I bought a new switch recently, partly because I got cheesed by having to run an extra no-name 10/100 switch plugged into the Netgear Gigabit switch simply because the Netgear doesn’t talk to some of my NICs. As well as some new Shiny, I got yet another reminder that the browser compatibility wars are far from over.
The Linksys SRW2024 is a managed 10/100/1000 switch at a rock-bottom price, and since I’ve had a really good run with Linksys kit I decided to give it a go.
It has a console port on the front, but that’s only good for basic setup (IP address, etc). The main configuration interface is via a web browser. I got the IP address in via the serial console, and fired up Firefox to check out the web interface.
The login panel appeared, which I completed, then garbage. The menu screen only partially loaded, bits of graphics were overlaid text, and none of the menu options worked. Hmmm. I started checking network connectivity — a flood ping to the switch’s IP was all good. I opened the page in Konqueror, and got a bit further, but still the menu was non-functional and the screen was not rendering correctly.
At about this point, the unthinkable idea emerged — was there still a company in the 21st century making devices with IE-only web interfaces? Sure enough, I went to the Windows XP virtual machine on my work laptop, and the page worked perfectly. Aargh!
A bit of research on the web would show that early versions of the firmware on the switch worked okay with other browsers. And, looking at the Javascript console in Firefox shows a raft of errors in the CSS files — so it seems to be sloppy coding rather than exploitation of non-portable features.
So who’s the enemy? Linksys? They’ve turned out a shoddy firmware that doesn’t even have valid CSS in the management web interface — what does that say about the switch code itself? What about Microsoft, who blather on about standards but still make a browser that doesn’t care what kind of horsemeat it renders?
I’m yet to try Opera or Seamonkey — I don’t expect Seamonkey to be any better than Firefox, but Opera might give joy. I think I can forget about Safari too, since I saw one review buy a guy who returned his SRW2024 because the management interface wouldn’t render on his Mac (a bit extreme I first thought, but if you don’t have any Windows in your shop at all, the cost of a Windows box just to manage your switch blows the cost-case a bit!).
Stop Press: I tried the interface again with Konqueror on the home laptop, running Kubuntu Edgy, and it worked! Not completely, as the rendering is still a bit dodgy and I can’t actually configure anything, but most of the viewing screens work just fine.
Crossed Wires 