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DSA in OpenWrt: switch ports as Linux interfaces, VLANs on br-lan

Each port is a Linux interface; VLANs live on br-lan.

DSA (Distributed Switch Architecture) is the Linux kernel subsystem for network switches. On DSA devices each front port appears as its own interface, such as lan1–lan4, and those ports are bridged into br-lan.

  • DSA first appeared in 21.02, replacing the older swconfig on some targets.
  • 22.03 converted more of them, for example all of bcm53xx and lantiq xrx200.
  • Sysupgrade cannot migrate a swconfig configuration to DSA. If your device switched over, set the network up again.

VLANs are config bridge-vlan sections in /etc/config/network. Interfaces then sit on the bridge with a VLAN suffix, as in br-lan.1. Each port is tagged or untagged per VLAN.

Terminal window
ip -br link
uci show network | grep -E 'bridge-vlan|=device'

If you see config switch and switch_vlan sections instead, the device still uses swconfig, and DSA guides do not apply to it.

Sources

Router.Homes

Independent OpenWrt notes. Every page states the firmware, device, package manager and way back.

Icons: Solar by 480 Design, CC BY 4.0