Where are the cheap home 2.5G switches?

Modred189

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Gigabit switches have been around for almost a decade now, and relatively cheap. Where are the cheap (sub $50) consumer switches? Am I just failing at searching?
Everything I'm finding is over $100.
 
II was going to pull up a counter example so I went into my Amazon orders.... and saw that I paid $130 for mine. Why did I do that...
 
Not here yet. There's no market for 2.5g or 5g in servers (10G was already there), so there's not much in terms of scale to make things cheap.
 
Gigabit switches have been around for almost a decade now, and relatively cheap. Where are the cheap (sub $50) consumer switches? Am I just failing at searching?
Everything I'm finding is over $100.
Almost a decade? I think I got my first gigabit switch in like 2003-2004. I think I paid like $200 for a 5-port switch. Still using it. I remember stuffing a gigabit NIC into an MSI K7D Master-L, which had an integrated 100Mbit NIC. I managed to fry that board (melted the main power connector) which resulted in an Opteron upgrade. CPUs, etc. got repurposed.

I haven't seen any cheap 2.5Gb switches either. That's one of the reasons I just went straight to 10Gb. My desktop machines are all using fiber or DAC cables.
 
I think these were the cheapest ones at the time I was looking and they were always out of stock. Paid $120 each I believe from B&H Photo.
2.5 Nics are pretty cheap though, bought one for my Plex server and a USB one for my NUC, my 2 newer PC's have onboard 2.5.

IMG_1804.JPEG
 
Almost a decade? I think I got my first gigabit switch in like 2003-2004. I think I paid like $200 for a 5-port switch. Still using it. I remember stuffing a gigabit NIC into an MSI K7D Master-L, which had an integrated 100Mbit NIC. I managed to fry that board (melted the main power connector) which resulted in an Opteron upgrade. CPUs, etc. got repurposed.

I haven't seen any cheap 2.5Gb switches either. That's one of the reasons I just went straight to 10Gb. My desktop machines are all using fiber or DAC cables.
Poorly worded. I meant cheap dishes have been around for a decade.
 
Almost a decade? I think I got my first gigabit switch in like 2003-2004.
I remember the transition from 10Mb to 100Mb. I still have 2x 8x 10Mb with 2x 100Mb uplink ports that we paid $900/ea for. And there is no auto crossover on these since that didn't exist when they were made, haha.

It will simply take time to get the price down as demand and manufacturing ramp up. I think ISPs now providing speeds >1Gbps will be a catalyst, but I still see a few years before 2.5Gb hits the price of 1Gb.
 
Yeah unfortunately I think the timing for basically fucking *anything* under $100 is bad. Not sure you'll be able to find a "gallon of milk" (cliche) for less than $100 next week lol. Even with gas prices falling it's over $150 to fill my truck up (admittedly 44gallon tank is exceptional).

I do agree though, it seems like consumer networking equipment is in a pretty stagnant state. Seemingly nobody gives any fucks about anything that needs a wire though anymore, no matter how unrealistic expectations are for the next 200+ plus arrayed antennas stealth bomber looking 802.11-xxx brain frying appliance are. Thank god we finally have 5G speeds to suck up our entire monthly data allowance up in 2 minutes on our phones though, couldn't use that giant 20GB up quick enough with only 4G right?


Cynacism aside, what are the options for cheap 10Gb fiber switches someone mentioned?
 
I think it might be a bit longer. Also companies like unifi do not make switches so till they do I won't use it in my network stack at home
 
I think these were the cheapest ones at the time I was looking and they were always out of stock. Paid $120 each I believe from B&H Photo.
2.5 Nics are pretty cheap though, bought one for my Plex server and a USB one for my NUC, my 2 newer PC's have onboard 2.5.

View attachment 511769
I recently paid $300 for a 12-port 10gige netgear switch. The XS712T
 
Cynacism aside, what are the options for cheap 10Gb fiber switches someone mentioned?
Depends what you mean by "cheap", but Mikrotik make some that are within reach of us mortals, with catchy names like CRS305-1G-4S+IN. You have to spend extra money to get SFP+ modules to actually connect fibre to, but those can be had fairly cheap these days. Switches with SFP+ cages can be used for 2.5GbE too.
 
