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I'd disagree here. I have multiple devices in my home server rack that have native 10Gb. 10Gb PHY/SFP+ are dirt cheap these days as well. And if you want you

I'd disagree here. I have multiple devices in my home server rack that have native 10Gb. 10Gb PHY/SFP+ are dirt cheap these days as well. And if you want you can get a 10Gb DAC cable (fused SFP+ connectors) for under $20. 10Gb at home, today, is not expensive and is not a high consumer of power. PoE uses more power than 10Gb in switching - and that's relatively consumer friendly at this point (mainly for PoE IP cameras). I agree, most people care more about stable WiFi, but for the prosumer home lab - 10Gb has been low cost all around for a few years already.

the_hoser 7y ago
You have a home server rack. That places you comfortably in the "almost" part of "almost nobody".
- snuxoll 7y ago
  As somebody with one as well, it’s very true. However I don’t expect 10Gb networking is going to stay out of actual prosumer and SOHO spaces (versus /r/homelab subscribers) for much longer. While consumers are moving more to streaming and offloading their stuff to the cloud, creators are going to need more bandwidth on their internal networks. Really the killer right now is 10Gb over twisted pair is a power sucking beast; and people are (rightly) not wanting to abandon the familiarity, ubiquity and ease of installation granted by it. More PC motherboards and assembled systems are shipping with 10Gb NIC’s, we’re just waiting on switching to be affordable and fairly quiet before it can take off.
  - mattkrause 7y ago
    I work at a major research institute/hospital. We still have 100 Mbps connections everywhere, with a few 1 Gbps ports available if you beg (and pay!). We still move data around by sneakernet--a briskly walking postdoc can move a Tb/minute with a hard drive in their pocket. I would love 10 Gbps connections, but I don't think they're right around the corner.
    - buran77 7y ago
      On HN the passion for tech tends to obscure the harsh realities of the "everyday person". The overwhelming majority of people don't know, need, care, or want to pay for a lot of tech that we take for granted, or as a "bare minimum" to go about our daily routine. Many others would love to have it but for whatever reasons, usually money or lack of skill, won't anytime soon. Though I do have to admire the conviction with which some of my co-techies believe what they are describing is a generally applicable situation anywhere beyond the limits of places like HN. And I am saying this as someone who has over 1000 CPU cores and over 2TB of RAM in my home lab for some years now. I'm realistic enough to accept that this isn't a reasonable expectation even from other techies, let alone for a regular consumer.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - DeathArrow 7y ago
        Just for curiosity, what kind of processors and servers do you have?
        buran77 7y ago
        About a third are functioning (albeit not very productive) "collector's items". Anything from Intel and AMD, to PowerPC and SPARC. The productive ones are mostly Intel because I acquired them before AMD's resurgence. Also plenty of AMD, and even ARM. They run Linux, Windows, MacOS, BSD, ESX, or dedicated appliance OSes. All on 1, 10, or 40G network, plus WiFi. I usually buy everything second hand, the most expensive stuff usually from companies that upgraded. To be clear, most of the stuff I didn't buy because I need it but because I wanted to play and experiment with it. I test and play with everything I can imagine, time permitting. Then I sell most of it before it loses the resell value and top it up a bit to buy the next "big thing". But if I told even most of my fellow HNers that "they're cheap" and "everyone should have this" they'd think I fell on my head one too many times. :)
        7y ago
- MR4D 7y ago
  I'm not the OP, but my 82 year old dad has a server rack in his house. It holds mostly telecom/network gear, but also has a simple NAS of some sort that he uses for backups (not sure what it is). Also, most people with $1MM homes with integrated media systems piping through their house have a rack with telecom/network/media. A friend of mine has one in a house built 4 years ago. So yeah, clearly this is a small minority, but still a bigger population than you might expect. And for reference, only one of the houses that I mentioned was over a million dollars. The other is about half than. And neither are geeks (one is a doctor, the other a retired manager).
  - buran77 7y ago
    This sounds more like a way to organize some regular equipment that many people would have in the house like a router or switch, a modem, a home NAS, etc. than what OP was describing when they said "multiple devices in my home server rack that have native 10Gb". Excluding people who work(ed) in the field, and have money and time to spare I have seen exactly 0 people who have a home lab and racks of high-end IT equipment.
Klinky 7y ago
I can get an 8-port gigabit switch for $15 on sale. Where is my dirt cheap 10G switch? Also "PoE" uses more power because it's actually powering a separate device entirely, that's not related to the 10G IC power consumption.
- MR4D 7y ago
  Your comment piqued my interest, so I decided to look it up and find out how much these cost. (I only have 1G, so thought it might be a chance to upgrade.) Plus, it's a chance to open up the conversation a bit... This was the first non-ad link I found on Google when searching for "10G switch": https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Ethernet-Unmanaged-Rackmount-Protection/dp/B075Q5C3Z4 https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Ethernet-Unmanaged-Rackmount-... $349 Not dirt cheap, but less than I had thought. YMMV on "cheap" or "dirt-cheap", so just sharing for a more robust conversation.
  - FullyFunctional 7y ago
    Just above in the thread: CRS305-1G-4S+IN. 4 SFP port switch for $150. I had to mount a 10G (SFP) card in a Thunderbold 3 PCIe box to get my iMac on the 10G net, lame that it's not native.
- windexh8er 7y ago
  Dirt cheap with respect to pricing only a few years ago. Keep in mind comparing a 4 x 10Gb SFP+ switch with an 8 port discount switch are apples and oranges. The former provides L3 support per port and L2 functionality such as VLAN tagging. The discount switch is likely oversubscribed on the backplane (cheap switch controller) and is almost surely unmanaged. You also have to consider the savings of 10Gb - each port is not just 10 x 1Gb, but a full 10Gb lane. If you calculate the cost per Gb comparing a discount switch (8 x 1Gb switch) with a discount 10Gb switch (4 x 10Gb) - yes, it does cost more. But for anyone who wants or needs to move large files or data at home 10Gb isn't considerably more expensive. You pay $15 for 8 ports of 1Gb @ $1.87 per Gb where as that 10Gb switch you're paying around $143 for 4 ports of 10Gb @ $3.57 per Gb. So the cost factor is about 2x, but then again - L3, L2, manageability, etc are all constraints the discount switch can't compete with either. To each their own, but putting the cost of 10Gb in perspective of what it takes to move the same bandwidth with a 1Gb switch (requires LAG capabilities and even then you'd still end up short). As for power - a typical optical 10Gb-SR will be power draw listed at 1W (PHY would draw less). It would appear to me that the power aspect is a moot point.
close04 7y ago
> I have multiple devices in my home server rack that have native 10Gb. 10Gb PHY/SFP+ are dirt cheap these days It's a matter of perspective. These are only a concern for a narrow niche. Outside of your/our tech bubble people don't think the same way, and don't care about this. You know what is cheaper than everything that you mentioned there? The "free" ISP router and not building a home lab because they don't need it. They don't have 10G, racks, and home labs for the same reason you don't have 40/100/200G and an actual data center. Or anything that's so much outside of your field and passion that you can't even imagine it. I have friends that think 6000E is the least they can pay to get a decent bicycle.

