[clug] Zodiac FX OpenFlow switch on Kickstarter

Bob Edwards Robert.Edwards at anu.edu.au
Tue Jul 28 02:28:55 UTC 2015


On 28/07/15 12:11, David Austin wrote:
>
>
> On 28 July 2015 at 11:38, Bob Edwards <Robert.Edwards at anu.edu.au
> <mailto: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>
>         <mailto: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?  :-) )
>

Oops - I made that up. 25Mb at the Phy, 31.25MHz on the wires... Sorry.

>
>     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...)

I tell my students that TCP has been with us for some decades now and
carries untold petabytes/sec across all the Internets. And, as far as
we know, the _protocol_ itself has never dropped a byte (some 
implementations may have). It's ugly, but I wouldn't be reading your
messages with out it...

>
>     Might be worth writing them a note to let them know that this might be
>     a thing.
>
>
> Did so ;-)

I did too, and Paul mentioned that he already had your message...

Bob Edwards.

>
> David
>




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