Hi!https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=35828.0...as close as you will get. ;-)
It cannot. All packet forwarding is done by the main CPU.
Can Opnsense work just for switching purposes or it's not optimized for it?
How does it work on real switches (something like Mikrotik CRS305-1G-4S+IN), it uses extra hardware to offload the CPU?
Quote from: Patrick M. Hausen on January 24, 2024, 06:57:23 amIt cannot. All packet forwarding is done by the main CPU.How does it work on real swtiches (something like Mikrotik CRS305-1G-4S+IN), it uses extra hardware to offload the CPU?
OPNsense does not support any proprietary switch hardware.
This switch/router, depending on which version of OS you use like RouterOS / SwitchOS will behave as switch or router. That OS is optimised to use a discrete switch chip, in this case a Marvell 98DX3236. You see now the main difference, switches have a switch chip.The OS can offload switching packets duties to said chip.OPN on the other hand is an OS that is not leveraging these chips in a general-purpose amd64 machine that doesn't have them, so it has to do all the switching/forwarding using the CPU as Patrick said.
I mean if Marvell 98DX3236 has open drivers, how hard is it to add support for it in FreeBSD / Opnsense? Or there are no chips with open drivers like that?