5 ms·

Managing the Unmanaged Switch

85 points by luu 6mo ago

stephen_g 5mo ago
Cool hack - I have the ‘smart’ managed version of that switch (although the PoE version of it I think), and it looks exactly the same to the unmanaged one - absolutely makes sense that it’s basically identical (just a BOM change for the different flash to fit the larger firmware). Often it’s way cheaper to have one hardware version and control features in firmware, and that principle is even more true for silicon (same die but fuses that are blown to disable parts of it, or the chip clocked down because it might not perform properly at the speed of the more expensive SKU), so not surprising it’s this way!
superkuh 5mo ago
Watch out, I'm not sure about the SG108 but the SG108E has a known defect where it incorrectly broadcasts non-VLAN traffic across all ports, regardless of configured VLAN settings. https://community.tp-link.com/en/business/forum/topic/89181 https://community.tp-link.com/en/business/forum/topic/89181 I have confirmed this with my own version 1 SG108E (which additionally can't actually be managed without an ancient version of java and iptables /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward forwarding tricks. https://shred.zone/en/dev/setting-up-tp-link-tl-sg108e-with-linux/ https://shred.zone/en/dev/setting-up-tp-link-tl-sg108e-with-...) I'd say stay far away from this hardware line unless you actually do just want a dumb switch. If you do buy make sure you know exactly what hardware revision you're getting. I've heard the version 5 fixes it.
- toast0 5mo ago
  I had the 24 port version of these. They're fine for 'cooperative vlans' where you trust everything (enough), but want a little separation. But they're not sufficient if you don't trust the devices. You can't restrict management to specific vlans and iirc, there was a least one auth bypass. At least for the version I had. I replaced it with some used smb stuff with a few 10g ports, cause unnecessary 10g is more fun.
  - PhilipRoman 5mo ago
    >You can't restrict management to specific vlans This bit me as well, FYI Zyxel switches seem to be among the few that do this properly, even on cheapest models. On the other hand their web interface cannot be used over SSH or other tunnels... The software side of network equipment is in a sad state, no wonder the hyperscalers moved to whitebox switches
- TacticalCoder 5mo ago
  > Watch out, I'm not sure about the SG108 but the SG108E has a known defect where it incorrectly broadcasts non-VLAN traffic across all ports, regardless of configured VLAN settings. I've got the SG108, since so many years I forgot how many... It's a little workhorse. I'm pretty sure it's totally unmanaged. I've got both a 192.x.x.x and a 10.x.x.x LAN, on two different switches (one being the SG108) and I've got an actual bridge (and firewall) between the two. It's not a managed switch but a NUC doing the bridging between 192. and 10. I also have got a 3rd switch near the fiber termination (apartment is wired with ethernet in the walls). I did that years ago: even though I've got a "guests" network, I still wanted my own machines to be on a totally separate LAN. > I'd say stay far away from this hardware line unless you actually do just want a dumb switch. Yeah exactly. I've got the SG108, because it's dumb. It's really fine. It never ever fails. I'm using unmanaged switches at home because it's one less thing to configure/manage. Now I only have about four desktop PCs (two being workstations used as headless servers), 4 NUCs, 3 laptops, and six Raspberry Pi. It's not a big network by any means. A buddy of mine has got a 42U rack at home full of servers (and Mikrotik switches) and, well, that's another can of worms.
StillBored 5mo ago
8051! I love it. Its like running web stacks on these ESP8266's without the crypto acceleration. But at the same time, we have to stop pretending that 1Gbit Ethernet isn't utterly obsolete in the same way that RS-232 is. Useful maybe for low power, longish reach, but its slower than a good number of internet connections now, and the wifi on the other end too. Ex: My house, turns out the 1Gbit uplink from the ISP provided hardware to my firewall was causing me to lose 300MB because it was actually provisioned at 1.3Gbit, and when I switched it to 5Gbit, my Wifi got faster.. Ex, I can get in excess of 1Gbit in about 2/3rds of my house now to sites on the internet. 1GbaseT is 27 year old technology this year, 10GbaseT is 20 this year, and by any other computing metric should be obsolete too since there has been a 25GbaseT spec for 10 years that no one has bothered to manufacture. And here in 2026, double or more should be easy with modern phy technology, and with proper line quality could easily be all of dynamic power, dynamic length and dynamic speeds over a range of cable types and length, both running at lower power and higher performance.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5mo ago
  I dunno, I'd like to see faster options taking off but last time I checked they were just starting to get cost-effective. I'm not paying a factor more for 10GbaseT when I don't actually need that kind of speed.
- tracker1 5mo ago
  I'm a bit irked that there aren't more, less expensive 10gb 10baseT ethernet switches available. I have one that I have as my main connection in the wiring closet (need to get my NAS back in there), and a few 2.5gb switches off of that (one in my office)... mostly because I just didn't want to shell out the dramatically more expensive option.
- zokier 5mo ago
