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I thought that way too until recently, but MicroTik has moved aggressively into this market and has a variety of switch offerings including the Mikrotik CRS305-

I thought that way too until recently, but MicroTik has moved aggressively into this market and has a variety of switch offerings including the Mikrotik CRS305-1G-4S+IN Switch with 4 SFP+ 10Gbps Ports and 1 Gigabit Ethernet Port. At least for a home power user serving NAS to a few high speed clients, that $150ish switch is sufficient, but if not then MikroTik makes larger switches with more ports.

close04 6y ago
> At least for a home power user Obviously if you are an HN reader you fall under the <5% :). If you have the need and are a power user there are options. The best one right now being the second hand market. I was eying a couple of Intel X540-T2 (~60-80E on eBay) or Mellanox ConnectX-2 (under 50E), not yet decided on the switch. But realistically speaking, most people don't want to pay even 10E for any of this. They don't transfer bulk data or not over cable so they don't care about DIYing their network, especially once they realize everything is more expensive (cards, switches, NAS, maybe even cables). 2.5G and up has to go into ISP routers for it to really take off and become cheaper. And even then most users will still want better WiFi and not care about cables (and still most don't go for a decent AP and use the ISP router WiFi.
- technofiend 6y ago
  Interestingly 2.5Gb cable modems are also imminent. Yes early adopters are the market right now but as they purchase equipment it will drive down adoption costs due to economy of scale gradually kicking in.
  - close04 6y ago
    Going to 2.5G seems like a wasted opportunity to go "big" without causing disruptions repeatedly or have "too much" extra cost. From the user perspective at least there's pretty much no difference between 2.5G and 5G in terms of cost and inconvenience of upgrading all the hardware). But for the manufacturers and ISPs I imagine at that large scale the relatively small cost savings add up. And why waste a good opportunity to sell an intermediary tech. They'll be able to sell 5G/10G in a few years.

close04 6y ago

> At least for a home power user Obviously if you are an HN reader you fall under the <5% :). If you have the need and are a power user there are options. The best one right now being the second hand market. I was eying a couple of Intel X540-T2 (~60-80E on eBay) or Mellanox ConnectX-2 (under 50E), not yet decided on the switch. But realistically speaking, most people don't want to pay even 10E for any of this. They don't transfer bulk data or not over cable so they don't care about DIYing their network, especially once they realize everything is more expensive (cards, switches, NAS, maybe even cables). 2.5G and up has to go into ISP routers for it to really take off and become cheaper. And even then most users will still want better WiFi and not care about cables (and still most don't go for a decent AP and use the ISP router WiFi.

technofiend 6y ago
Interestingly 2.5Gb cable modems are also imminent. Yes early adopters are the market right now but as they purchase equipment it will drive down adoption costs due to economy of scale gradually kicking in.
- close04 6y ago
  Going to 2.5G seems like a wasted opportunity to go "big" without causing disruptions repeatedly or have "too much" extra cost. From the user perspective at least there's pretty much no difference between 2.5G and 5G in terms of cost and inconvenience of upgrading all the hardware). But for the manufacturers and ISPs I imagine at that large scale the relatively small cost savings add up. And why waste a good opportunity to sell an intermediary tech. They'll be able to sell 5G/10G in a few years.