciva based radio it is still possible to access existing presets on the radio although you can no longer add presets or modify them any more. When you power it on wait for the Network Error caused by the lack of the back end and then press Back twice and then a preset. The media server functionality also still works.
I am referring to that. I'm reduced to 3 presets. The disaster is that:
1. the device was critically connected to a resource that GD does not control
2. GD offers no way to change this dependency, no way to redirect it elsewhere, no way to change the presets, no way to access radio stations, etc
3. I don't see any reason why they had to use Reciva to access Pandora
None of this was disclosed when I bought them. GD should offer a web interface to it, like my router has.
The media server does still work, but it can't read USB sticks with more than 32G of capacity.
But my Roku device can. Roku works fine when I hook up a 16T drive to its USB port. Pretty much all the streaming devices I looked at as replacement for GD have strange limitations on what can be connected (some USB sticks work, others do not), Roku does not.
I'm kinda shocked that 20 years after the Turtle Beach Audiotron, streaming devices are still mired in the stone age with bad user interfaces, poor device support, unusable displays, bricking, and very buggy (my GDs regularly locked up).
My GD display, for example, shows:
1. the title of the song 2. the bit rate 3. the elapsed time
When it should show:
1. title/album/band
2. time remaining
3. album cover art
The GD is like 90% towards being a good product. Why not go the last 10%?
The CC Wifi 3 I got to replace my CC Wifi does have some anti-obsolescence features. It can be used as a bluetooth speaker and it has a built in web server that you can connect into from a browser and manually enter the URLs of streams so even if the Skytunes backend goes defunct like Reciva did the radio should still be somewhat usable.
If your radio can receive bluetooth you could put your media on a uPnP server, access it using vlc on a smartphone and then from there send it via bluetooth to the radio using it as a bluetooth speaker. That is probably more convenient than mucking with the radio to select audio files since you can do it on your smartphone with a better user interface. Anyways, that is what I do.
Hertzshaffnocheinmal! What a contraption. Here's what I want:
1. plug a USB device in that has all my media files on it
2. push "shuffle"
3. push "play"
Like how CD players work. In fact, even steps 2 and 3 should be optional. It should just work when the USB device is plugged in.
If you have multiple radios (like I do) that would require physically moving the USB from one to another.
My GDs are about to go to the recycler. I won't be buying a GD device again. They are a nice product marred by easily correctable flaws.
Very interesting read and lots of upside to what is discussed, but the thought of the uncountable, almost invisible operating systems running in a large network give me a odd feeling in the pit of my stomach. So many potential places for malfeasance to hide.
Watch it happen anyway. Watch it accelerate. Watch the devices grow in complexity, capability, connectivity, and vulnerability. Watch innumerable manufacturers go out of business with no software-update succession plan, no code escrow, no upgrade path for victi^H^H^H^H^H end users.
The pit of your stomach gets pretty damn sick of the state of things.
I still feel complicit.
I worked for a hardware startup in 2013/2014. Part of my role was to populate and run the private pacman server that the devices got their OS and software updates from (we ran ARCH, but didn't connect to the public ARCH pacman repos, because we had some hardware specific code and kernel mods we needed to work, so we tested everything that updated on there public pacman repos before letting the devices load them). The startup failed after the first batch of products were shipped - as they are wont to do. Much acrimony about who owned what. I kept the Linode instance running the pacman server on my own credit card for years, but eventually the domain name (or perhaps the dns hosting, I don't recall) expired and the only devices that still knew how to get to the repo were my own. If I'd have a heads-up that dns was going to die, I could have pushed a config change to use a domain name under my control, but it just unexpectedly switched off.
There were only a few hundred devices I was keeping software updates flowing to. But the feeling of despair when I was no longer able to do that and finally decommissioned that Linode server was heartbreaking.
Honorable mention goes to:
- the Dell switch with the changelog note "if you had a device with a MAC starting with these bytes plugged in, the last N ports on the switch will stop working"
[1] - https://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres...
It's an entertaining and informative read, but it's more like low-end datacentre hardware than that cheap €25 switch I've got in my home office.
A little disappointing as I was hoping I'd have a cheeky high-bandwidth raspberry-pi alternative on my hands ...
One works as a main router for a fiber Internet connection (via a dumb SFP-Ethernet D-Link switch), 2 handle the "Intranet" 1 house + 1 workshop (Wifi bridge via one band) computers, printer and NAS, and one is with me, acting as a repeater bridge.
If I buy anything new it'll habe to support OpenWrt or I stick with AC1750s lol.
Even Wifi N 300 is enough for my needs, computers are wired and my phone doesn't need AC speeds.
yep covered that
It's even a very cheap fully managed switch.
N1108T-ON:
1GbE Port Attributes Multi-speed:
8x 10/100/1000Mbps half/full duplex RJ45 ports
1GbE Port Attributes Single-speed:
2x 1000Mbps half/full duplex RJ45 ports
Integrated 1GbE SFP dedicated ports: 2
Integrated 10GbE SFP+ dedicated ports: N/AAlso current price on ebay for a refurb N1108T-ON unit is 360 quid, so I reckon relatively speaking you could say it's cheap.
"powerline adaptors" [0]
Basically, buy these adaptors and for ~$100, you can have create a "wired" LAN connection using power outlets in a home.
