A developer transformed a Nintendo Switch into a functional network switch by running Linux and configuring USB Ethernet dongles. The project started with installing switchroot Ubuntu onto the console using an SD card and the hekate bootloader, following the setup wizard. After plugging in a USB Ethernet dongle, the developer checked lsusb and saw the device listed, but ip link showed no network interface. Initial attempts failed because the USB network adapters weren't recognized by the system.

The solution came from downloading an update from the switchroot download page, which the developer extracted to the boot partition after deleting the existing boot directory and boot.scr file. After rebooting with hekate, the USB Ethernet dongles finally appeared as network interfaces with MAC addresses like enx9cebe816215d and enx8416f90eae20. The developer then used brctl to create a bridge interface called br0 and added both USB adapters to it using brctl addif.

Testing showed the improvised network switch could achieve 90Mbps throughput, limited by one of the 100Mbps dongles. One dongle was identified as an ASIX Electronics AX88772B with USB ID 0b95:7e2b. The project demonstrates how the Switch's USB ports and Linux support enable practical networking applications beyond gaming. The developer plans to share additional related projects on Twitter soon.