Zarathustra[H]
Extremely [H]
- Joined
- Oct 29, 2000
- Messages
- 38,841
If you are anything like me, you have for some time been excited about upgrading your home network to 10 gigabit speeds, but have been frustrated at the relatively high cost of 10 gigabit capable switches. The common wisdom has been that, to the great frustration of us enthusiasts, consumers no longer care about wired Ethernet, preferring no wires and WiFi, relegating 10 gigabit switches to the realm of Enterprise gear, and Enterprise gear is pricy. Well, this may be about to change. Aquantia Solutions, reportedly has switching silicon in the works that will drastically reduce the cost of 10Gbase-T switches to about $30 per port, compared to the greater than $100 (and in some cases much much greater) per port.
Personally I'm looking forward to this. I currently have a dedicated direct 10 gigabit line running between my workstation and my NAS, relying on gigabit for everything else. I would absolutely love to bump up my entire network to 10 gigabit speeds.
Naturally, we asked about pricing of the switches and availability. With the aforementioned caveats, we were told that the switch vendors themselves will be the ones dictating pricing. That being said, after suggesting that pricing in the region of $250-$300 for an 8-port switch that supports Aquantia 10G solutions (so likely 5GBase-T and 2.5GBase-T as well) would be great, we were told that this was likely a good estimate. Previously in this price range, options were limited to a sole provider: ASUS’ XG-U1008, a switch with two 10GBase-T ports and six one-gigabit Ethernet ports for $200. Above that, some Netgear solutions were running almost $800 for an 8-port managed solution. So moving to eight full 10G ports in this price bracket would be amazing, and I told Aquantia to tell OEMs that at that price ($~30 per port), those switches will fly off the shelves with enthusiasts who want to upgrade.
Personally I'm looking forward to this. I currently have a dedicated direct 10 gigabit line running between my workstation and my NAS, relying on gigabit for everything else. I would absolutely love to bump up my entire network to 10 gigabit speeds.
Naturally, we asked about pricing of the switches and availability. With the aforementioned caveats, we were told that the switch vendors themselves will be the ones dictating pricing. That being said, after suggesting that pricing in the region of $250-$300 for an 8-port switch that supports Aquantia 10G solutions (so likely 5GBase-T and 2.5GBase-T as well) would be great, we were told that this was likely a good estimate. Previously in this price range, options were limited to a sole provider: ASUS’ XG-U1008, a switch with two 10GBase-T ports and six one-gigabit Ethernet ports for $200. Above that, some Netgear solutions were running almost $800 for an 8-port managed solution. So moving to eight full 10G ports in this price bracket would be amazing, and I told Aquantia to tell OEMs that at that price ($~30 per port), those switches will fly off the shelves with enthusiasts who want to upgrade.