3 ms·
40GbE is indeed crazy fast. Didn’t realize that you can have PCIe cards that do this for less than $500.
by TomVDB 7y ago
40GbE is indeed crazy fast. Didn’t realize that you can have PCIe cards that do this for less than $500.
- justinclift 7y agoFor a home lab or dev/test gear, where getting stuff off Ebay is an ok thing to do, older Mellanox cards can commonly be found for under $100. Sometimes much cheaper. depending on what the seller is doing. :) Looking quickly at the US Ebay just now, here are some older single port ConnectX-2 cards: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Mellanox-MHQH19B-XTR-PCI-E-Single-Port-Connecter-40GBS-Network-Adapter-Card-FP/132546880757 https://www.ebay.com/itm/Mellanox-MHQH19B-XTR-PCI-E-Single-P... US $23.00 each, free shipping. Note - I don't know the seller at all, this is just from a quick look on Ebay. There's a tonne of stuff on there. ConnectX-2 is no longer supported by Mellanox, though the cards themselves are generally pretty bullet proof. Drivers for Linux and FreeBSD come with the OS. :) Drivers for Windows are a bit more complicated. Mellanox has an archive section with the ConnectX-2 drivers, which work for most people. Cabling directly between two cards - instead of going via a switch - is pretty common for people just trying out the tech. It lets them plug one card into (say) a FreeNAS server, with the other card in their desktop or workstation. Removes the ~120MB/s limit of 1GbE, assuming any kind of reasonable disks in the connected NAS. :) If this kind of thing is of interest, probably the best place on the whole internet (not joking) for this stuff is Serve The Homes' Networking forum: https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?forums/networking.20/ https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?forums/networking.... Plenty of advice and stuff to read there, and a good place to ask questions from people that have a clue. :)