3 ms·
For such a low speed and small number of ports using a hardware switch circuit is not necessary. Nevertheless, if the designing and building effort is neglecte
by adrian_b 2y ago
For such a low speed and small number of ports using a hardware switch circuit is not necessary.
Nevertheless, if the designing and building effort is neglected, I assume that the total cost of the hardware might be under $100, which is less than a computer with multiple interfaces would cost.
Still, 1 Gb/s networks are rather obsolete. One could make a managed network switch that is bigger and faster by using only off-the-shelf components for slightly more than $200, e.g. a 6-port 2.5 Gb/s switch can be made with an Odroid H4+ having 2 ports, together with its add-on M.2 card with 4 extra Ethernet ports. Another variant is to use a small computer with an N100 CPU and 4 2.5 Gb/s ports, which can be bought in this price range from various Chinese companies. Similar small computers with 6 2.5 Gb/s ports are a little more expensive, perhaps slightly over $300.
- MartijnBraam 2y ago$100? I paid roughly $80 for two of these and the price per boards will rapidly converge to ~$17 when increasing quantity.
- adrian_b 2y agoThe PINE A64-LTS alone is $40 + shipping + taxes, so you cannot have a $17 total cost. I assume that you mean that the card with the switch circuit alone could reach $17, if made in a large quantity. However, you cannot make a managed switch with that card alone. If your current cost has been $40 for a card with the switch circuit, adding the PINE A64-LTS + whatever you have paid for shipping and taxes must make the total around $100, exactly like I have said.
- MartijnBraam 2y agoI meant the cost of just the switch obviously... It can hook up to whatever Linux machine you have running and I happened to have this one in the drawer. The point of this was not to make the fastest or cheapest or most featureful switch available, it just had to fit in a case and none of the options have one port facing backwards so it doesn't require an ugly loop cable on the front of the final case. It's also possible to make a managed switch with that card alone, there is a footprint for a NOR flash chip, if you load the netgear GS105E firmware on that (which is available on the netgear website) then it will be just a GS105E without leds and one port on the back.
- mschuster91 2y ago> Still, 1 Gb/s networks are rather obsolete. Are they? Most consumer, even office gear still is maximum 1000M/port - your average USB-C network/multi-port laptop dongle, most USB-C/TB monitors (and shamefully, Apple's Studio Display which only has USB-C/TB ports, no network), VoIP phones (hell these are usually 10/100 only, with 1000 being reserved for top models), printers, virtually all entry to mid range NAS systems... the list is endless. Options for more than that tend to be really niche, expensive, or are bring-your-own-module-SFP. Besides, 1000M is way more than enough for almost all consumer and office needs. Only exception is heavy video and photo editing, if these workplaces don't already use direct Thunderbolt/FC attach.
- bongodongobob 2y agoThey definitely aren't, no idea what parent is talking about. They are the standard unless you're talking about a SAN or something. If I had to guess, 92% of the switches in a typical office are 1000M, 5% are 100M, and the rest are > 1000M for switch interconnects or HA server interconnects/SANs.
- TacticalCoder 2y agoNo they aren't. You failed to mention the big one: most people by very far have 1 Gb/s network switches to... Connect their machines to this thing called the Internet. Some may have heard of it. And most people also have not more than 1 Gbit/s up/down. Do I have switches (with a 's') with 10 Gbit/s SFP+ at home? Yup. Is 1 Gbit/s obsolete: definitely not.
- p_l 2y ago1gig is starting to become a problem - we have increasing deployment of 2gig and 8gig internet to homes in Poland for example, figuring out how to deal with that when most computer gear still comes with 1gig is becoming an issue
- Asmod4n 2y agoA raspberry pi 400 can handle around 875 MBit when bridging two interfaces. So it’s not even fast enough for two ports let alone full duplex. I doubt a n100 can handle more than three.
- sofixa 2y agoAn Intel Celeron N5105, on one core, does ~28Gbps locally between two bridged interfaces with iperf. A Raspberry Pi 4 has a single PCIe lane with a total of 4Gbps bandwith for everything (all USB ports and Ethernet). Edit: shameless plug, but I just finished writing an article on my new home network, including the router with the above spec/results: https://atodorov.me/2024/07/03/running-a-multi-gig-home-network-in-2024/ https://atodorov.me/2024/07/03/running-a-multi-gig-home-netw...
- Asmod4n 2y agoThe CPU is the bottleneck. All switching is done in software with off the shelf NICs.
- sofixa 2y agoYes, my Intel Celeron N5105 had a full core pegged at 100% while doing that iperf and getting those numbers. But there are 4 whole cores, meaning I can get far more traffic switched and routed with the CPU capacity than all the ports combined can sustain.
- bongodongobob 2y ago1000M networks are THE standard, no idea where you got the idea they were obsolete.
- KeplerBoy 2y agoUnfortunately gigabit ethernet is far from obsolete. Yes, there's 2.5 gigabit on some consumer hardware, but it's still kind of rare. Also who is excited about a 2.5x speedup after 20 years? Nobody cares until we need 10 gigabit internet access (which will probably never happen).
- sofixa 2y ago> Nobody cares until we need 10 gigabit internet access (which will probably never happen). For what it's worth, my ISP gives me 5Gbps down/700Mbps up for ~40 euros a month which includes a bunch of TV channels and discounts for Netflix and Disney+. They also have an 8Gbps down / 8Gbps up plan for ~60 euros, also including a ton of extra things.