10Gb and 40Gb equipment available

[Thor Lancelot Simon <tls%panix.com@localhost>]

NetBSD has received a donation of 10Gb Ethernet switches (Arista 7124S or SX
and 7050).

We will use some of these switches in our own infrastructure but are
offering others for long-term use by developers interested in using them to
work on NetBSD-related projects.

An immediately obvious project would be porting of additional 10Gb card
drivers, such as those for Broadcom, Solarflare, or Mellanox cards.  I
can supply cards and cabling for this purpose.

These are low-latency switches with a fairly rich L2 and L3 feature
set (though lacking newer features such as VXLAN encapsulation).  They run
Linux as the control plane OS and user-provided code on the control plane
is expressly supported.  A few features perhaps of note to NetBSD developers
include MACsec support, port mirroring over GRE, rapid, multiple, and
per-VLAN spanning-tree, equal cost multipath routing, and multichassis
link aggregation ("MLAG").

The 7050 switches have 40Gb ports.  I have a *limited* quantity of 40Gb
adapters and cabling available which we can provide to developers who
demonstrate a serious interest in working on 40Gb card drivers and
related stack features (e.g. large receive).  The adapters are Solarflare
and Mellanox, and suitable-licensed FreeBSD drivers are available as a
starting point.

The switch software is EOL by Arista and has some open security issues
which mean that the control plane should *not* be exposed to untrusted
networks.  This should not be a problem for development work.

Please let me know before the end of February if you want hardware from
this donation, and why.

-- 
 Thor Lancelot Simon	                                      tls%panix.com@localhost

	Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the
	inheritor of our fear.			-Alan Paton