Best routers out there ?

[madires]

i simply do not want to deal with homebrew anymore. i have no interest in it. There is too much to learn , too many decisions to find hardware and endless tinkering. Not my field of interest.
I use screwdrivers, i don't make them. i go to the store and find a good quality reasonably priced screwdriver. i use that screwdriver to get my work , in my field of interest done.

Sorry, but network elements can be quite complex with all the features they support. You get plug'n'play only with dumb unmanaged switches or old school hubs. And even those allow you to screw up your network.

[Berni]

In particular, NAS appliances that do not use a standardized RAID filesystem effectively have a form of ransomware built in. Just ask Micah Elizabeth Scott about the experience she had repairing a Drobo to get the data off the disks. Worse than that, she uncovered several checks that crash the unit if they fail, when they could have just defaulted into a read only limp mode in order to allow recovery of important data.

Just your usual hardware RAID controller cards can do that.

For simple mirroring of drives no problem, but when it comes to more fancy raid setups there is no standardization between vendors. So quite often if your raid controller card dies you better have a spare identical or very similar one on hand to replace it with in order to get your raid array running again so that you can pull data from it. Even just inserting the same card and configuring it incorrectly could cause it to start falsely parity syncing and trampling over the precious data. But these hardware raid controller cards are the fastest spinning rust setup out there.

This is also the reason why i like UnRaid. Each drive in the array has its own linux filesystem on it and raid is only used to provide parity drives for redundancy. So you do still need a working instance of UnRaid in the correct configuration to recover a dead drives contents from parity data (and xfs filesystem checksums help in reconstruction), but if the raid array is healthy and the machine running UnRaid blows up then drives can be taken out, plugged one by one into any modern Linux machine and files copied off it like any other drive. So hopefully that keeps me from irrecoverably crashing my raid array due to my lacking IT skills.

[free_electron]

Each drive in the array has its own linux filesystem on it

-evils advocate-. that is also lock-in. i can't read those from a windows machine.

As for for managed switches : why is there no standard protocol inside the network that allows you to configure ports ? that would be vendor agnostic and could be driven from a central controller.
A switch would have a control channel on a specific ip range. When adding a switch to the network that ip is assigned automatically to a conmmand and control vlan on the upstream port only, that is under control of the admins and invisible to other ports.
When a switch sees such a channel come in from a lower port it switches it only up to the upstream port and other ports do not get to see the control stream.
Switches are designed so they can not originate commands. Switches will only listen to packets coming from upstream. they flow from the controller downward only. so no malicous switch could be plugged in to send commands on that channel as you can't send upstream, only receive or reply. only the controller would need guarding from being taken over. But it's easier to defend 1 element than hundreds.

There's already so many IP protocols. time for a command and control one ?

[Monkeh]

Each drive in the array has its own linux filesystem on it

-evils advocate-. that is also lock-in. i can't read those from a windows machine.

Sure you can. There's drivers available with some looking. But see, you don't have to pay for a license to use the proper software..

As for for managed switches : why is there no standard protocol inside the network that allows you to configure ports ? that would be vendor agnostic and could be driven from a central controller.
A switch would have a control channel on a specific ip. When adding a switch to the network that ip is assigned automatically to a conmmand and control vpn on the upstream port only, that is under control of the admins only and invisible to other ports.
When a switch sees such a channel come in from a lower port it switches it only up to the upstream port and other ports do not get to see the control stream.

There's already so many IP protocols. time for a command and control one ?

Openflow and OF-Config, OVSDB, etc..

[free_electron]

Mikrotiks arrived.

Marvell based chipset. 3 Switch/phy's each handling 8 ports linked to an upstream device handling the 10two 10GB ports and the three 8 port devices. looks like there are tx and two rx diff pair per 8 channel device running to the 10g device.

- Master clock is distributed using a diff pair clocking all devices driven from a TI cdcm61001
- There is room for a BGA SDRAM chip next to the big chip , which is not installed.
- some snot like 74595 and 74164 shift registers. for led's and status
- TI 54719 switchers for various rails . three times
- 25q19 flash for firmware
- a pair of AP3R60 mosfets combined with a switch controller. unknown. AO 5J H2K marking. which leads me to believ it is an alpha-omega part.. this one makes the 5 volt from the power supply / poe port to feed the TI switchers.
- footprint for console port.
- footprint for 28 pin rs232 converter chip in ssop narrow body
- and the usual grunt like the ethernet transformers , led's decoupling cap.

interesting find : one electrolytic , hand solder using VERY STINKY FLUX that has not been cleaned up.

most likely the chipset is 98dx421 combined with three 88e1680 devices

[tautech]

Pics ?

