This is my “wishlist” for peplink switching:
SOHO
Cheap switches that are basic. The selling point here is single pain of glass management in incontrol2.
Minimum viable product here is 1gb switches with POE & VLANs. Single PSU, no local console. Priced to sell with a bOne/b20x.
Once MVP is met, desirability here is:
mlag
2.5gb ports
usb for UPS monitoring
dynamic vlan config
what I’d like to see:
4 port POE in (4x 1Gb RJ45, 1 does POE in, 3 do POE out)
8 port (8x 1Gb RJ45, all with .at 30w POE out, 2x 1Gb SFP, single PSU)
24 port (24x 1Gb RJ45, all with .at 30w POE out, 2x 10Gb SFP, single PSU)
48 port (48x 1Gb RJ45, all with .at 30w POE out, 2 or 4x 10Gb SFP, single PSU)
Rugged
The existing line does well here. We use this in Fiji where the temp range can get wider, and we want reliability. The biggest problems are actually small quality of life things like the brackets being annoying & the power plugs sticking out to far.
In an ideal world I would like to see the existing line get:
shuttered ports
accept 12v in and still do 48v poe out
the 8 port and 16 port use the same bracket, which has space to hold the PSUs on it
The PSU plug not stick out so far (the terminal block does help)
16 port have poe on all ports & NOT share port 15 with copper/fibre (it can’t do lacp on 2x fibre ports)
mlag
dynamic vlan config
in an mgig world, perhaps the above feature in a range like this:
5 port POE in (4x 1Gb RJ45, 2 do 60w POE in, 3 do POE out, plenum rated, shuttered RJ45 ports, DIN rail mount)
8 port (6x 1Gb RJ45 30w POE out, 2x 2.5Gb with 60w POE out, 2x 1Gb SFP, dual PSU, GPIO, shuttered RJ45 ports)
16 port (12x 1Gb RJ45 30w POE out, 4x 2.5Gb with 60w POE out, 2x 1Gb SFP, dual PSU, GPIO, shuttered RJ45 ports)
24 port (16x 1Gb RJ45 30w POE out, 8x 2.5Gb with 60w POE out, 4x 10/25Gb SFP, dual PSU, GPIO, shuttered RJ45 ports)
Access point wise I really want two things here:
- An ap like the ap ax lite with an SFP port (ie it has rj45 poe in, and sfp/dc in)
- A proper outdoor AP. I envisage this as a two-part unit, a radio unit that has rj45, sfp & dc and antenna ports that clips into peplink antennas and forms a modular outdoor IP67 ap with no antenna cables. the antennas could be chosen for the specific deployment, like:
360 degree omni
180 degree panel
120 degree panel
60 degree panel
Enterprise
This is about bigger deployments. Rack mount, dual PSU, all POE, mgig, mlag are all minimum viable product here. They don’t have to be 100% mgig, they could be mostly 1gb with a third or half the ports being mgig if that made a big difference price wise.
Some sort of mlag/stacking/fabric is required to get redundancy on the LAN side. I have lots of deployments where I want redundancy, I can have HA peplinks but to have redundancy from the peplink->lan I have to able to connect the peplink to 2x switches lan side and its risky to use STP for that. I need to be able to have an LACP from the peplink sd-wan where each leg ends on two separate switches.
3 port 1 Gb HA switch/dongle (2 ports POE in, 1 no POE or POE out). For connecting a wan to 2x peplinks in HA. POE powered from both peplinks, monitored by the peplinks with something like synergy mode.
16 port (16x 1/2.5Gb or 1/2.5/5gb with 60w POE out, 2x 25Gb SFP, dual PSU, MLAG, stacking or fabric)
24 port (24x 1/2.5Gb or 1/2.5/5gb with 60w POE out, 4x 25Gb SFP, dual PSU, MLAG, stacking or fabric)
48 port (48x 1/2.5Gb or 1/2.5/5gb with 60w POE out, 4x 25Gb SFP, dual PSU, MLAG, stacking or fabric)
Fibre switch (24 or 48x SFP28 supporting 1/10/25gb + 6-8x QSFP28 100G ports, dual hot swappable PSU, selectable fan direction, MLAG minimum but prefer stacking)
The ++ level here would be:
- USB UPS monitoring
- dynamic vlan config
- Fabric “SD-LAN”.
Access point wise:
- AP AX Lite but wifi7 and a second ethernet port that does POE out
- AP AX but wifi7 and 2x multigig ports that both do POE in for deployments doing LACP (or passive LAG) from 2x mlag switches to have switch redundancy for the AP