the_hoser 7y ago

You have a home server rack. That places you comfortably in the "almost" part of "almost nobody".

snuxoll 7y ago
As somebody with one as well, it’s very true. However I don’t expect 10Gb networking is going to stay out of actual prosumer and SOHO spaces (versus /r/homelab subscribers) for much longer. While consumers are moving more to streaming and offloading their stuff to the cloud, creators are going to need more bandwidth on their internal networks. Really the killer right now is 10Gb over twisted pair is a power sucking beast; and people are (rightly) not wanting to abandon the familiarity, ubiquity and ease of installation granted by it. More PC motherboards and assembled systems are shipping with 10Gb NIC’s, we’re just waiting on switching to be affordable and fairly quiet before it can take off.
- mattkrause 7y ago
  I work at a major research institute/hospital. We still have 100 Mbps connections everywhere, with a few 1 Gbps ports available if you beg (and pay!). We still move data around by sneakernet--a briskly walking postdoc can move a Tb/minute with a hard drive in their pocket. I would love 10 Gbps connections, but I don't think they're right around the corner.
  - buran77 7y ago
    On HN the passion for tech tends to obscure the harsh realities of the "everyday person". The overwhelming majority of people don't know, need, care, or want to pay for a lot of tech that we take for granted, or as a "bare minimum" to go about our daily routine. Many others would love to have it but for whatever reasons, usually money or lack of skill, won't anytime soon. Though I do have to admire the conviction with which some of my co-techies believe what they are describing is a generally applicable situation anywhere beyond the limits of places like HN. And I am saying this as someone who has over 1000 CPU cores and over 2TB of RAM in my home lab for some years now. I'm realistic enough to accept that this isn't a reasonable expectation even from other techies, let alone for a regular consumer.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - DeathArrow 7y ago
      Just for curiosity, what kind of processors and servers do you have?
      - buran77 7y ago
        About a third are functioning (albeit not very productive) "collector's items". Anything from Intel and AMD, to PowerPC and SPARC. The productive ones are mostly Intel because I acquired them before AMD's resurgence. Also plenty of AMD, and even ARM. They run Linux, Windows, MacOS, BSD, ESX, or dedicated appliance OSes. All on 1, 10, or 40G network, plus WiFi. I usually buy everything second hand, the most expensive stuff usually from companies that upgraded. To be clear, most of the stuff I didn't buy because I need it but because I wanted to play and experiment with it. I test and play with everything I can imagine, time permitting. Then I sell most of it before it loses the resell value and top it up a bit to buy the next "big thing". But if I told even most of my fellow HNers that "they're cheap" and "everyone should have this" they'd think I fell on my head one too many times. :)
        7y ago
MR4D 7y ago
I'm not the OP, but my 82 year old dad has a server rack in his house. It holds mostly telecom/network gear, but also has a simple NAS of some sort that he uses for backups (not sure what it is). Also, most people with $1MM homes with integrated media systems piping through their house have a rack with telecom/network/media. A friend of mine has one in a house built 4 years ago. So yeah, clearly this is a small minority, but still a bigger population than you might expect. And for reference, only one of the houses that I mentioned was over a million dollars. The other is about half than. And neither are geeks (one is a doctor, the other a retired manager).
- buran77 7y ago
  This sounds more like a way to organize some regular equipment that many people would have in the house like a router or switch, a modem, a home NAS, etc. than what OP was describing when they said "multiple devices in my home server rack that have native 10Gb". Excluding people who work(ed) in the field, and have money and time to spare I have seen exactly 0 people who have a home lab and racks of high-end IT equipment.

