| 21 May 2025 |
 matthewcroughan - nix.zone | but openwrt is more than good enough for the dainty task of running a managed switch | 15:37:31 |
 emily | it's a lot easier to figure things out if you just put any effort at all into research :P | 15:37:39 |
| emily | I knew genuinely nothing about networking ~2 months ago when I asked about the BPI initially | 15:38:03 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | is openwrt actually a good match for a managed switch though? it's webui and utils are more geared towards routing | 15:38:06 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | And if we think they're just using Linux to configure an asic.. it should probably not be necessary to have all of openwrt running there | 15:38:41 |
| emily | I mean it's Linux. | 15:39:00 |
| emily | there's no reason to use anything less than Linux. | 15:39:06 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | yeah admittedly Linux is needed to keep it simple and easy | 15:39:19 |
| emily | the SoC has the capability to do it and the drivers were written. it's free real estate | 15:39:21 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | but the most ideal thing would just be some firmware written in embassy/micropython that's easy to contribute to and test | 15:39:36 |
| emily | it's way less pleasant to write for some embedded thing with no infrastructure | 15:39:38 |
| emily | how would it be "most ideal"? | 15:39:51 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | The vendor ships a webpage that lets you choose some options in html in a dropdown, the form is submitted, this programs the asic | 15:40:23 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | to respond to a html form, you only need some basic micropython code | 15:40:40 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | you don't need linux, or routing, or all the stuff that comes with openwrt | 15:41:01 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | so it would be most ideal if there were something else that isn't openwrt just for the purposes of providing an API or webui for managing a switch | 15:41:23 |
| emily | but it's not that simple | 15:41:34 |
| emily | you need to persist the configuration | 15:41:41 |
| emily | you need to handle upgrades, for issues in the configuration UI | 15:41:46 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | if openwrt ends up having infra for that, and the UI/api ends up being different for the one use-case of a managed switch, I'm interested in that | 15:41:47 |
| emily | operating systems exist because they make writing software systems easier | 15:42:08 |
| emily | the only reason to use lower level more embedded stuff is cost, power efficiency, realtime/hardware interface requirements | 15:42:25 |
| emily | you're already paying ≥ $100 for the switch and the SoC can run Linux, it's literally free | 15:42:43 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | You need state? I don't get why | 15:43:38 |
| emily | to… save the configuration? | 15:44:15 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | I have my bpi-r4 operating without state, and it is just running nixos, and it can do managed switch stuff on the 4 1G ports it has | 15:44:18 |
| emily | so that you don't have to set it every time it powers on? | 15:44:21 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | oh right, yeah so that's not hard to do in micropython, or embassy, etc | 15:44:52 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | whatever you choose, you're always gonna have some way of persisting config values | 15:45:00 |
| matthewcroughan - nix.zone | I just argue that linux/ext4 is like, overkill for what a managed switch has to do | 15:45:24 |
