[Arm-netbook] Switch chip

[Derek LaHousse]

luke.leighton <luke.leighton <at> gmail.com> writes:

> >  I came across the AR8316, a switch chip which does VLANs,
> > can port-mirror, etc.
> 
>   oo - thank you.  i'll take a look this evening.  yes that one's
> still on the cards, as GPL'd hardware.
> 
>  thanks derek.
> 
> l.
> 
> 

Well, I continued trying to track this down, product numbers, etc.  This led
to me spending some time on Qualcomm Atheros' site.  Here's the link for the
current top-of-the-line:
http://www.qca.qualcomm.com/technology/technology.php?nav1=48&product=101

The AR8328 is a 7 port switch, three with GMII/RGMII and 4 with integrated
PHY.  Sounds about right, no?  One of those three can (supposedly) be
SGMII/SERDES, which I read as feeding into an SFP.  Which I further read as
being a plug-able upgrade to fiber, for when we all have optical runs in our
houses.

As I said before about the 8316, this one's got a bunch of network
management offload, like QoS based on IPv6 traffic category, hardware NAT
(on the -N variant), and some firewall rules right on the chip.

Of course, I have no idea of the cost, which is a big consideration.