When will 10Gb networking become cheap?

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Quartz-1

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I have a modest network at home and more speed is always good. But 10Gb networking cards and switches are still hugely expensive. Is there any likelihood of that changing soon?

As an aside, I can't switch right now because my PC doesn't have sufficient spare PCI Express lanes, so I'm looking at next year.
 
10G is really only expensive if you are trying to do it right at a business. For home, you can get away with relatively inexpensive gear where downtime and warranty terms aren't the major concern.
 
Its not cheap even for home users in the respect that the damn switching is the price point that will make you sick.

Ubiquiti Unifi has a 16 port 10Gig switch that uses SFPs for aboyt $500. I have toyed with getting one simply because it uses FAR FAR FAR less kwh than my current 4948-10ge Cisco
 
buy used gear and you can get it done much cheaper and worthwhile.
 
How many 10Gb ports do you need? Cisco has some small biz switches that came out (so still expensive) that are mostly 1Gb but have like two 10Gb ports. I'm sure other companies offer the same. Those ports are usually designed for switch uplinks but there is no reason you couldn't use it for a server or NAS. A switch capable of 10-24 ports of 10Gb will be expensive, and probably loud or power hungry.
 
Quartz-1 said:
In my case it will be at least 3 - at least 2 PCs plus server.
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can you put 2 cards in the server and attach the 2 PC's to that, so no switch required?

Back in the day with Gigabit, I just put a Gigabit card in both of my machines and connected them together with a straight cable.
I used the 10/100 built in Nics for internet.
 
Zepher said:
can you put 2 cards in the server and attach the 2 PC's to that, so no switch required?
Click to expand...

I could do that - only one slot so a dual-port card would be needed - but it would mean that I could not have a third PC connected. We're 9 months off anyway, so fingers crossed for price cuts before then.
 
Maybe get some of those cheap PCI-e 4 port Gigabit cards and a bit of teaming? I saw a video where folks could get close to 400MBps if setup right. Even 200MBps could be nice I guess.

I know you said you were PCI-e limited but is there room for compromise?

 
i would rather infiniband than that 4 cable per nic crap.

and that's why i use infiniband.
 
daglesj said:
I know you said you were PCI-e limited but is there room for compromise?
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Sadly not - I have two GPUs and SLI requires 8x PCIe lanes for each card. If I use the x4 slot, the second GPU slot drops to x4 and I lose SLI. I won't have a free slot until I upgrade my GPU to Volta next year or upgrade my CPU to Threadripper (and I'm waiting for that platform to mature).

Master_shake_ said:
i would rather infiniband than that 4 cable per nic crap.
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Hmm... That does look like an alternative solution, but the prices for cables are steep indeed.
 
Cisco 4948e on ebay in Feb of 2015 was $1,695.00, now they are under $400. New these things were something like 10g, seems cheap me.
Very happy with mine, even tho I paid 4X what it's worth now.:whistle:
 
Quartz-1 said:
Sadly not - I have two GPUs and SLI requires 8x PCIe lanes for each card. If I use the x4 slot, the second GPU slot drops to x4 and I lose SLI. I won't have a free slot until I upgrade my GPU to Volta next year or upgrade my CPU to Threadripper (and I'm waiting for that platform to mature).



Hmm... That does look like an alternative solution, but the prices for cables are steep indeed.
Click to expand...

So sell a Titan and use that to pay for some connectivity goodness and get some slottage. Simple.

You'll get more for the Titan now than later...
 
Intel X520-DA1 card is about 50, and the DA2 dual port is like 85....

Picked up my 24p-1G + 4p-10G SFP switch new for ~260$.....

Not sure how much cheaper you expecting 10G to get.
 
I can link 3 computers peer to peer with dual port 40Gbit nics for around $100 on fleabay if you shop carefully, $200 if you are lazy and just want to click buy it now and not hunt. If your home network really needs more than 3 fast links, time to pony up as there are switches for a few hundred but be ready for jet engines.

Funny you mention UK, I got my 40/56 12 port FDR switch from there on an amazing deal even with the extra shipping. Still jet engine, but its 4-pin fan connectors and a custom shroud are on my mod project list.
 
Quartz-1 said:
Not here in the UK. I'm looking at £253 for a DA1 from the UK. Sure, I can order from China...
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And it comes with free malware embedded on the intel 'clone' they sold you. And that micro-whatever stamp of authenticity has been faked, so don't trust that.

Check out servethehome.com. There is a site that sells legit intel cards for very cheap. I forgot the name, but you'll be able to find it there. They have lots of used/surplus hardware from datacenters. Bought multiple DA2's from there for my home servers.
 
