4 ms·

2.5G and 5G Ethernet are relatively cheap. I recommend them for new installs. I had a 10GBASE-T network for a while but returned to 1G and haven’t really misse

2.5G and 5G Ethernet are relatively cheap. I recommend them for new installs. I had a 10GBASE-T network for a while but returned to 1G and haven’t really missed it. It only made a difference during sustained reads/writes from the NAS, and my workflow almost never gets blocked on that. The switches and even Ethernet cards are power hungry and, unless you’re careful about switch selection, can be noisy. It just wasn’t worth it for me.

jmnicolas 5y ago
> 2.5G and 5G Ethernet are relatively cheap. It's not what I saw a bit more than a year ago when I changed my PC. A PCI express card was about 100€, about the same for a switch IIRC. It was about 500€ total for what I wanted to do, not worth it for me. The same hardware just Ethernet would have cost 5 or 6 times less!
- mlyle 5y ago
  Motherboard ports are rapidly becoming 2.5G. Adapter cards are $35. Switches about $100, depending upon what you want (getting to a managed switch with a lot of multigig ports is $400, but then you also tend to get PoE).
  - jmnicolas 5y ago
    You're right, I just checked on my Newegg equivalent and the local Amazon, one has PCI express cards for 35€ and the other has switches for 135€. Too bad the price for switches didn't go down, I have a hard time replacing 15€ switches for 135€ one just for faster transfers.
- HPsquared 5y ago
  Cheap relative to 10G, I think.
giantrobot 5y ago
Every time I've looked at upgrading to anything better than 1G Ethernet I can't justify the cost for the performance. Only my NAS can come close to saturating 1G but I rarely do that. Everything else in the house is more than happy with 1G and WiFi. I can't even get my WiFi 6 AP to get higher than about 500Mbps. Even if I wanted to upgrade it means replacing/upgrading my switch, router, and wiring in some cases. Going from Fast Ethernet to 1G was a no brainer and relatively inexpensive. For home use 10G is just too rich for my blood and won't get me much better actual network performance.
- hinkley 5y ago
  In that sort of situation, a high speed switch and one high speed network card (in the NAS) would seem to be the biggest bang for the buck. Switches with one, maybe two high speed uplink ports used to be quite common, allowing every machine on the switch to get around 50% utilization of their network connection before congestion set in.
  - giantrobot 5y ago
    My NAS has two 1G ports that I set up as a bonded interface. So it's got 2Gb of capacity which is more than enough capacity for any other device on the network. Even upgrading to a 2.5G or 5G switch isn't going to do much for my network capacity and just cost me a bit of money.
baybal2 5y ago
it worth to update to 2.5g hardware even if your infra is 1g. The designs are just a generation ahead in everything, and they are really pulling close to 1g theoretical maximum.

jmnicolas 5y ago

> 2.5G and 5G Ethernet are relatively cheap. It's not what I saw a bit more than a year ago when I changed my PC. A PCI express card was about 100€, about the same for a switch IIRC. It was about 500€ total for what I wanted to do, not worth it for me. The same hardware just Ethernet would have cost 5 or 6 times less!

mlyle 5y ago
Motherboard ports are rapidly becoming 2.5G. Adapter cards are $35. Switches about $100, depending upon what you want (getting to a managed switch with a lot of multigig ports is $400, but then you also tend to get PoE).
- jmnicolas 5y ago
  You're right, I just checked on my Newegg equivalent and the local Amazon, one has PCI express cards for 35€ and the other has switches for 135€. Too bad the price for switches didn't go down, I have a hard time replacing 15€ switches for 135€ one just for faster transfers.
HPsquared 5y ago
Cheap relative to 10G, I think.

giantrobot 5y ago

Every time I've looked at upgrading to anything better than 1G Ethernet I can't justify the cost for the performance. Only my NAS can come close to saturating 1G but I rarely do that. Everything else in the house is more than happy with 1G and WiFi. I can't even get my WiFi 6 AP to get higher than about 500Mbps. Even if I wanted to upgrade it means replacing/upgrading my switch, router, and wiring in some cases. Going from Fast Ethernet to 1G was a no brainer and relatively inexpensive. For home use 10G is just too rich for my blood and won't get me much better actual network performance.

hinkley 5y ago
In that sort of situation, a high speed switch and one high speed network card (in the NAS) would seem to be the biggest bang for the buck. Switches with one, maybe two high speed uplink ports used to be quite common, allowing every machine on the switch to get around 50% utilization of their network connection before congestion set in.
- giantrobot 5y ago
  My NAS has two 1G ports that I set up as a bonded interface. So it's got 2Gb of capacity which is more than enough capacity for any other device on the network. Even upgrading to a 2.5G or 5G switch isn't going to do much for my network capacity and just cost me a bit of money.

baybal2 5y ago

it worth to update to 2.5g hardware even if your infra is 1g. The designs are just a generation ahead in everything, and they are really pulling close to 1g theoretical maximum.