[free_electron]

coming ...

[Berni]

-evils advocate-. that is also lock-in. i can't read those from a windows machine.

You can read it on a windows machine just fine if you install a little tool that reads those filesystems such as DiskInternals Linux reader (30MB freeware tool). Im a windows user myself as well and don't keep any real linux machines around apart from a raspberry pi.

My point is that because its just a normal Linux partition means its possible to easily read data from it from pretty much any machine that has a SATA port, no matter if its windows, linux or even osx. As opposed to if you use a server with a real hardware raid controller card, or one of the off the shelf black box NAS solutions like Sinology. In those cases its incredibly difficult to get a single byte of usable data from the drives once you pull them out of the original machine. The RAID structure has to be reverse engineered with special expensive data recovery software, all done manually with lots of expert knowledge and you need to have all of the arrays drives(excluding pairity) in working order to recover anything.

These XFS and BTRFS filesystems used here are designed by Silicon Graphics and Oracle for use in enterprise storage solutions, but support for them ended up in mainstream Linux. They are specifically designed to be reliable and resilient against failures or improper shutdowns, so that even if large areas of a storage medium are garbled the filesystem can still read the surviving files and heal itself on the fly from smaller errors. You wouldn't normally pull drives from a large RAID NAS array and try to read them outside, but i find it comforting its easily possible in my NAS in case something bad happens to it.

As for for managed switches : why is there no standard protocol inside the network that allows you to configure ports ? that would be vendor agnostic and could be driven from a central controller.
A switch would have a control channel on a specific ip range. When adding a switch to the network that ip is assigned automatically to a conmmand and control vlan on the upstream port only, that is under control of the admins and invisible to other ports.
When a switch sees such a channel come in from a lower port it switches it only up to the upstream port and other ports do not get to see the control stream.
Switches are designed so they can not originate commands. Switches will only listen to packets coming from upstream. they flow from the controller downward only. so no malicous switch could be plugged in to send commands on that channel as you can't send upstream, only receive or reply. only the controller would need guarding from being taken over. But it's easier to defend 1 element than hundreds.

There's already so many IP protocols. time for a command and control one ?

Yes they already make that kind of switch. Its called an L2 unmanaged switch and they are quite heavily used in large networks.

Plug it in and it works out of the box. They don't even have a configuration web UI or anything since there is no need to set up anything. It simply routes packets towards the correct MAC address and does not even care about what IPs since it ignores the whole IP protocol all together. If that's the kind of switch you want then you just have to buy one. But as a result these simple unmanaged switches also don't give you any of the fancy functionality that needs setting up such as VLANs, trunking etc... or even layer 3 functionality that's normally found in routers.

[Monkeh]

My point is that because its just a normal Linux partition means its possible to easily read data from it from pretty much any machine that has a SATA port, no matter if its windows, linux or even osx. As opposed to if you use a server with a real hardware raid controller card, or one of the off the shelf black box NAS solutions like Sinology.

Synology are hardly black box, they're actually not doing anything particularly unusual. No problem at all to recover.

These XFS and BTRFS filesystems used here are designed by Silicon Graphics and Oracle for use in enterprise storage solutions, but support for them ended up in mainstream Linux.

Err... btrfs was developed from the very beginning to be in Linux.

They are specifically designed to be reliable and resilient against failures or improper shutdowns

XFS at least has nothing you'd consider special in that regard since, oh, the early 2000s. It's actually one of the least robust options presently available..

Yes they already make that kind of switch. Its called an L2 unmanaged switch and they are quite heavily used in large networks.

Are we speaking the same language, here?

[madires]

There's already so many IP protocols. time for a command and control one ?

There are several solutions for managing network elements, e.g. NETCONF. But the software and the modeling might be a little bit too much for the typical user.

[bd139]

Ansible:

https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/modules/routeros_command_module.html

[Berni]

Okay for Synology its not as bad since they do use linux stuff to do it, but still if you have any sort of raid configuration that's not mirroring, then its going to be fairly involved to get a single file off the pile of drives, some other raid capable NAS solutions are worse still.

