April 26, 2026
Switchception: let the pig sing
The Nintendo Switch Switch (2019)
Someone turned a Nintendo Switch into an internet switch — puns vs. performance
TLDR: A hacker made a Nintendo Switch act like a basic internet switch, hitting ~90 Mbps. Comments erupted over whether that limit is the hardware or cheap adapters, while pun lovers and pragmatists duked it out—showcasing DIY creativity and the internet’s favorite sport: arguing about speed.
A tinkerer just made a Nintendo Switch behave like a real internet switch (yes, the “Switch switch”), and the comment section instantly became a comedy club and a speed lab. The crowd’s vibe? Equal parts awe and side-eye. One top comment summed it up with pure theater: it’s not fast, but wow, the pig sings. Translation: nobody expected it to work at all, which makes it delightful.
Then came the brawl over speed. The project hit about 90 megabits per second because one adapter only supported 100, and the thread split into two camps. The “Is the console the bottleneck?” detectives demanded benchmarks, while the optimists swore the Switch’s USB‑C can do full gigabit with the right dongle and network. Cue the “just buy a $15 switch” pragmatists getting dunked on by the “because we can” makers.
Puns flooded in (“All that work for a pun—I love geeks”), but the nitpickers brought receipts too, explaining that a mystery USB device name was likely just an outdated list and pointing to device databases. Meanwhile, fans cheered the whole step-by-step saga—booting Linux, plugging in two adapters, bridging them—and the triumphant tweet-check to prove it works. The creator hints more madness is coming; follow @bitcynth for the sequel, because the internet demands Switchception.
Key Points
- •A Nintendo Switch was repurposed into a basic network switch using its dock’s USB-A ports and switchroot Ubuntu.
- •Initial USB Ethernet adapters were detected by lsusb but had no drivers loaded (Driver=(none)) and didn’t appear in ip link.
- •Applying a switchroot boot update (replacing boot directory and boot.scr) enabled the USB NIC drivers to load correctly.
- •A Linux bridge (br0) was configured with brctl and ip, connecting two USB Ethernet adapters between LAN and a test computer.
- •Throughput reached about 90 Mbps, limited by a 100 Mbps USB Ethernet dongle used in the setup.