The TACTICAL-1000 series is live. The first model, T1K-24T1000-4X, ships with 24x 1G RJ45 ports and 4x SFP+ uplinks, powered by Microchip LAN9696 with Linux support. Teams across enterprise, telecom, industrial, and research environments are already running it. That's not the end of the story. It's the beginning.
Open networking hardware is a platform, not a single product. What we build next depends on where operators actually need to go. And based on what we're hearing, there's a clear direction.
The market is shifting
For years, network hardware was a black box. Organizations accepted opaque firmware, unpredictable licensing, and supply chains they had no control over because there was no real alternative. That is changing.
Security and compliance requirements are tightening. Supply chain independence has gone from a nice-to-have to a hard requirement for many organizations. The networking industry's default answer of picking a major vendor and accepting the tradeoffs is no longer the only path.
Organizations managing critical infrastructure, running research environments, or simply wanting to know what their hardware is actually doing are all asking for the same thing: infrastructure they can see into, automate freely, and own without conditions. Novarq is built for exactly that.
The next generation of silicon
All upcoming TACTICAL-1000 variants move to the Microchip LAN9698 and LAN9694 families. The same open, Linux-native approach, the same switchdev foundation, but with more density, faster copper ports, and PoE support across the lineup. Staying within the same silicon family means the software stack carries over, Linux upstream support extends naturally, and operators can run a consistent toolchain across every device they deploy.
What open actually means in practice
Open is a word that gets used a lot. Here is what it looks like when it is real.
The TACTICAL-1000 series is capable of running a pure Linux networking stack with native switchdev integration for hardware offloading. No proprietary drivers. No binary blobs. No out-of-tree modules. Standard Linux tools like ip, bridge, and tc work exactly as they do on any other Linux system.
The pieces of this stack did not appear overnight. Platform support, silicon bring-up, hardware offloading, security elements, and power delivery each required dedicated upstream Linux work. One of those pieces was PoE. Until recently, the Linux kernel had no support for it at all. Getting PoE into mainline Linux (kernel 6.10), with enhanced features following in 6.11, meant contributing a driver that had never existed before. Each piece in place means one less thing operators have to maintain themselves.
When you deploy a TACTICAL-1000 device, you are running software the broader Linux community can inspect, audit, and build on. That is what transparency looks like when it is not just a marketing word.
Four new SKUs in development
All-SFP+ density: 10x SFP+ ports (1G/10G capable). For environments where fibre connectivity and high-bandwidth uplinks matter more than copper density.
Mixed copper and fibre with 2.5G: 16x RJ-45 10/100/1000/2500 BASE-T, 8x RJ-45 1G, 4x SFP+, expandable with PoE. A versatile platform for modern access layers that need room to grow.
Compact 2.5G with PoE: 8x RJ-45 10/100/1000/2500BASE-T, 2x SFP+, expandable with PoE. Smaller form factor for deployments where simplicity and power delivery come first.
Balanced 2.5G density: 16x RJ-45 10/100/1000/2500BASE-T, 4x SFP+, expandable with PoE. A clean option for enterprise access switching with modern port speeds.
The roadmap is shaped by the people using it
Novarq builds hardware that teams can rely on and understand. The SKUs above reflect what organizations are asking for today. If you have requirements that don't fit any of them, that's worth a conversation.
If you're planning a deployment, evaluating options, or have a specific use case in mind, now is the time to say so. The decisions being made today about port configurations, power budgets, and form factors will determine what ships next.
Your requirements shape what we build. Tell us what you need.