Graham Sutherland / PolynomialSep 10, 2025
I am fully here for the move to RGB LEDs on network switch status ports. it's one of those features that sounds like gamer gimmick bullshit but is actually super useful.
Show threadGary Sep 11, 2025

@gsuberland hard nope on that: utter shit UX for people who are #colourblind.

There are three guys with CVD in my network team, a statistical anomaly for sure, but 1 in 12 men are colourblind, and 1 in 200 women.

Show thread0x5cSep 11, 2025
@WiteWulf @gsuberland even with very mild red-green colourblindness, bi-colour link speed LEDs are useless to me
Show threadGary Sep 11, 2025

@0x5c @gsuberland best hardware interface design I ever saw in this respect was a Cisco ISR voice gateway chassis that had a single LED for each Ethernet port. Off meant no link, 1 blink was 10mb, 2 was for 100mb and 3 was gig.

Very simple, very accesssible.

Show thread0x5c
@WiteWulf @gsuberland yeah that's nice, though depending on the switch and what it (might) need to also indicate I'd want a secondary led
But even that is very doable on standard two-led ethernet ports
Sep 11, 2025 at 8:36amWeb
Show threadGary Sep 11, 2025

@0x5c @gsuberland recent Cisco gear (that's the majority of my experience, we don't use any other manufacturer at work) has a single LED above each port, and a Mode button at the end that allows you to cycle through a number of functions such as activity, link speed, PoE status, stack status, etc.

That works perfectly for me.