Budget 10g LAN?

[Phone Guy]

I am having some issues with my current 1g lan setup, and thinking since I will replacing some stuff anyway, how expensive would it be to do 10gb lan? Anyone familar could maybe give me some advice? Seems like it will most likely be outside my budget, but I thought I'd ask here for help if there was any to be had.

 

[EAZ1964]

It is expensive. You need the cat6 cables, 10gbe switches and 10gbe NIC on all devices.
fiber SFP+, can be slightly cheaper in some cases and has some additional advantages like thin cables, lower latency and energy bill.
Budget options:

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2.5GBe is approaching mainstream and may help if your devices come with ports That support it.
USB3 connections can be used with connectors in some cases.

 

[Robbie]

If this is for the average home size then Cat5e cable will work just fine for 10 GbE. It is cheaper, easier to work with, to terminate and you can get more cables in a given hole or space. 30m run of proper Cat5e is easy for 10 GbE links.

I fitted Cat5e in my home knowing that I would be using 10 GbE, with some SFP+ DACs too, as I understand what the standards look to achieve and under what conditions. It is a different case when certifying standards for a commercial network or installing in a more noisy RF environment with longer runs - for that you need the correct required standards of cable.

I would not look to replace 1 GbE switch with a 10 GbE switch either. It is better to augment an existing 1 GbE network with an additional 10 GbE switch, so that you don't end up spending a fortune on 10 GbE ports that then spend their lives hosting 100 Mbps clients.

I started 10 GbE working with a point to point (ie no switch) for my first move into 10 GbE. Then I moved briefly to a switch with just 2 x 10 GbE ports and a brace of 1 GbE. From there it was a move to a 6-port 10 GbE switch before eventually moving to a 24-port 10 GbE switch, when the prices dropped to a level I could tolerate.

Anyway, for better advice tell us you layout / topology and what you would like to achieve in what setting. No point getting an ace 10 GbE network if the screaming fans send you nuts, so things like noise level could influence which switch to aim for.

️

 

[one-eyed-king]

It realy depends on your circumstances.

It doesn't have to be expensive if all devices are in close range and can use DAC cables.

I bought a bunch of Mellanox connectx-3 pci-e cards from ebay + DAC cables, a Mikrotik CRS305-1G-4S+IN (1x GbE, 4x 10GbE SFP+) managed switch. In retrospective, I wish I would have bought the 2x 10Gbps Mellanox connectx-3 cards and the CRS309-1G-8S+IN (1x GbE, 8x 10GbE SFP+) back in the days instead. Both switches are fanless.

As long as you only use DAC cables, the Mikrotik switches are a bargain. Though, if you are looking for 10GBase-T ports, I wouldn't recommend those switches, as each 10Gbase-T port needs a SFP+ 10GBase-T transiver module (>50€ per piece), which run at crazy temperatures due to the higher current required by 10GBase-T connections..

 

[Phone Guy]

I have a 2 story house, according to my current Netgear switch, longest cable run is about 65 meter with the second longest run being about 20 meters (give or take obviously). I have 3 pc's and 2 Nas decives that could all be upgraded to 10gb, and ideally that's what I'd want, all 3 pc's to access the 2 Nas at top speeds.so a total of 5. The big problem is 1 of them is upstairs on the other end of that longest run.

All my runs terminate downstairs at a central point, that longest cable run feeds my upstairs with only 1 important connection. It actually goes into another switch to feed a couple of tv's, a PC, a printer and a streaming box. So only 1 "serious" connection up there.

The house is wired with cat5e, and the vast majority of the runs are simple and short.

So I know I would need 3 pci cards for the windows pc's, and 2 10gb cards for the 2x ds1621+ Nas. I've got a couple other projects going like another brand Nas box and getting ready to do a server build to play with proxmox. The proxmox box will eventually be upstairs on that long cable run, and would be a 4th PC eventually eligible for 10gb. (So what is that 6 total)

The other Nas box does have usb3, not sure if it's gen 2? I'll have to look up the specs, not sure if a 10gb USB to lan adapter exists? But I'm trying to paint a picture of my network for you guys.

