[clug] Zodiac FX OpenFlow switch on Kickstarter

David Austin david at d-austin.net
Tue Jul 28 02:11:38 UTC 2015


On 28 July 2015 at 11:38, Bob Edwards <Robert.Edwards at anu.edu.au> wrote:

> On 28/07/15 11:26, David Austin wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 28 July 2015 at 10:20, Bob Edwards <Robert.Edwards at anu.edu.au
>> <mailto:Robert.Edwards at anu.edu.au>> wrote:
>>
>>     At the BeerSIG last Thursday (prior to CLUG), the Zodiac FX low-cost
>>     OpenFlow SDN switch Kickstarter project was discussed and several
>>     of us signed up for one. They are coming from a Melbourne-based
>>     outfit called Northbound Networks.
>>
>>
>> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/northboundnetworks/zodiac-fx-the-worlds-smallest-openflow-sdn-switch
>>
>>     $79 incl. postage for a 4-port (3 + 1) 10/100Mbps OpenFlow switch.
>>
>>
>> We can't see both sides of the PCB but we can see quite a lot and it
>> does not appear that they have correctly laid out the differential pairs
>> on
>> the PCB.
>>
>> David
>>
>>
> A reasonable observation. I would definitely care about that if it were
> GigE+ or USB2.0+, but it is 10/100Mbps (25Mb max. signalling rate etc.)
> so I'm less concerned.
>


At 10Mbps it doesn't matter - at 100Mbps it does slightly. (Not sure where
your "25Mb max. signalling rate" comes from - should be 31.25MHz?  :-) )


>
> Plus it has been tested (apparently) downloading 3 episodes of Games of
> Thrones from iTunes (neither downloading from iTunes, nor downloading
> GoT are of any interest to me), although I don't know what the cable
> lengths used were etc.. So it does, apparently, work...
>

Did they publish bit/packet error rates?  TCP can hide a lot of errors.
(Man I
hate TCP - but that's a rant for another day...)


> Might be worth writing them a note to let them know that this might be
> a thing.
>

Did so ;-)

David


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