4 ms·

2.5Gbps is becoming pretty common and fairly affordable, though My understanding is right around 10Gbps you start to hit limitations with the shielding/type of

by nijave 2y ago

2.5Gbps is becoming pretty common and fairly affordable, though My understanding is right around 10Gbps you start to hit limitations with the shielding/type of cable and power needed to transmit/send over Ethernet. When I was looking to upgrade at home, I had to get expensive PoE+ injectors and splitters to power the switch in the closet (where there's no outlet) and 10Gbps SFP+ transceivers are like $10 for fiber or $40 for Ethernet. The Ethernet transceivers hit like 40-50C

akira2501 2y ago
Ironically.. 2.5 Gbps is created by taking a 10GBASE-T module and effectively underclocking it. I wonder if "automatic speed selection" is around the corner with modules that automatically connect at 100Mbps to 10Gbps based on available cable quality.
- cyberax 2y ago
  My 10G modules automatically drop down to 2.5G or 1G if the cable is not good enough. There's also 5G, but I have never seen it work better than 2.5G.
  - akira2501 2y ago
    Oh man. I've been off the IT floor for too long. Time to change my rhetoric, ya'll have been around the corner for a while. Aging has it's upsides and downsides I guess.
  - chgs 2y ago
    I don’t think my 10g coppers will drop to 10m. 100m sure, but 10m rings a bell.
cyberax 2y ago
40-50C? What is the brand? Mine were over 90C, resulting in thermal shutdowns. I had to add an improvised heat exchanger to lower it down to ~70C: https://pics.archie.alex.net/share/U0G1yiWzShqOGXulwe1AetDjRdfBOHilPBPNeRYQgcaWOtFOOXWrZ--Rht8WuKeLQkE https://pics.archie.alex.net/share/U0G1yiWzShqOGXulwe1AetDjR...
- nijave 2y ago
  I think 10GTek. However there were only 2 of them in the uplink ports on a 24x1Gbps switch in a server cabinet with decent airflow. They might have been getting up to 60C but I don't think they were hitting as high as you were saying. I've since replaced with a 8x10Gbps Hasivo switch so I can't check anymore.
crote 2y ago
The main issue is switches, really. 5Gbps USB NICs are available for $30 on Amazon, or $20 on AliExpress. 10Gbps NICS are $60, so not exactly crazy expensive either. But switches haven't really kept up. A simple unmanaged 5-port or 8-port 2.5GigE isn't too bad, but anything beyond that gets tricky. 5GigE switches don't seem to exist, and you're already paying $500 for a budget-brand 10GigE switch with basic VLAN support. You want PoE? Forget it. The irony is that at 10Gbps fiber suddenly becomes quite attractive. A brand-new SFP+ NIC can be found for $30, with DACs only $5 (per side) and transceivers $30 or so. You can get an actually-decent switch from Mikrotik for less than $300. Heck, you can even get brand-new dualport SFP28 NICs for $100, or as little as $25 on Ebay! Switch-wise you can get 16 ports of 25Gbps out of a $800 Mikrotik switch: not exactly cheap, but definitely within range for a very enthusiastic homelabber. The only issue is that wiring your home for fiber is stupidly expensive, and you can't exactly use it to power access points either.
- maccard 2y ago
  > The only issue is that wiring your home for fiber is stupidly expensive What do you mean by that? My home isnt wired for ethernet. I can buy 30m of CAT6 cable for £7, or 30m of fibre for £17. For a home use, that's a decent amount of cable, and even spending £100 on cabling will likely run cables to even the biggest of houses.
  - hakfoo 2y ago
    Isn't the expensive part more the assembly aspect? For Cat 6 the plugs and keystone jacks add up to a few dollars per port, and the crimper is like $20. I understand building your own fibre cables-- if you don't want to thread them through walls without the heads pre-attached, for example-- involves more sophisticated glass-fusion tools that are fairly expensive. A rental service might help there, or a call-in service-- the 6 hours of drilling holes and pulling fibre can be done by yourself, and once it's all cut to rough length, bring out a guy who can fuse on 10 plugs in an hour for $150.
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
Dylan16807 2y ago
> My understanding is right around 10Gbps you start to hit limitations with the shielding/type of cable and power needed to transmit/send over Ethernet. If you decide you only need 50 meters, that reduces both power and cable requirements by a lot. Did we decide to ignore the easy solution in favor of stagnation?
- nijave 2y ago
  I'm not sure what you're saying. The cable length is largely fixed/determined by the building you're running cable in. I'd rather spend an extra $100 on cable than start ripping open walls/floors/ceilings to get a slightly more optimal run length. If it's new construction or you already have everything ripped open it's less of an issue.
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    I'm not saying 10gig itself should have been range-limited. I'm saying if the reason it was expensive was cable limits and transmit power, both of those can be solved by cutting the range. And if cutting the range could have given us cheap fast connections 15 years ago we should have made it a variant. It could have become the default network port, and anyone that wanted full distance could have bought a card for it. Instead we waited and waited before making slower versions of 10gig, and those are still very slow to roll out. Also 2.5gig and 5gig seem especially consumer-oriented, so for those users a cheap but half range 10gig would be all upside. And 40gig can't reach 100m on any version of copper, so it's not like 100m is a sacred requirement.