My current big switch is a Netgear gs724v3, and I mistakenly ordered a Cisco meraki 48 PoE port switch with 4x 10gb sfp+ ports, but after I ordered it I found out those only work with a valid yearly license from Cisco! Unless it can be flashed to openwrt? I've seen that for other meraki models but not this particular one, so I think I bought a paperweight! as I understand it without the license the meraki switch simply will not pass traffic at all (which doesn't sound right but it's all over the internet, I should have Google'd a little before clicking that buy it now button, damn ebay and there private 50% deals)

Anyway I think that's all I got?

 

[one-eyed-king]

I'll have to look up the specs, not sure if a 10gb USB to lan adapter exists?

I am afraid there are no 10GbE usb adapters. Though, 5GbE usb adapters exist, like the QNAP QNA-UC5G1T (which I used with a 10GTBase-T transiver module, It never ran reliable with USB Network Native Driver for ESXi due to termal problems).

Though, 10GbE adapters for Thunderbold 3/4 exist. I highly recommend to use PCI-E cards over usb or thunderbold adapters - they are cheaper and more reliable.

 

[Phone Guy]

For the pc's sure, pci cards I've seen some on ebay in the $40 range (10gbase-t). For the nas, I looked at the 10gbase-t cards from synology (unless another brand would be able to work?) are about $140 ea, where the sfp+ are easily another $100 more. I remember reading the mellanox cards worked in synology slot?

I was under the impression copper rj45 would work with 10gb on shorter runs <30m ? are you saying still need to use sfp+ transceivers?

-- post merged: 9. Apr 2022 --

The usb adapters were only for the non-synology nas I have, thats if I keep it.....

 

[one-eyed-king]

I have no experience with 10GBase-T long run connections. Though, due to my experience with 10GBase-T sfp+ transceivers, I would highly recommend to avoid them. I tried serveral 10GBase-T transceivers and all of them where too hot to touch - and way hotter than the 70c the sensors heat range could messure. For me SFTP+ makes most sense with DAC or Fibre transeivers.

Actualy, I never tried to add a Melanox card to the NAS. It is more like a data dump for me. My stuff runs on a 3 node Proxmox cluster, which runs docker and kubernetes clusters. Instead of Ceph I use Portworx to have high available storage for my container stuff... all data is sitting on NVMEs and is replicated accross the nodes - this is actualy the reason why I run my my homelab with 10GbE.

 

[Phone Guy]

My original idea was to see how much this would cost. I had seen 10gb rj45 copper was possible, without fiber and sfp transceivers. and that running copper only might make this a more affordable adventure... a 60m fiber cable is more than the smaller mikrotek switch. And I think you still need the ends on top of that?

 

[one-eyed-king]

I can fully understand your position - your wiring in the house is a fixed constraint.

In your situation I would buy two managed switches like the QSW-M408-4C (8x 1Gbe+ 4x10GbE ports) or something bigger and actualy give it a try. You'd loose 1 Port each for the upling between them, but could connect tree additioanal 10GbE devices to each of them. Worst case you can still replace the 60m cat5e cable with a cat6a or cat7 cable (assuming your cables are in "empty tubes" that doesn't make replacement impossible). It might require a new (or small additional) patch pannel and wall sockets for the higher grade cat cable.

With Base-T in mind, I would not bother to use the Mikrotik devices I suggested.

 

[Robbie]

60m in a house?

You are Prince Andrew right?

 

[Phone Guy]

60m in a house?

You are Prince Andrew right?

2 story, normal house, that wire feeds to upstairs and it routed the longest possible way unfortunately. That 60m was according to the cable test of the netgear switch, in reality I dont know how long it is, but it is long.

-- post merged: 11. Apr 2022 --

I can fully understand your position - your wiring in the house is a fixed constraint.

In your situation I would buy two managed switches like the QSW-M408-4C (8x 1Gbe+ 4x10GbE ports) or something bigger and actualy give it a try. You'd loose 1 Port each for the upling between them, but could connect tree additioanal 10GbE devices to each of them. Worst case you can still replace the 60m cat5e cable with a cat6a or cat7 cable (assuming your cables are in "empty tubes" that doesn't make replacement impossible). It might require a new (or small additional) patch pannel and wall sockets for the higher grade cat cable.

With Base-T in mind, I would not bother to use the Mikrotik devices I suggested.

I honestly dont think I can justify the expense right now... its going to cost more than my optimistic hopes allowed

 

[Robbie]

Try the cabling at 10 GbE and see if it works or not. Either borrow enough gear to test or buy the minimum needed and return it if it does not work.