  > there has been a 25GbaseT spec for 10 years that no one has bothered to manufacture because dealing with fiber is easier than cat8 copper. unless you want poe there is very little reason to use base-t.
  - 5mo ago
walrus01 5mo ago
In very cost sensitive applications where you want 'managed' and 'cheap' like security cameras for an ordinary house, the best non hack solution I've found is to have something like a basic managed non-PoE switch, and then hang a dumb switch downstream of it for the sole purpose of aggregating something like IP cameras. For example some of the cheaper unmanaged 8-port 802.3af/at switches with enough power budget for 7 cameras. Average traffic from a single camera isn't a lot, easily fitting in a single 1000BaseT link to the managed switch. Put the whole dumb switch in the camera vlan.
zokier 5mo ago
For slightly less dinky option rtl838x/rtl839x based switches are quite common and relatively cheap. What makes them special is that they are well supported by openwrt https://openwrt.org/docs/techref/targets/realtek https://openwrt.org/docs/techref/targets/realtek
AshamedCaptain 5mo ago
> given the price point of these switches when buying new I would highly recommend that you instead look for a used managed Gigabit switch. Power, power, power .... one of these older gigabit switches is going to use 10x power at idle, compared with one of the crappy and cheapest realtek-based "unmanaged" switches. Which is kinda important for something that is going to be 24h on. And of course since no one reviews these things, you'll only know once you have spend the money. So if you really can get away with a crappy web interface onto the crappy low-power realtek chip, you may get the best of both worlds.
- jimmaswell 5mo ago
  Gigabit seems undersized for a home LAN these days. 2.5Gb equipment isn't significantly more expensive and any Cat6 should handle it. Fiber is cheap enough too if you want some 10Gb devices. Only expensive thing is SFP ethernet adapters but you can put an SFP NIC in your PC and bypass the problem. I've been using this equipment in my home LAN for a mix of 10Gb fiber, 2.5Gb ethernet, and a small number of devices that came with 10Gb ethernet ports (Tyan motherboards) get SFP ethernet adapters. Unmanaged 4x2.5Gb ethernet 2x10Gb fiber - https://a.co/d/08J99UjH https://a.co/d/08J99UjH - I daisy chain these with fiber connections to have a kind of 10Gb backbone that terminates at my main PC with the fiber NIC. Managed 10x fiber - https://a.co/d/06927QeJ https://a.co/d/06927QeJ - This is the most economical 10Gb fiber switch I could find at the time and it's had no problems for the low price. Has a serial management interface in addition to web. Extensive management capabilities. I've used its link aggregation successfully. Managed 4x2.5Gb ethernet 2x10Gb fiber - https://a.co/d/0fud7jzF https://a.co/d/0fud7jzF - First hope off my modem before the fiber switch, good management capabilities. It's kind of funny, my LAN is all random Amazon brands people would warm against relying on, but I picked out ones that have been solid and reliable for years of use. No need to break the bank if you find the right stuff.
  - NekkoDroid 5mo ago
    > Fiber is cheap enough too if you want some 10Gb devices. The problem with Fiber for now will remain that so few consumer devices can actually connect to it without first converting to RJ45. You are p much limited to some enthusiast networking gear and server gear and everything else needs you to convert. I recently had my families home ethernet situation upgraded and we went with Cat8 for now (it wasn't meaningfully more expensive to doing any other Cat cable all things considered). It is compatibile with networking stuff that is commonly available today and hopefully in the future some switch will appear to make full use of it (I am slightly sceptical, but I assume 10G will at least still be seen over Cat for consumers).
mindslight 5mo ago
I'd call the web interface on low-end managed switches a liability [0]. It would be interesting to write one's own 8051 firmware from the ground up [1]. It shouldn't actually be terribly hard to have some basic thing that accepts a binary chip config image from the network, right? The existing 512KiB flash ought to be enough for that. And since Realtek switch chips seem to be so popular, it could even be made generic enough to work across models. Then a user would just need a flash programmer. My core network is Mikrotik gear with 10Gb uplinks, but it would be nice to use my old unmanaged gbit switches (Netgear GS108 mainly) with vlans rather than going nuts with more Mikrotik or having lots of homeruns. [0] high-end ones too, for that matter [1] the alternative I thought of first was setting up an Arduino as an I2C slave. But then you'd also want to switch the switch's power supply, and need an ethernet port on the Arduino just to connect to the switch itself.
smileybarry 5mo ago
Archive.md link: https://archive.md/BXov8 https://archive.md/BXov8 In case you were also inexplicably blocked by Cloudflare.
Havoc 5mo ago
Aliexpress managed sfp+ 10 gigs with 8 ports have also gotten remarkably affordable If you’re willing to go the no name brand route
ranma42 5mo ago
> The TL-SG108 uses a 4Mbit (512KiB) SPI flash chip from Cfeon, which is too small to contain any assets for a web management interface The https://github.com/logicog/RTLPlayground https://github.com/logicog/RTLPlayground alternative firmware for RTL8372/RTL8373 based 2.5GBit Switches does fit into 512KiB, including web management interface.

