16 Port 10Gbe Carrier Ethernet Switch, L3 Managed

After update the hostware everything works fine (updating admin password)

Picked up one of these cuties for my 10" mini rack hoping to get a relatively cheap managed switch with 12 port 2.5gbe with a couple 10gbe SPF+. Unfortunately I ran into a dead-end on the firmware side and had to send it back. There are a lot of features in a small package here, so the hardware has a lot of potential. On paper it looks great. But as they often do, these minor brands often struggle with bugs and usability issues. Generally, I've had pretty good luck, but this one had some issues with users and authentication I couldn't work around. At first boot (on the stock firmware), I logged into the web interface with the default credentials (admin/admin). The first thing I tried to do was change the admin password, but found that was impossible for some reason. If you go to modify user and select the admin account, it locks the account type to "normal" instead of "admin", which is odd. If you try to update the password, it spits out some error about not being able to change the account type for admin, and the password does not get updated, leaving you with no way to change the default admin password. I tried to create a second account with admin privileges, but it told me that 'only the admin can create new accounts'. To be clear, there is only one user account on this thing out of the box and it's the default admin, which I was logged in as... I went to XikeStor's website and found a 1.04 firmware update, downloaded it, then flashed it successfully. After rebooting and logging in again as admin/admin there were noticeably more configuration options, features and the UI was a little more polished. The configuration save button was moved to a more visible location. Lots of improvements. However, when I went to change the pesky default admin password, it now showed that there were no users at all! No admin account or anything! Very strange since I logged in as admin. I tried to create a new user and guess what? Another error stating "Only user admin can add new user!" Tried logging out, tried resetting to factory defaults in the UI, tried resetting defaults using the hardware button, but every time I was able to log in as admin/admin on the webui, but the user list was empty on the management page. Totally unable to change the default admin login, create new users or delete the default login. I tried to access over ssh, but hey, no users (root didn't work either). I spent a while going through the serial management console, but there's no meaningful user management there. The console management layer is pretty ugly, tbh. I couldn't find any documentation for it, so get ready for a lot of guesswork if you go that route. Getting into a linux or *BSD shell would have been much more useful. The inability to change the default admin login is one of the most basic and severe failures I can think of in a piece of network gear. It's like having an extremely obvious backdoor just sitting there in plain sight. Others have mentioned they were unable to persist changes in the config after reboots, but you just need to dig under the maintenance tab for the save configuration button. The updated firmware makes it much easier to find. Another minor gripe is there is a long boot time, even on warm reboots. Hopefully XikeStor will get the firmware issues sorted out soon. It could be a really nice switch, but I cannot wait months for basic security functionality.

Unbeatable price. Works quite well. Management interface is complete and easy to use. Makes my network much easier to manage. Great compatability on the SFP+ ports. I'm highly knowledgeable in computer networking and did some very deep tinkering with this switch. I managed to mess it up (totally my own fault) and had to contact the manufacturer for help. To my surprise, they responded almost immediately with a procedure to restore the switch. They must have had an engineer work this out for me on the spot, going way beyond what I would expect.

I would give this switch a zero start review of that was an option. The support is non existent. I have emailed them multiple times requesting support and have not received a single response. This switch has an update for the firmware because it off the box or was missing most of the options. After applying the update it will not allow users to be added or password changed etc. In fact it shows no users not even the built on admin. And it gives an error stating the admin user is required to make changes even though i am logged in as the admin account. The documentation available does NOT EVEN SHOW THE FEATURES OF THE SWITCH and appear to be for a very old version without most of the features.

The stock firmware is usable but I was able to install a snapshot version of OpenWRT based on the 6.18 kernel and now it’s fully functional. I haven’t tried the SFP+ ports yet but the wired 10g port works like a charm. Highly recommend this with OpenWRT if you are comfortable using a snapshot until there is an official release.

Upgraded switch to work with high speed NAS. Works great!