Realtek RTL8365MB and RTL8366RB Ethernet switch chips
A family of small Realtek Ethernet switch ASICs (notably the RTL8365MB and RTL8366RB) commonly soldered into home and small-business routers, access points, and other embedded boxes. They sit alongside a SoC's CPU and provide several wired LAN ports with VLAN and basic switching offload, controlled over MDIO or SMI.
recommendation
It should stay because the hardware is still shipping inside current routers and is heavily used by the OpenWrt community, with fresh enablement work as recently as January 2025 and ongoing kernel commits into 2026. There is no replacement driver in tree, and the device-tree bindings continue to grow to cover more chip variants, so this is an active, healthy part of the DSA subsystem rather than a sunset codebase.
repository signals
sources
- git.kernel.org
Kernel history for this path shows the driver is young and still actively maintained into 2026, with recent bug fixes and feature work rather than retirement activity.
- git.kernel.org
Upstream Kconfig exposes current support for Realtek RTL8365MB and RTL8366RB switch drivers, plus MDIO and SMI interface support.
- git.kernel.org
The DT binding documents active upstream support for realtek,rtl8365mb and realtek,rtl8366rb families and enumerates multiple chip models in those families.
- openwrt.org
OpenWrt still publishes a package for RTL8366RB switch support, indicating ongoing deployment in router/open-firmware ecosystems.
- lists.openwrt.org
A 2025 OpenWrt patch explicitly created Realtek DSA switch packages for RTL8366RB and RTL8365MB, showing current enablement work rather than sunset.
- cateee.net
LKDDb tracks CONFIG_NET_DSA_REALTEK_RTL8365MB in current kernel series, confirming ongoing upstream presence.
- cateee.net
LKDDb tracks CONFIG_NET_DSA_REALTEK_RTL8366RB in current kernel series, confirming ongoing upstream presence.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Local shell inspection confirmed a real DSA driver with 2026 touches and no explicit removal/deprecation commits; `lore-http` MCP was unavailable, so upstream activity was assessed via local `git -c safe.directory=... log` and mapped to canonical-recall kernel.org log/tree URLs. Web `search_query` found OpenWrt package/devel evidence and LKDDb pages. The driver covers still-deployed embedded/router switch ASICs, especially OpenWrt-class hardware, so this looks active and relevant rather than obsolete; no natural in-tree replacement exists beyond this driver itself.