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The Nintendo Switch Switch
- ollien 7y agoAt my college, we have an airgapped network for security classes, and when assignments are due, we often run out of ethernet cables. I had just mentioned I would bring a switch with me the next day and people were confused why I'd be goofing off with a Switch so close to the deadline. Now we can avoid that kind of confusion! :)
- thaumasiotes 7y ago> when assignments are due, we often run out of ethernet cables. I had just mentioned I would bring a switch with me the next day As I understand it, a switch will solve a shortage of ethernet ports, but will make the cable problem worse by requiring one extra cable. What's the purpose of the switch here?
- Enginerrrd 7y agoshorter total cable length and a less cluttered environment?
- gberger 7y agoSure, but that doesn't solve the problem of shortage of ethernet cables
- m12k 7y agoIf the shortage is not of cables in general, but of cables that are long enough to reach the current connection point, then a switch would help.
- wlesieutre 7y agoMaybe they have plenty of short cables, but not enough long cables to get to each person from the main network switch. Adding a switch closer to you means multiple people can share the one long cable.
- 24gttghh 7y agoI'd presume anyone bringing a network switch with them to class would also have some Cat5e kicking around. Otherwise, what good is the switch doing them?
- singlow 7y agoRunning out of cables may actually mean running out of ports. Spare cables with no place to plug in are useless.
- laughinghan 7y agoI think they mean out of ethernet-cables-that-are-usable-to-get-network-access. So there's loose cables aplenty, but a shortage of cables that work in the sense of the far end being plugged in, due to a shortage of ports. From the perspective of a student walking into the room with their laptop, that's a shortage of cable-ends that they can plug into their laptop to gain network access.
- randogogogo 7y agoEither way, I'm surprised port security isn't enabled in an educational environment like this.
- leetrout 7y agoIt probably is and they just don't know or the policy is lax enough to allow it but triggers an alarm in OIT.
- tomjen3 7y agoWhy should it be, or even be detectable if OP attaches a switch? Afaik, those don't even have different MACs and even if they do, it is unlikely that the university has all the students laptops MACs.
- andykx 7y agoSwitches have MAC addresses.
- taneq 7y agoThey might have people in a couple of different rooms, and plenty of short Ethernet cables but not enough long ones. So a switch allows them to run one cable between rooms and use a bunch of shorter cables within the room.
- greggman2 7y agoswitches route traffic to other machines on the same switch lowering network congestion between those machines and the rest of the network right ?
- robohoe 7y agoYes. They also minimize the broadcast storm domain.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago...no they don't. STP will help prevent broadcast storms, but a switch does nothing in and of itself to stop them.
- walrus01 7y agoIf your college has any proper security on access ports, they'll be limited to one MAC address per physical port, and hopefully a decent 802.1x setup
- tinco 7y agoWhy would 1 mac per port be proper security? Seems needlessly restrictive and ineffective to me.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoNAT for IPs may be everywhere, but NAT for MAC addresses is inconceivable.
- mercora 7y agoif you use a cheap router instead of a switch the far end will only see one MAC address which is the one of the router. doing NAT then is as easy as it could be. You could literally use just about any router out of the box without even configuring anything. you can also add an ethernet switch behind this device easily. only limiting a port to a single MAC is therefore somewhat pointless. you would prohibit valid use cases (adding a switch) without hindering any nefarious user (guy with a cheap router). Also, NAT for MAC addresses is a thing although not necessarily the most useful approach in this case...
- jrockway 7y agoA lot of people think trusted L3 is a valid security solution.
- jlgaddis 7y ago> an airgapped network for security classes
- Godel_unicode 7y agoWait till he finds out that people frequently use multiple VMs with their own MAC addresses on a given physical box. Especially in the kind of lab where people are working on security projects. Edit: or that security includes availability in addition to confidentiality and integrity
- bitwize 7y agoYeah, I saw a story titled "The Nintendo Switch" on Hackernews back in October 2016 and thought, "Nintendo is getting into network hardware now?!"
- lonelappde 7y agoDoes your college teach security before networking? Probably a smart choice.
- SenHeng 7y agoSimilar story, I've been looking into getting ethernet switches to wire up my home and my initial search for switches turned up the console. It is annoying when companies name their product after a commonly used word. Even more so if both are equally popular.
- core-questions 7y agoCute project! Sometimes it's nice to see a simple hack that elucidates perfectly just how amazing it is to actually be able to run our own software on a variety of devices. With Linux support, these devices will be useful for decades to do random things.
- bitcynth 7y agothank you :) I have other evil network related ideas for this in the near future :p
- saagarjha 7y agoInteresting CSS you’ve got there on your blog page ;)
- mercora 7y agoi am a bit disappointed that what has been done is basically installing linux and setting up a bridge using usb ethernet dongles. not what i was expecting. its still somewhat amusing though.
- bitcynth 7y agoyeah, tbh, I wanted to do it with the it still functioning as a game console. However I realized that it would be way too difficult for me and would never get done :/
- pfundstein 7y agoYeah, and only two ports so it's not useful as a switch. It could be useful as a router though.
- Moru 7y agoVery expensive extension cable? :-)
- afandian 7y agoI'm [vaguely] interested in unconventional Android devices. People often talk about "plenty of android devices with X" where x is e.g. a keyboard. But a search of Google, Ali Express, etc don't yield much except for conventional phones. Is there a list or other source where I can discover these mythical interesting devices?
