RJ45-sized Linux networking server goes IPv6 | Hacker News Reader

RJ45-sized Linux networking server goes IPv6

linuxgizmos.com

92 pointsdeviceguru34 comments

Out of curiousity does anyone use any of these style devices? And if so what for?

Yeah these sort of "look at how small this fully functional computer is" pieces always make me wonder if they have a real world appeal or if they're more a proof-of-concept or tech demo to pull people's attention to the company's other products.

They say target use is internet of things. Makes for a great personal server too. I use a bunch of really small boards for fun, but not this small.

this would be fantastic for corporate espionage, snap one into an unused to drop somewhere and you have a beachhead inside the network. Combine it with a Micro SD card you have a great way to exfiltrate data via weekly/monthly data drops, without setting off external firewalls.

I didn't see PoE on this device, you need to supply 3.3VDC to make it run. So do you want to attach a wall wart? I don't think it will run long off a lithium cell.

I immediately imagined adding web UIs, or simply network APIs, to various "dumb" hardware. Attach it to a ADC/DAC and suddenly a lot of things become computer controllable. It's small enough to stick it on most electronic device boards without major changes.

Robotics, consolidate all your sensors and controllers onto Ethernet. Its quite hard finding a microcontroller with good Ethernet.

I've had good success with the NXP LPC178x series. Cortex M3 with onboard Flash and SRAM. Ethernet is onboard and easy to attach with a simple PHY, also works well with extenral SDRAM and expanded Flash.

yeah I also used that a while ago, but I don't think I can fit an ethernet client for Robotic Operating System on it. Doesn't appear straight forward anyway:-

http://mbed.org/forum/bugs-suggestions/topic/2662/?page=1#co...

Hmm, that Xport product is £50 from mouser. Not bad

I don't quite understand mbed. It seems...toylike. I've been using ucLinux for 1788-based stuff. You get the full stack with that.

The other option is something like the TI CC3000, a serially driven wifi module. Adafruit just launched a cheap breakout module.

http://www.adafruit.com/products/1469

everything we do is in volumes of 1. What is the dev board you use? Mbed is quite convenient for us doing random 1 offs.

EDIT: also can't find evidence of a ROS client working on ucLinux :(

For LPC I've prototyped on boards from Future Designs, like this one:

http://www.teamfdi.com/development-tools-kits/products/1/DK-...

The arduino yun [1] combines an linux-based SoC with a microcontroller on a single board. So you can have both, networking and applications in practically any language, and an internal interface to a microcontroller.

For only accessing a rs232 serial port over ethernet, there are easier solutions. But if you need multiple of such ports, sensor access, etc. its quite a nice combination.

[1] http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardYun?from=Main.ArduinoY...

We use them to add ethernet and new comm protocols to regulated legacy embedded devices that only have serial ports.

I've used one of these before. They are useful for attaching serial devices to an Ethernet network. It's a lot cheaper and easier than trying to put a PC with enough serial ports near every device you need to talk to. The ones I worked with were part of a radio modem sold by MaxStream, now part of Digi International.

We used dedicated terminal servers for this function years ago. No PC required. DEC and Allied Telesis made them. Now I feel old.

That is essentially what these are. The default Lantronix firmware allows you to connect to the device on a specific TCP port and talk to the serial device on the other side. You configure them over HTTP or Telnet.

The pricing is on that page $39/each at qty 1000. I have seen the other models 2 years ago range from $50 to $70 at qty 1.

RIPE used these for the v1&2 versions of their Atlas measurement network. I've had a few running for about 3 years.

https://atlas.ripe.net/

I use microcontrollers for prototyping and proof-of-concept work. Often I combine multiple devices into a system that I can control from a PC. It's been my experience that dropping in a something-to-serial converter is 100x easier than trying to install and understand a communication protocol "stack," even if the code and documentation is supplied by the chip vendor.

I tend to use little USB-to-serial breakout boards, but I'd do the same with RJ45 if I needed that interface.

Once something of mine is ready to commercialize, it gets handed over to professional developers who tend to prefer the built-in firmware based approach, but they end up spending a lot of time debugging those interfaces.

Isn't IPv6 a feature of the Linux networking stack? Shouldn't everything that runs Linux be IPv6 capable? Or is there some IPv6 stuff implemented in hardware here?

Many embedded devices compile out IPv6 to save flash and RAM.

The author writing this article picked up something nonsensical - the entire second half suggested they knew little to nothing about the IPv6 protocol, and this devices implications for such, including statements like, " formally launched in June 2012. "

I read "RJ45-sized" and thought they meant the size of the connector.

It's the size of a (female) connector.

I wish this thing was double sided so I can make a router out of it.

Am I missing something or does the article not state how much RAM the server comes with?

It comes with 8Mb of SDRAM

http://linuxgizmos.com/worlds-smallest-linux-webserver/

It actually comes with 16MB.

Also, it's MB not Mb. The difference between the two is a factor of 8.

It says 16MB. Nowhere can I find what the CPU architecture is though.

In the same sentence. :)

> The 32-bit RISC CPU appears to be the same, but instead of coming standard with 8MB SDRAM, it now ships with the previously optional 16MB.

IIRC RISC is a category of architecture, rather than a concrete implementation

I can't either, but a Google search suggests the previous version used Freescale's ColdFire MCF5208:

http://forums.lantronix.com/showthread.php?t=857

http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?co...

Now if it had PoE it would be awesome

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