[PLUG] Unmanaged gigabit switches: does brand matter?

[Tomas Kuchta]

Thanks Tom,

I thought that I might have overlooked something, based on your earlier
comment.

Do not get me wrong, I am familiar with openWRT. In fact, I am using it
right now when I travel - in one or those small and cheap GL-AR750S.
Performance sucks (10-100Mbs PC to PC over 5GHz wifi max.), but the package
is fantastic for travel.

Static network config on openWRT is easy with things like Ansible. The
tricky part is dynamic config such as channel allocation and dancing around
with firmware updates on multiple disjointed pieces of HW. That calls for
server based solution.

So many ideas and wishes, and so little time. And did I mention that
computers hurt, physically, so it is nice to unplug for the few hours
between work and sleep.

If you come across something relatively easy, please post or even do
advanced topic hands on demo.

Tomas


On Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 21:21 Tom <tgrom.automail at nuegia.net> wrote:

> On Thu, 5 Dec 2019 17:06:05 -0500
> Tomas Kuchta <tomas.kuchta.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Do you have recommendation for active SDN controller able to manage
> > multiple openWRT APs with channel control and client traffic hand off
> > between the APs?
> >
> > The rest of simple network can be managed statically with
> > Ansibe/Puppet.
> >
>
> I'm sorry,
>
> The automation already out there for OpenWRT centralized router
> management seems to be more optimized for medium to large internet
> service provider usage, not necessarily business usage. However If you
> already have a vendor agnostic router config and monitoring solution it
> looks like there is quite a bit of custom automation you can do with
> SNMP, TR-069 (via EasyCwmp), a few protocols and software suites
> provided by OpenWISP systems (which now appears to be merged with LEDE
> which was merged to OpenWRT recently). RADIUS wireless authentication
> is definitely supported.
>
> Is does not look like there is a as-polished out of the box
> ready solution as the UBNT cloudkey stuff but the underlying technology
> is there. I'd still invite you to take a look at the OpenWRT
> documentation https://openwrt.org/docs/start here. There may be some
> other place where openwrt may be the perfect fit in your network.
>
> I do want to stand by when I said OpenWRT is not simply a consumer
> firmware replacement for consumer routers. Despite that being a common
> use case the OpenWRT firmware does scale up very nicely and even
> encompasses other use-cases such as embedded appliance development. In
> one of my use cases I've used the OpenWRT OS and a base to develop
> uninterruptible power supply and power distribution unit network
> management with the help of Nut Daemon.
>
> Sorry I could not be of more help here. It does sadden me that UBNT is
> now implementing and turning on spyware functionality "analytics" on
> people's networks via firmware updates. If that is true it's probably a
> tradeoff your going to have to make at least until better regulation of
> userdata comes to the US or more development is put towards a open
>  central management system. Balance the polished central management of
>  the UBNT system vs the freedom and program-ability of the WRT system.
>
> If you do end up doing something with OpenWRT do write back here and
> tell us. I'd be curious to see what you've done with it. But yeah,
> OpenWRT seems better for either the really small one-off setup like a
> central core router or the really big setup (custom firmware for
> thousands of devices) without much in-between.
> --
> _______________________________________________
> PLUG mailing list
> PLUG at pdxlinux.org
> http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
>