I got the 8 port POE TPlink 2.5gb switch, arrived yesterday, but I have an ILO connection going across the country for an OS install and I cant break the Internet connection to swap the switch in
 
Depends what you mean by "cheap", but Mikrotik make some that are within reach of us mortals, with catchy names like CRS305-1G-4S+IN. You have to spend extra money to get SFP+ modules to actually connect fibre to, but those can be had fairly cheap these days. Switches with SFP+ cages can be used for 2.5GbE too.
Wow 12-57V DC input, I presume that's to meet wide ranging PoE specs but that's hella nice to see it on a barrel jack input, for those of us who live off-grid and power everything direct DC as much as possible. Nice suggestion, thanks!
 
The demand for 2.5g and 5g is lower than you think. Return on investment for companies making this equipment is not great so the prices are higher.
If you think about it, the push in home markets has been for wireless everything, even when it makes no sense. Most people that in the market for faster gear than 1Gbps quickly realize that a little bit more money gets them a 10G setup.
 
The demand for 2.5g and 5g is lower than you think. Return on investment for companies making this equipment is not great so the prices are higher.
If you think about it, the push in home markets has been for wireless everything, even when it makes no sense. Most people that in the market for faster gear than 1Gbps quickly realize that a little bit more money gets them a 10G setup.
It's not so much this as there isn't a 'demand' for it yet. It's just like when the original 1Gb came out and people were on 100Mb switched--there was no real reason for 1Gb except on servers. Then file serving without a file server took off and suddenly you could use the storage at native speeds on 1Gb, but 100Mb was a bottleneck. It also helped that 1Gb hardware came down in cost to the point where it was $5 more for 1Gb vs a 100Mb nic. So the cabling and nics where already there and all you needed were the switches, and once those came down in price, poof! 100Mb was history.

I can see the same thing happening again but not all the pieces are in place yet. The cabling is for the most part, but 2.5Gb nics are still a bit of a novelty and afaik Intel still doesn't make a multi-gig nic, so we have a supply issue on the nic side, and then of course the switches are still expensive. And then there's the other elephant in the room, which is used 10Gb SFP+ and DAC stuff that may be a decade old but is still enterprise ready to go. So for a small install, it can make more sense to replace the cabling with fibre and go with used 10Gb than new 2.5/5Gb nics and a switch.

I personally seeing 2.5/5Gb being used as a stopgap in places where they don't want to rip cable out--similar to how 100VG-Anylan was to help people move to 100Mb without rewiring their cat3 infrastructure. But I think 2.5/5Gb will have a lot more foothold than 100VG did. Even ATM155 which was the bandwidth god like 10Gb is today, had a utp nic right before 100Mb was eclipsed by 1Gb, which also demolished ATM155.

With isps starting to push 1Gb+ Internet plans, I think that will be the biggest demand. It's crazy that I can get 5Gb fibre now at one of my sites--and the problem is that I don't even have cat5 in the walls there, moreless switches and nics. But for someone starting out with a new construction with this available, you can put in 5Gb compliant cabling and switches from day one and have ridiculous bandwidth like a data center. But for consumers this is just bragging rights and for the homelab enthusiast, they're already running 10Gb and 40Gb DACs so they're covered for the most part.

The biggest place I see 2.5/5Gb being used is to upgrade saturated 1Gb point to point links--easily worth the upgrade price since running additional lines would be many times more expensive and come with their own issues.
 
Was at MC yesterday looking for a 2.5gb switch and they had none. Don't really want to spend $100+ when a 1gb switch is like $20. 2.5gb ports have become pretty damn common on MB. Hell my 3 year old board has 2.5gb port even.
 
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Was at MC yesterday looking for a 2.5gb switch and they had none. Don't really want to spend $100+ when a 1gb switch is like $20. 2.5gb ports have become pretty damn common on MB. Hell my 3 year old board has 2.5gb port even.
That's good that the nics are getting popular. That's what helped bring gigabit down in price at the transition from 100Mb. It got to the point that a gig nic was the same cost as 100Mb, so everyone had gig nics, and once there were gig nics and all the wiring could handle gig, it was only the switches that were left and manufacturers focused on bringing those prices down. The day a gig switch was 4-5x 100Mb it made sense because of the increase in bandwidth. For 2.5, it's going to have to come down to 2-3x gig imo. 5Gb might still work at a higher premium, but both of these have to also compete with the large amount of used 10Gb that's out there, where in many scenarios 2x 10Gb nics and a DAC can do the job for a lot less than 2.5/5Gb.
 
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