Please cite where a Chinese clone X520 has malware in the firmware. I've done firmware dumps of authentic X520's and clones, and they are identical, if normalized for the version. You can argue that they use worse quality components, though.
 
What's your budget? TP-Link T1700G-28TQ is designed with 24 x 1GE ports and 4 x 10G SFP+ ports. It is about $370 on amazon.
 
Trouble I'm having is finding a good router/fw OS that does 10G speeds. PfSense seems to be very limited in speeds due to the encryption used.
 
enyownz said:
Trouble I'm having is finding a good router/fw OS that does 10G speeds. PfSense seems to be very limited in speeds due to the encryption used.
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What? Sounds like your hardware is the issue, because a proper pfsense box will have zero trouble handling 10G or higher.
 
Biznatch said:
What? Sounds like your hardware is the issue, because a proper pfsense box will have zero trouble handling 10G or higher.
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Everything I read seems to be that pfsense seems to be getting 3.5gbps when loading it up even with good hardware. What hardware have you tested it with. Might have to beef up my build.
 
tangoseal said:
Its not cheap even for home users in the respect that the damn switching is the price point that will make you sick.

Ubiquiti Unifi has a 16 port 10Gig switch that uses SFPs for aboyt $500. I have toyed with getting one simply because it uses FAR FAR FAR less kwh than my current 4948-10ge Cisco
Click to expand...
You can also get the mikrotik 16 port I think for $350 or $399, and/or an old quanta LB6M on ebay for $250-$350...
 
enyownz said:
Trouble I'm having is finding a good router/fw OS that does 10G speeds. PfSense seems to be very limited in speeds due to the encryption used.
Click to expand...
Why does this matter? Won't the fast network be private LAN, dependent on only the switch?
 
Why do you want 10g at home right now? Unless you are running some business out of the house where you have to move massive amounts of data, 10g is a waste. 10g is not going to help with latency. I'm making an educated guess that you do not have 10g to the Internet either.
 
evilwon said:
Why do you want 10g at home right now? Unless you are running some business out of the house where you have to move massive amounts of data, 10g is a waste. 10g is not going to help with latency. I'm making an educated guess that you do not have 10g to the Internet either.
Click to expand...

Because I can.
Why do I need to be a business? My home network would crush the fuck out of most small businesses 10 times over.
10g helps with throughput and bandwidth, now the constraint is beefy array at the other end.

I was able to go 10g for two servers for <$200 for my server to server backup. Everything else is SMB v3, do I need to be a business to use that, too?
 
I think it will be a while before proper 10g gear (Ex: switches with all 10G ports and not just a few) will become affordable. Got to consider that even gig is not that cheap when buying new, and normally you would buy used for a home application. 10gig is still rather new, I don't imagine there is going to be a lot of it on the used market for a while. Though I am finding SOME on ebay upon doing a quick search, so they are out there on used market, but not that cheap, still a couple grand for a 16 port. Just did a quick search so there may be some good deals that I missed.
 
I think we are getting there, there is that ASUS 10GbE card that is pretty cheap, but it's still going to be awhile before we see switches with all ports 10GbE and RJ45 (not SFP+) and even further out for things like laptops with the faster wired ports.
 
You can find deals in used and surplus equipment, but you have to be patient. In the meantime, there is the 2.5/5g stuff that you can look into, although the nics are more expensive than 10g right now. :eek:
 
scobar said:
Because I can.
Why do I need to be a business? My home network would crush the fuck out of most small businesses 10 times over.
10g helps with throughput and bandwidth, now the constraint is beefy array at the other end.

I was able to go 10g for two servers for <$200 for my server to server backup. Everything else is SMB v3, do I need to be a business to use that, too?
Click to expand...

I like how you cherry picked. No shit on the bandwidth and throughput. I never picked that up with my comment, just like you never picked up that I was asking how much data are you creating that you think you need 10g...other than "you can." If that is the case, why does price matter?
 
daglesj said:
$150 is cheap. $400 is "Have to think about that for a bit! Might be something else I can spend that on!";)
Click to expand...

$400 isn't too bad. Many people pay more than that for a video card that will be high end and only useful for 5 years or less. Should get way more than 5 years out of a decent 10G switch.
 
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And again, that's new retail. The used markets for networking equipment are really strong and you can find great deals if you look long and hard enough.
 
Wow, that's an awesome article! It would have been nice to see some lan_speedtest results or iperf results though. That would have been cool just to see the crazy numbers. :eek:
 
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