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My pet peeve about all these small single board computers is that none of them have multiple ethernet ports, which severely limits their usefulness as networkin

My pet peeve about all these small single board computers is that none of them have multiple ethernet ports, which severely limits their usefulness as networking hardware. They'd otherwise be very well suited to being various kinds of packet routing appliances. You can sometimes hang a usb ethernet dongle off them but performance on those tend to be somewhat limited.

nomel 6y ago
> have multiple ethernet ports Could you say more about the use case you have in mind?
- Teever 6y ago
  I would imagine that a person who wants multiple ethernet ports on an SBC would be interested using the SBC as a router or firewall.
guidoism 6y ago
Several of the boards from Friendly ELEC have dual ethernet: https://www.friendlyarm.com https://www.friendlyarm.com
johnwalkr 6y ago
Check out solidrun, they have a variety of boards with multiple Ethernet ports. I used to wonder why embedded boards didn’t have multiple Ethernet boards and why it’s not common to use ethernet to connect to peripherals instead of “old interfaces”. Until I tried it for a project. It turns out Ethernet uses roughly 0.5 to 2W per port depending on speed (that’s 1-4W per connection).
exporectomy 6y ago
Perhaps what you want is a range of boards with many combinations of features. Some with 4xethernet, some with 2xethernet, some with PCIE and 1xethernet, some with M.2 and PCIE, some with M.2 and 2xethernet, etc. to fill out that big matrix of combinations. But is the market big enough for such a huge range to be economical? Some of them have PCIE which you could connect a network card to. That seems like a more practical way to allow flexibility than having a lot of special purpose boards.
gorgoiler 6y ago
I use consumer (Netgear) switches with VLAN support to enforce network separation. The actual routing is done as a router-on-a-stick. It’s not perfect but it’s simple, scalable, and reliable.
bentcorner 6y ago
Depending on your bandwidth (especially if you have an asymmetric connection like cable) using it as a router-on-a-stick with vlans should work. On lower end hardware you'd probably get higher throughput over the single link than trying to add a USB LAN adapter to it.

nomel 6y ago

> have multiple ethernet ports Could you say more about the use case you have in mind?

Teever 6y ago
I would imagine that a person who wants multiple ethernet ports on an SBC would be interested using the SBC as a router or firewall.

guidoism 6y ago

Several of the boards from Friendly ELEC have dual ethernet: https://www.friendlyarm.com https://www.friendlyarm.com

johnwalkr 6y ago

Check out solidrun, they have a variety of boards with multiple Ethernet ports. I used to wonder why embedded boards didn’t have multiple Ethernet boards and why it’s not common to use ethernet to connect to peripherals instead of “old interfaces”. Until I tried it for a project. It turns out Ethernet uses roughly 0.5 to 2W per port depending on speed (that’s 1-4W per connection).

exporectomy 6y ago

Perhaps what you want is a range of boards with many combinations of features. Some with 4xethernet, some with 2xethernet, some with PCIE and 1xethernet, some with M.2 and PCIE, some with M.2 and 2xethernet, etc. to fill out that big matrix of combinations. But is the market big enough for such a huge range to be economical? Some of them have PCIE which you could connect a network card to. That seems like a more practical way to allow flexibility than having a lot of special purpose boards.

gorgoiler 6y ago

I use consumer (Netgear) switches with VLAN support to enforce network separation. The actual routing is done as a router-on-a-stick. It’s not perfect but it’s simple, scalable, and reliable.

bentcorner 6y ago

Depending on your bandwidth (especially if you have an asymmetric connection like cable) using it as a router-on-a-stick with vlans should work. On lower end hardware you'd probably get higher throughput over the single link than trying to add a USB LAN adapter to it.