And yes BTRFS was developed to be used with Linux, but its a more enterprise oriented filesystem rather than the bog standard EXT4 that most linux desktop machine are likely going to be using. While XFS might not the the most resilient in the world its still plenty tough. It has mechanisms for recovering from improper partial writes and i did manage to run over a XFS system due to a failing drive, but running the command line XFS utility restored it to fully working state with no data loss.

Anyway my point is that this sort of slowly performing separate filesystem raid setup is the easiest to pull data off by simply taking one drive out of the array and plugging it into a PC, no matter what OS its running.

[free_electron]

SFP module teardown.

Marvell 88x3310P phy
54519 switcher

aac95n two times  6 pin dfn. looks like ldo

one chip marked

3h838
0g190u

and another one marked

l013z
cm4vg
sg802

[Zucca]

Dependig where you place them, free_electron please make sure to protect all the cables from hungry north american rats.
Some bloody mickey mouse could take the SFP link down.

I hate them.

[free_electron]

i know all about rats and mice and squirrels. a couple of years ago a squirrel was nesting in my attic and ate the bloody powerlines ( who makes the sheething of powerlines from plant material ? ) causing a short circuit that blew the fuses and a roasted stinking squirrel.

Problem in the us is homes are made from wood and sheetrock and cables are just loose in walls and attics. They use that stupid romex cable. I had the electrician replace the damaged cables with metal clad.

When i will build a house all cabling will be metal clad or run in steel pipes.

That aside. The teardown of the existing rack is done. new power distribution is in. i found a spot for the new switch. Tonite i will make a shelf for the switch and complete the switchover to the mikrotik switches in the network cabinet and wall panel.

[rsjsouza]

When i will build a house all cabling will be metal clad or run in steel pipes.

This is my dream as well - using conduits for wiring is something that would have saved me tons of dollars in labour to rewire or replace things. That and the fact that Romex in my house is attached with metal staples (?!?) - yeah, they surely to a great tie, but what would it do to the insulation if rust takes over?

But to me the worst offence is the bare wire buried to carry the 24V power to the sprinkler heads. Obviously that any work on the yard can potentially destroy anything - which in fact happened and we had to spend yet another round of green bills to fix. 

(sorry to derail the thread. Carry on)

[free_electron]

Same here. romex stapled to the rafters and studs. unbelievable how that can be allowed.
In europe everything has to be in pipe ( plastic or metal. wire in metal has to be double coated. )

but then , pipe is hard to work with. making bends etc.
i like the spiral metal clad wire.
straight stretches can be run with pipe. the moment it becomes winky wonky : switch over to a stretch of that.

[Mr. Scram]

Metal isn't allowed any more for obvious reasons. New installations have to be plastic. Not an issue when it's all in the actual brick and mortar walls.

[Monkeh]

Metal isn't allowed any more for obvious reasons. New installations have to be plastic. Not an issue when it's all in the actual brick and mortar walls.

Which obvious reasons are those?

[free_electron]

first post over the 10Gb link !

[Monkeh]

first post over the 10Gb link !

Welcome to the future 2006!

[Mr. Scram]

Which obvious reasons are those?

It conducts.

[Monkeh]

Which obvious reasons are those?

It conducts.

That's... not a problem.. Conductive enclosures have been used for decades. Metal conduits of various types are very much allowed and common pretty much everywhere.

[Mr. Scram]

That's... not a problem.. Conductive enclosures have been used for decades. Metal conduits of various types are very much allowed and common pretty much everywhere.

Looking into this I readily admit there doesn't seem to be a ban on metal conduits. I think I may be misremembering information from an electrician. Regardless, having your conduits potentially conduct instead of your actual conductors seems to pose a distinct risk.

[Monkeh]

That's... not a problem.. Conductive enclosures have been used for decades. Metal conduits of various types are very much allowed and common pretty much everywhere.

Looking into this I readily admit there doesn't seem to be a ban on metal conduits. I think I may be misremembering information from an electrician. Regardless, having your conduits potentially conduct instead of your actual conductors seems to pose a distinct risk.

.. not if you explicitly construct the installation to support this.

Metal conduit is perfectly normal and in almost all situations involving potential mechanical damage vastly safer than any other option.