- wtracy 7y agoThis is probably not quite what you're talking about, but: I'm convinced there's a bunch of interesting single-purpose Android devices that simply aren't available to the general public. The manufacturers are large companies that you've probably heard of that don't do business on places like AliExpress. Unfortunately, the devices in question are "enterprise" products, and sold accordingly. For example, the self-service kiosks at Taco Bell seem to be Android-based, though I can't confirm this. Good luck finding a supplier who will sell you those in lots of less than a thousand. Swinging around to your original question, I occasionally hear about MIPS-based Android tablets made for Indian or Chinese markets. I'm sure they're on AliExpress, but I doubt they're clearly labeled as MIPS.
- smichel17 7y agoNorwegian Air's in-flight entertainment systems (screen on the back of the seat in front of you) are modified/custom Android tablets. When you open the flight tracker you can see the regular Android buttons at the bottom and pull down to see the notification area (which has been modified to contain no content). Didn't find a way out of their sandbox, maybe next time I'll bring a male-male usb cable and see if I can get in with adb..
- strbean 7y agoCould those people be referring to Chromebooks and other ChromeOS netbooks? They apparently run any android app, although they aren't really running android as the OS.
- swiftcoder 7y agoThere are a ton of non-smartphone Android devices out there, but a lot of manufacturers are a bit cagy about the fact that they use Android. A couple of fun ones: - Sparkling water dispensers: https://www.bevi.co https://www.bevi.co - Refrigerators: https://www.samsung.com/us/explore/family-hub-refrigerator/overview/ https://www.samsung.com/us/explore/family-hub-refrigerator/o...
- VectorLock 7y agoPutting PiHole on this would have been wonderful.
- bitcynth 7y agonotes down
- aidenn0 7y agoLiving in the US, I'm a bit jealous of the 100mbit upload...
- bitcynth 7y agoI have 250/250 but the usb dongle was only 100mbit lol
- kube-system 7y agoIf you're in a Fios area, Verizon's running a deal on 940/880 Mbps right now for $74.99.
- aidenn0 7y agoCable or DSL only here and I pay about that for 120/16.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Yetanfou 7y agoLiving on a farm in the Swedish countryside with 1Gbit/1Gbit fiber I'll probably make you even more jealous...
- pfundstein 7y agoHej Yetanfao, can I randomly ask you if you're aware of any tech positions you could refer? I'm seriously considering moving to Sweden (and it's not just the 1Gbit fiber).
- Moru 7y agoLoads of companies are looking for developers of various sorts, take your pick :-) (100/100 Mbps since 2005 or so in a little village in Sweden)
- filoleg 7y ago
- rjeli 7y agoWoah, didn’t realize you could install Linux on the switch now. Got me thinking about the uses for a portable tx2 tablet...
- saagarjha 7y agoOnly on certain Switch devices.
- baroffoos 7y agoIts quite a large number of them but not any of the ones you can get from a store anymore. There are loads of them floating around ebay second hand. Just look up the serial number checker and you should have no issues snagging one.
- Lammy 7y agoThere is a hardware vulnerability in the first ~18 months of Switch systems produced. It’s a USB boot mode (like DFU mode in iPhones) from the underlying Tegra chipset and is triggered by pressing the Tegra “Home” button (not the Switch Home button!), one of the Volume buttons, and Power while injecting the software you want to boot over USB. That button is exposed as one of the pins (#9, iirc?) of the right-side Joycon rail, so all you have to do is short that to ground with anything you like. 3D printed jigs are cheap and common. Your system will get banned from Nintendo online services if you run any Switch-mode homebrew—for good reason since piracy and online hacking have unfortunately become rampant—so the most I’ve done with mine is run the standalone Hekate to dump my system’s unique keys and internal storage a few times. I’m still enjoying the system for its intended use too much to want to go offline forever, so I’m just holding on to an exploitable system for a few years until the Next Big Thing comes along. As for obtaining an exploitable system, all you need is one manufactured before July 2018. I keep the following in the Notes app on my phone for when I see a used system for sale in the wild: Exploitable Switch Serial Ranges Serials beginning with XAW1: - XAW1007XXX and below are safe to buy - XAW1008XXX not safe to buy, probably patched - XAW1009XXX and above definitely patched Serials beginning with XAW7: - XAW70017X and below are safe to buy - XAW70018X not safe to buy, probably patched - XAW70019X and above definitely patched Serials beginning with XAJ4: - XAJ40052X and below are safe to buy - XAJ40053X not safe to buy, probably patched - XAJ4006XX and above definitely patched Serials beginning with XAJ7: - XAJ70042X and below are safe to buy - XAJ70043X not safe to buy, probably patched - XAJ7005XX and above definitely patched Happy hunting!
- bduerst 7y agoBravo. So is the Fast (megabit) Ethernet speed bottleneck with the USB ports? Do you think you could get gigabit Ethernet speeds?
- gotoeleven 7y agoThats nothing I turned my playstation into a space station.
- anon9001 7y agoI'm surprised to not see anyone talking about how Switch homebrew works and which devices are compatible. There's both hardware and software patches to worry about. Here's the most up-to-date guide with version numbers and bootloader choices and such: https://nh-server.github.io/switch-guide/ https://nh-server.github.io/switch-guide/
- littlecranky67 7y agoThe author's main motivation is probably the cool name "Nintendo Switch Switch" but a bridge is not a switch, so it should be called a "Nintendo Switch Bridge".
- whalesalad 7y agoBeing a little pedandic here aren't we? For all intents and purposes a bridge is basically a switch with two ports. At the end of the day this is running on a Linux kernel so it can basically be any networking device you want it to be, even a router.
- Moru 7y agoOr an extension repeater adapter?
- littlecranky67 7y agoNo, even a two-port bridge is smarter than physical extension/repeater. I.e. the bridge will not forward ethernet frames to the other port if the destination if assumed to be in the originating network segment.
- outliergroup 7y agoWas this inspired by the meme?
- jcmontx 7y agoNo one: Absolutely nobody: A Nintendo Switch that works as a switch