FS S5850-48S6Q 48x 10GbE and 6x 40GbE Switch Review

6

FS S5850-48S6Q Internal Hardware Overview

Inside the switch, we see a relatively straightforward layout with ports, switch chip, management, and then fans and power supplies.

FS 5850 48S6Q Switch Front Open 2
FS S5850 48S6Q Switch Front Open 2

One small item that did not fit well elsewhere is that the internal cables are all on the left side of the switch. There is one that can be hard to see in many of the photos, but it sits just behind the management ports.

FS 5850 48S6Q Switch Front Panel Connection
FS S5850 48S6Q Switch Front Panel Connection

The switch chip itself has a relatively small heatsink with its 1.44Tbps of switching capacity and a 9MB packet buffer. This is not the fastest switch that FS sells and the throughput is roughly that of ~4-5 generations ago in cutting-edge data center switch chips. As a result of requiring less performance, we also have lower power consumption and a smaller heatsink.

FS 5850 48S6Q Switch Chip Heatsink
FS S5850 48S6Q Switch Chip Heatsink

Behind the switch chip, we have a Lattice FPGA. One will notice that there are large areas of the PCB that are being used to run wires and do not have surface mount components.

FS 5850 48S6Q Switch Lattice
FS S5850 48S6Q Switch Lattice

Powering the management control plane is the Freescale PowerPC P1010 on a fairly large daughtercard. This means that one will be using FS’s OS, and not something like SONiC. These days, most high-end switches come with Intel CPUs, some with AMD and Arm making this perhaps the fourth most common architecture.

FS 5850 48S6Q Switch Management Board 1
FS S5850 48S6Q Switch Management Board 1

The advantage again is that this is a very low-power solution.

FS 5850 48S6Q Switch Management Board 2
FS S5850 48S6Q Switch Management Board 2

On the side of power, we just also wanted to point out that the redundant PSUs have a small power distribution board that is then cabled to the main switch PCB.

FS 5850 48S6Q Switch Power Distribution To Switch
FS S5850 48S6Q Switch Power Distribution To Switch

Overall, this is a fairly simple hardware setup that seems optimized for cost. Next, we wanted to discuss the management interface.

6 COMMENTS

  1. I think FS is really doing themselves a disservice with the fake-looking reviews, that just makes them look super-shady. Also, they should ditch developing their own OS and instead support an open OS like SONiC, lower cost for them and a larger customer base especially at the price point. I have an FS switch and the typos alone don’t inspire a lot of trust in the Web GUI.

  2. Makes me laugh that companies are still including those “warranty is void if seal is broken” stickers. In the US at least it’s not legal and they can’t use it as a grounds to void your warranty.

  3. I’ll agree with Nils SONiC would be best, but then they’d need a better CPU and it’d be more expensive.

    STH is the only site I trust for these reviews of FS products. All the rest seem like they’re fakes. All of the FS.com reviews look like fakes. It’s so shady.

  4. FS does not produce any switches, the switches of FS are OEM, and the operating system is also OEM, and FS is not responsible for development.

  5. Their website claims a forwarding rate of 1071.4 Mpps, however, I have some doubts that the low power (small heatsink!) PowerPC can keep up with anything demanding

  6. FS is the new back door into the U.S

    Due to most of the other vendors being shut down,
    give it a few years & they will be on the banned list as well…

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