by nijave 2y ago

akira2501 2y ago

Ironically.. 2.5 Gbps is created by taking a 10GBASE-T module and effectively underclocking it. I wonder if "automatic speed selection" is around the corner with modules that automatically connect at 100Mbps to 10Gbps based on available cable quality.

cyberax 2y ago
My 10G modules automatically drop down to 2.5G or 1G if the cable is not good enough. There's also 5G, but I have never seen it work better than 2.5G.
- akira2501 2y ago
  Oh man. I've been off the IT floor for too long. Time to change my rhetoric, ya'll have been around the corner for a while. Aging has it's upsides and downsides I guess.
- chgs 2y ago
  I don’t think my 10g coppers will drop to 10m. 100m sure, but 10m rings a bell.

cyberax 2y ago

40-50C? What is the brand? Mine were over 90C, resulting in thermal shutdowns. I had to add an improvised heat exchanger to lower it down to ~70C: https://pics.archie.alex.net/share/U0G1yiWzShqOGXulwe1AetDjRdfBOHilPBPNeRYQgcaWOtFOOXWrZ--Rht8WuKeLQkE https://pics.archie.alex.net/share/U0G1yiWzShqOGXulwe1AetDjR...

nijave 2y ago
I think 10GTek. However there were only 2 of them in the uplink ports on a 24x1Gbps switch in a server cabinet with decent airflow. They might have been getting up to 60C but I don't think they were hitting as high as you were saying. I've since replaced with a 8x10Gbps Hasivo switch so I can't check anymore.

crote 2y ago

The main issue is switches, really. 5Gbps USB NICs are available for $30 on Amazon, or $20 on AliExpress. 10Gbps NICS are $60, so not exactly crazy expensive either. But switches haven't really kept up. A simple unmanaged 5-port or 8-port 2.5GigE isn't too bad, but anything beyond that gets tricky. 5GigE switches don't seem to exist, and you're already paying $500 for a budget-brand 10GigE switch with basic VLAN support. You want PoE? Forget it. The irony is that at 10Gbps fiber suddenly becomes quite attractive. A brand-new SFP+ NIC can be found for $30, with DACs only $5 (per side) and transceivers $30 or so. You can get an actually-decent switch from Mikrotik for less than $300. Heck, you can even get brand-new dualport SFP28 NICs for $100, or as little as $25 on Ebay! Switch-wise you can get 16 ports of 25Gbps out of a $800 Mikrotik switch: not exactly cheap, but definitely within range for a very enthusiastic homelabber. The only issue is that wiring your home for fiber is stupidly expensive, and you can't exactly use it to power access points either.

maccard 2y ago
> The only issue is that wiring your home for fiber is stupidly expensive What do you mean by that? My home isnt wired for ethernet. I can buy 30m of CAT6 cable for £7, or 30m of fibre for £17. For a home use, that's a decent amount of cable, and even spending £100 on cabling will likely run cables to even the biggest of houses.
- hakfoo 2y ago
  Isn't the expensive part more the assembly aspect? For Cat 6 the plugs and keystone jacks add up to a few dollars per port, and the crimper is like $20. I understand building your own fibre cables-- if you don't want to thread them through walls without the heads pre-attached, for example-- involves more sophisticated glass-fusion tools that are fairly expensive. A rental service might help there, or a call-in service-- the 6 hours of drilling holes and pulling fibre can be done by yourself, and once it's all cut to rough length, bring out a guy who can fuse on 10 plugs in an hour for $150.
  - Dylan16807 2y ago

Dylan16807 2y ago

> My understanding is right around 10Gbps you start to hit limitations with the shielding/type of cable and power needed to transmit/send over Ethernet. If you decide you only need 50 meters, that reduces both power and cable requirements by a lot. Did we decide to ignore the easy solution in favor of stagnation?

nijave 2y ago
I'm not sure what you're saying. The cable length is largely fixed/determined by the building you're running cable in. I'd rather spend an extra $100 on cable than start ripping open walls/floors/ceilings to get a slightly more optimal run length. If it's new construction or you already have everything ripped open it's less of an issue.
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  I'm not saying 10gig itself should have been range-limited. I'm saying if the reason it was expensive was cable limits and transmit power, both of those can be solved by cutting the range. And if cutting the range could have given us cheap fast connections 15 years ago we should have made it a variant. It could have become the default network port, and anyone that wanted full distance could have bought a card for it. Instead we waited and waited before making slower versions of 10gig, and those are still very slow to roll out. Also 2.5gig and 5gig seem especially consumer-oriented, so for those users a cheap but half range 10gig would be all upside. And 40gig can't reach 100m on any version of copper, so it's not like 100m is a sacred requirement.