85 points by luu 6mo ago

Cool hack - I have the ‘smart’ managed version of that switch (although the PoE version of it I think), and it looks exactly the same to the unmanaged one - absolutely makes sense that it’s basically identical (just a BOM change for the different flash to fit the larger firmware). Often it’s way cheaper to have one hardware version and control features in firmware, and that principle is even more true for silicon (same die but fuses that are blown to disable parts of it, or the chip clocked down because it might not perform properly at the speed of the more expensive SKU), so not surprising it’s this way!

superkuh 5mo ago

Watch out, I'm not sure about the SG108 but the SG108E has a known defect where it incorrectly broadcasts non-VLAN traffic across all ports, regardless of configured VLAN settings. https://community.tp-link.com/en/business/forum/topic/89181 https://community.tp-link.com/en/business/forum/topic/89181 I have confirmed this with my own version 1 SG108E (which additionally can't actually be managed without an ancient version of java and iptables /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward forwarding tricks. https://shred.zone/en/dev/setting-up-tp-link-tl-sg108e-with-linux/ https://shred.zone/en/dev/setting-up-tp-link-tl-sg108e-with-...) I'd say stay far away from this hardware line unless you actually do just want a dumb switch. If you do buy make sure you know exactly what hardware revision you're getting. I've heard the version 5 fixes it.