[0] https://www.techradar.com/news/the-best-powerline-adaptors
I guess this also means inside your neighbor's home, if you live in an apartment building, right? That's why those devices typically use AES for encrypting the signal between the paired ones.
True,especially when a microwave, washing machine or other motor starts sending noise down the power line...
I'm using a pair of TPLinks to feed a wifi router on the opposite side of my house. The outlets are definitely on opposite phases, but the powerline adapters still work reasonably well. (~80Mbps). Now I'm realizing I should probably swap a couple of circuits and improve that connection.
But brute force works too :)
It took forever to figure out what was causing this, and I eventually figured it out by doing a (very slow) IP scan of every device on the network I was connecting to and finding a machine named with their first and last name. Unplugged the thing, and the problem went away forever.
If it hadn't happened to me, it's something I would have thought impossible!
(edited a small typo)
I think the newer ones all have some sort of encryption/pairing system which at least helps you ignore your neighbors transmissions.
X10 users have used them for years - you can find them with vendors that specialize in dealing with the X10 community or home automation; although with the wireless mesh networks like Zwave or Zigbee a lot of the powerline stuff has (thankfully) fallen by the wayside.
Another way to get wired internet without possibly running new cable is with MOCA - ethernet over coax. You can find cheap DirecTV branded MOCA adapters all over the place. Most are 100Mbps but if you watch the newer ones are gigabit capable.
That being said, I've worked with 10base5. Drilling for a vampire tap in an open elevator shaft is its own form of exciting.
I used it in home automation (Thank you Home Assistant) for mostly sensors, and less important actuators, where I had power, but could not get Ethernet, or WiFi.
Anything else, very unstable and too much latency.
Speeds won't be great for that sort of ethernet-over-phone wire, especially because most landlines used awful, cheeap wires, but in some cases it is faster than powerline adaptors.
Unfortunately all the companies that produce such equipment for "phone line adaptors" sell only to the phone companies and never directly to consumers.
So many houses today have vestigial phone wires that no one is using for anything.
There's a lot of things that made Cat 5 cheap for running phone lines in houses and most of them make Cat 5 useless for Ethernet, unfortunately.
If you've got an old house with old telephone wiring, it's probably wired as a bus, if you want to re-use that for ethernet, you'll want to split it up so each phone jack gets wired as two ethernet jacks; one in each direction. If you're using ethernet in the room, you'll need a (small) switch, and you'll want to be careful to buy 10/100 switches if you've only got two pair as Ethernet autonegotiation can easily do the wrong thing and you don't want to pay for managed switches in each room. If there's no ethernet use in a room, still wire it up for two ports, but put a small patch cable between the two.
If you've got star topology phone wiring, there's a better chance of cat5 cabling and 4-pair and you can run gigE. GigE will sometimes run on cat3 for small distances too though. The only question is if the central location where the star wires meet is convenient for a switch. In a pinch, you can use a PoE powered switch and power it from one of the other ends of the star.
Of course, some houses are a mix of star and bus or generally some form of tree. Anywhere that there's a branch, you want to put one ethernet port for each direction. And hopefully all the branches are accessible.
There's really no need for DSL equipment in your own home, unless you've only got one pair wiring.
Well, 100BASE-TX will also run on single pair in half-duplex mode.
Alternatively you can also use powerline adapters over any cabling (twisted pair/coax/whatever). Just instead of connecting adapter prongs to power socket, connect to your cable and feed there enough power to supply the adapters. Around 50V DC (as commonly used by PoE supplies) will probably be enough.
I mean, kind of, but I don't know how you get network cards to run on a single pair? I'm actually interested, because if it works for 100BaseTx, it probably also works for 10BaseT, and I've got 10BaseT half duplex device I'd like to network, but only one pair available (there's a 3-pair cable run, but two are used for voice communication). I've tried a commercial product (ETSLAN Monoline Balun), but while I can get it to work a bit when testing on parts of the line, it doesn't work across the whole line; if I can just wire something more simple, that'd be worth a try too.
I would think the NICs would sense their own transmissions and declare a local collision?
My apartment has some places that have coax runs but not ethernet runs.
Their performance depends on the electrical wiring in your house.
Ironically for me I’ve only managed to make them work on older electrical installations, and even then it was at best 802.11n speeds.
In my current house (newly built 2018), I can’t even get them to handshake. I suspect it’s due to improved electrical standards and better isolation between different circuits internally in the house, but I honestly don’t know.
> did the author drop a zero in the price?
Not far off ...
It's a fantastic device if all you need is 2 ports.
I originally had two mikrotik rb2011* switches and a rb750gl, now I have two rb3011 switches.
Linux has recently got native framework for control of switching chips called "Distributed Switch Architecture." This turns a lot of very cheap hardware with very basic hardware switching chips into high performance routers.
EDIT: No, actually, I was mistaken - there is one Broadcom series supported now I look again, BCM53xx, of which the one in the article does indeed appear to be. Looks like since the 4.8 kernel though, so not in the 4.4 kernel that comes with the device.
So going for a cheap, 2nd hand router supported by OpenWRT is probably the easiest and cheapest way there.
Their table of supported hardware for each of the platforms now using DSA probably includes all of the most affordable devices, since OpenWRT is mostly focused on consumer-grade equipment (and mostly routers/APs, but they support some purpose-built switches using Realtek CPUs).