On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 08:34:06AM -0400, Daniel Feenberg wrote: > > I wouldn't think the OP was interested in saving money, there are > other reasons for building your own switch. For example, there is > a famous article "Tricks you can do if your firewall is also > a bridge": > > http://www.usenix.org/events/neta99/full_papers/limoncelli/limoncelli_html/
I'll read that. Sounds interesting. To be perfectly clear, the reason I'm looking into this is that I tend to like to understand how things work, and to know how to build things I need (most of the reason I got into programming in the first place). Toward that end, I've decided to look into how one would build a switch, and discovered that -- for the most part -- it seems one *wouldn't* build a switch, so I decided to ask here since the subject of switches came up. Obviously, a switch needs some kind of software running on it; it seems reasonable to me that FreeBSD should be able to serve as the necessary software, if only I can figure out how to build a switch from commodity parts without completely breaking the bank. In addition to that, it would be kinda nice to have a switch whose internals I understand so that port-by-port failure of a switch will not occur as a mysterious process I don't quite grasp, as so often occurs with dedicated switches. The fact any switches built after the turn of the century seem to start dying within three years seems like a big problem (I have one 10/100 Linksys switch from before the turn of the century that still works great), after all. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]
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