toast0 5mo ago
I had the 24 port version of these. They're fine for 'cooperative vlans' where you trust everything (enough), but want a little separation. But they're not sufficient if you don't trust the devices. You can't restrict management to specific vlans and iirc, there was a least one auth bypass. At least for the version I had. I replaced it with some used smb stuff with a few 10g ports, cause unnecessary 10g is more fun.
- PhilipRoman 5mo ago
  >You can't restrict management to specific vlans This bit me as well, FYI Zyxel switches seem to be among the few that do this properly, even on cheapest models. On the other hand their web interface cannot be used over SSH or other tunnels... The software side of network equipment is in a sad state, no wonder the hyperscalers moved to whitebox switches
TacticalCoder 5mo ago
> Watch out, I'm not sure about the SG108 but the SG108E has a known defect where it incorrectly broadcasts non-VLAN traffic across all ports, regardless of configured VLAN settings. I've got the SG108, since so many years I forgot how many... It's a little workhorse. I'm pretty sure it's totally unmanaged. I've got both a 192.x.x.x and a 10.x.x.x LAN, on two different switches (one being the SG108) and I've got an actual bridge (and firewall) between the two. It's not a managed switch but a NUC doing the bridging between 192. and 10. I also have got a 3rd switch near the fiber termination (apartment is wired with ethernet in the walls). I did that years ago: even though I've got a "guests" network, I still wanted my own machines to be on a totally separate LAN. > I'd say stay far away from this hardware line unless you actually do just want a dumb switch. Yeah exactly. I've got the SG108, because it's dumb. It's really fine. It never ever fails. I'm using unmanaged switches at home because it's one less thing to configure/manage. Now I only have about four desktop PCs (two being workstations used as headless servers), 4 NUCs, 3 laptops, and six Raspberry Pi. It's not a big network by any means. A buddy of mine has got a 42U rack at home full of servers (and Mikrotik switches) and, well, that's another can of worms.

StillBored 5mo ago

8051! I love it. Its like running web stacks on these ESP8266's without the crypto acceleration. But at the same time, we have to stop pretending that 1Gbit Ethernet isn't utterly obsolete in the same way that RS-232 is. Useful maybe for low power, longish reach, but its slower than a good number of internet connections now, and the wifi on the other end too. Ex: My house, turns out the 1Gbit uplink from the ISP provided hardware to my firewall was causing me to lose 300MB because it was actually provisioned at 1.3Gbit, and when I switched it to 5Gbit, my Wifi got faster.. Ex, I can get in excess of 1Gbit in about 2/3rds of my house now to sites on the internet. 1GbaseT is 27 year old technology this year, 10GbaseT is 20 this year, and by any other computing metric should be obsolete too since there has been a 25GbaseT spec for 10 years that no one has bothered to manufacture. And here in 2026, double or more should be easy with modern phy technology, and with proper line quality could easily be all of dynamic power, dynamic length and dynamic speeds over a range of cable types and length, both running at lower power and higher performance.

yjftsjthsd-h 5mo ago
I dunno, I'd like to see faster options taking off but last time I checked they were just starting to get cost-effective. I'm not paying a factor more for 10GbaseT when I don't actually need that kind of speed.
tracker1 5mo ago
I'm a bit irked that there aren't more, less expensive 10gb 10baseT ethernet switches available. I have one that I have as my main connection in the wiring closet (need to get my NAS back in there), and a few 2.5gb switches off of that (one in my office)... mostly because I just didn't want to shell out the dramatically more expensive option.
zokier 5mo ago
> there has been a 25GbaseT spec for 10 years that no one has bothered to manufacture because dealing with fiber is easier than cat8 copper. unless you want poe there is very little reason to use base-t.
- 5mo ago

walrus01 5mo ago

In very cost sensitive applications where you want 'managed' and 'cheap' like security cameras for an ordinary house, the best non hack solution I've found is to have something like a basic managed non-PoE switch, and then hang a dumb switch downstream of it for the sole purpose of aggregating something like IP cameras. For example some of the cheaper unmanaged 8-port 802.3af/at switches with enough power budget for 7 cameras. Average traffic from a single camera isn't a lot, easily fitting in a single 1000BaseT link to the managed switch. Put the whole dumb switch in the camera vlan.

zokier 5mo ago

For slightly less dinky option rtl838x/rtl839x based switches are quite common and relatively cheap. What makes them special is that they are well supported by openwrt https://openwrt.org/docs/techref/targets/realtek https://openwrt.org/docs/techref/targets/realtek