Klinky 7y ago

I can get an 8-port gigabit switch for $15 on sale. Where is my dirt cheap 10G switch? Also "PoE" uses more power because it's actually powering a separate device entirely, that's not related to the 10G IC power consumption.

MR4D 7y ago
Your comment piqued my interest, so I decided to look it up and find out how much these cost. (I only have 1G, so thought it might be a chance to upgrade.) Plus, it's a chance to open up the conversation a bit... This was the first non-ad link I found on Google when searching for "10G switch": https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Ethernet-Unmanaged-Rackmount-Protection/dp/B075Q5C3Z4 https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Ethernet-Unmanaged-Rackmount-... $349 Not dirt cheap, but less than I had thought. YMMV on "cheap" or "dirt-cheap", so just sharing for a more robust conversation.
- FullyFunctional 7y ago
  Just above in the thread: CRS305-1G-4S+IN. 4 SFP port switch for $150. I had to mount a 10G (SFP) card in a Thunderbold 3 PCIe box to get my iMac on the 10G net, lame that it's not native.
windexh8er 7y ago
Dirt cheap with respect to pricing only a few years ago. Keep in mind comparing a 4 x 10Gb SFP+ switch with an 8 port discount switch are apples and oranges. The former provides L3 support per port and L2 functionality such as VLAN tagging. The discount switch is likely oversubscribed on the backplane (cheap switch controller) and is almost surely unmanaged. You also have to consider the savings of 10Gb - each port is not just 10 x 1Gb, but a full 10Gb lane. If you calculate the cost per Gb comparing a discount switch (8 x 1Gb switch) with a discount 10Gb switch (4 x 10Gb) - yes, it does cost more. But for anyone who wants or needs to move large files or data at home 10Gb isn't considerably more expensive. You pay $15 for 8 ports of 1Gb @ $1.87 per Gb where as that 10Gb switch you're paying around $143 for 4 ports of 10Gb @ $3.57 per Gb. So the cost factor is about 2x, but then again - L3, L2, manageability, etc are all constraints the discount switch can't compete with either. To each their own, but putting the cost of 10Gb in perspective of what it takes to move the same bandwidth with a 1Gb switch (requires LAG capabilities and even then you'd still end up short). As for power - a typical optical 10Gb-SR will be power draw listed at 1W (PHY would draw less). It would appear to me that the power aspect is a moot point.

close04 7y ago

> I have multiple devices in my home server rack that have native 10Gb. 10Gb PHY/SFP+ are dirt cheap these days It's a matter of perspective. These are only a concern for a narrow niche. Outside of your/our tech bubble people don't think the same way, and don't care about this. You know what is cheaper than everything that you mentioned there? The "free" ISP router and not building a home lab because they don't need it. They don't have 10G, racks, and home labs for the same reason you don't have 40/100/200G and an actual data center. Or anything that's so much outside of your field and passion that you can't even imagine it. I have friends that think 6000E is the least they can pay to get a decent bicycle.