AshamedCaptain 5mo ago

> given the price point of these switches when buying new I would highly recommend that you instead look for a used managed Gigabit switch. Power, power, power .... one of these older gigabit switches is going to use 10x power at idle, compared with one of the crappy and cheapest realtek-based "unmanaged" switches. Which is kinda important for something that is going to be 24h on. And of course since no one reviews these things, you'll only know once you have spend the money. So if you really can get away with a crappy web interface onto the crappy low-power realtek chip, you may get the best of both worlds.

jimmaswell 5mo ago
Gigabit seems undersized for a home LAN these days. 2.5Gb equipment isn't significantly more expensive and any Cat6 should handle it. Fiber is cheap enough too if you want some 10Gb devices. Only expensive thing is SFP ethernet adapters but you can put an SFP NIC in your PC and bypass the problem. I've been using this equipment in my home LAN for a mix of 10Gb fiber, 2.5Gb ethernet, and a small number of devices that came with 10Gb ethernet ports (Tyan motherboards) get SFP ethernet adapters. Unmanaged 4x2.5Gb ethernet 2x10Gb fiber - https://a.co/d/08J99UjH https://a.co/d/08J99UjH - I daisy chain these with fiber connections to have a kind of 10Gb backbone that terminates at my main PC with the fiber NIC. Managed 10x fiber - https://a.co/d/06927QeJ https://a.co/d/06927QeJ - This is the most economical 10Gb fiber switch I could find at the time and it's had no problems for the low price. Has a serial management interface in addition to web. Extensive management capabilities. I've used its link aggregation successfully. Managed 4x2.5Gb ethernet 2x10Gb fiber - https://a.co/d/0fud7jzF https://a.co/d/0fud7jzF - First hope off my modem before the fiber switch, good management capabilities. It's kind of funny, my LAN is all random Amazon brands people would warm against relying on, but I picked out ones that have been solid and reliable for years of use. No need to break the bank if you find the right stuff.
- NekkoDroid 5mo ago
  > Fiber is cheap enough too if you want some 10Gb devices. The problem with Fiber for now will remain that so few consumer devices can actually connect to it without first converting to RJ45. You are p much limited to some enthusiast networking gear and server gear and everything else needs you to convert. I recently had my families home ethernet situation upgraded and we went with Cat8 for now (it wasn't meaningfully more expensive to doing any other Cat cable all things considered). It is compatibile with networking stuff that is commonly available today and hopefully in the future some switch will appear to make full use of it (I am slightly sceptical, but I assume 10G will at least still be seen over Cat for consumers).

mindslight 5mo ago

I'd call the web interface on low-end managed switches a liability [0]. It would be interesting to write one's own 8051 firmware from the ground up [1]. It shouldn't actually be terribly hard to have some basic thing that accepts a binary chip config image from the network, right? The existing 512KiB flash ought to be enough for that. And since Realtek switch chips seem to be so popular, it could even be made generic enough to work across models. Then a user would just need a flash programmer. My core network is Mikrotik gear with 10Gb uplinks, but it would be nice to use my old unmanaged gbit switches (Netgear GS108 mainly) with vlans rather than going nuts with more Mikrotik or having lots of homeruns. [0] high-end ones too, for that matter [1] the alternative I thought of first was setting up an Arduino as an I2C slave. But then you'd also want to switch the switch's power supply, and need an ethernet port on the Arduino just to connect to the switch itself.

smileybarry 5mo ago

Archive.md link: https://archive.md/BXov8 https://archive.md/BXov8 In case you were also inexplicably blocked by Cloudflare.

Havoc 5mo ago

Aliexpress managed sfp+ 10 gigs with 8 ports have also gotten remarkably affordable If you’re willing to go the no name brand route

ranma42 5mo ago

> The TL-SG108 uses a 4Mbit (512KiB) SPI flash chip from Cfeon, which is too small to contain any assets for a web management interface The https://github.com/logicog/RTLPlayground https://github.com/logicog/RTLPlayground alternative firmware for RTL8372/RTL8373 based 2.5GBit Switches does fit into 512KiB, including web management interface.