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D-Link Announces 2.5 GbE USB-C Adapter, Client Switch

newtekie1

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I didn't say it didn't exist, I said nobody has it. Which is still true. If even a few thousand households in the US had that (which I frankly doubt given the cost and limited availability), it would still be nobody in the grand scheme of things.

Obviously some people do have, and I'll be one once it is available in my area. But then I already have 10Gbps equipment. So, meh.

I guess this is cheating, as it's my DIY NAS, but still only spinning rust, albeit over 10Gbps. Still, anything is better than Gigabit for backups, except some old USB 2.0 drive...

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You're right about the power consumption and this is where 2.5Gbps Ethernet is a real winner, as well as the fact that you can get 2.5Gbps over Cat 5e, rather than needing new cabling for anything longer than a very short run. Prices for 10Gbps will continue to come down, but it won't be anywhere near the price of 2.5Gbps any time soon. I got both my cards in a black Friday sale for less than $70, but then needed to get a $199 switch to make proper use of them and the switch only has two 10Gbps ports...


Making the switch to 10Gbps really didn't cost as much as I thought it would. Yeah, it isn't as cheap as 1Gbps, but I wouldn't expect it to be. A 4-port 10Gbps switch with 1 1Gbps port to uplink to the rest of my network was only ~$325. The problem was finding inexpensive 10Gbps network cards. Aquantia made some really good cheap ones that you could get for around $70, but then Marvell bought them out and killed that off pretty quickly. So now you're looking at about $100 for one. Luckily my server's motherboard came with a 10Gbps NIC built in. I was able to find a cheap Asus dual-10Gbps card on ebay for $85 and a single Aquantia based Asus 10Gbps card for $65.

In the home space though, I think those switches that only have 1 or 2 10Gbps ports and 8 1Gbps ports actually make sense. Alot of homes these days are having some kind of NAS or such for various things. The NAS can be on the 10Gbps port, while all the PCs are on 1Gbps. The fact is 1Gbps is sufficient for what most home users do, even backups. But with the server/NAS being on a 10Gbps link, it means no one person can just saturate the NAS's bandwidth. So if Susie's computer starts doing a backup to the NAS, Johnie's movie he's watching with plex off the NAS doesn't start to stutter.
 

TheLostSwede

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Wow, that is pretty speedy for HDDs! Must be a rather beefy RAID (or equivalent). My DIY NAS still chugs along at GbE, but then its mirrored HDDs aren't exactly speed demons either. There'll be an upgrade in the future for that, but first I need to get Ethernet wiring run through the apartment - stupid concrete walls and needing to cross wires across the central hallway where everything stands out is making planning that more time consuming than I'd like :p It would be lovely if this apartment was wired for Ethernet, but I guess people in the 1960s weren't thinking that far ahead XD As for my network speeds, I've tested it directly from the ethernet ports on the fiber converter box (not a modem) and speeds are the same. Also upgraded my router a little while back. The speeds are also quite variable, but then internet speed tests aren't really controllable either, so that might be down to server load. Either way, as I said I haven't bothered looking into it as it's still plenty fast :) LAN speeds are another matter :(
Nah, only four 4TB Toshiba drives. That was in RAID 5.
Going to rebuild it a bit once OMV 6 is out.

That doesn't sound like it'll be too much fun. You can't replace some old phone wiring with Ethernet? Assuming every room has phone wiring...
We have really messed up wiring in the house, as the original owner messed up a lot of the wiring, both Ethernet and electrical. When we fixed up the kitchen, the electrician nearly had a fit.
I also have the same problem as most people, the internet comes in at the ground floor, but as it's a small three storey house, all my computer stuff is one floor up, except the cable modem and the router. So I have one cable from the router that goes upstairs to my switch, to which then the computers and the NAS is connected to. I also have a wired port by the TV, but in their wisdom, Samsung only added a 100Mbps port on their TVs, which seems to only be capable of about 10Mbps... :ohwell:
I also need a Wi-Fi AP on all the floor, due to thick concrete floors and metal bars.

Have you tried this test? It's a bit different.

Making the switch to 10Gbps really didn't cost as much as I thought it would. Yeah, it isn't as cheap as 1Gbps, but I wouldn't expect it to be. A 4-port 10Gbps switch with 1 1Gbps port to uplink to the rest of my network was only ~$325. The problem was finding inexpensive 10Gbps network cards. Aquantia made some really good cheap ones that you could get for around $70, but then Marvell bought them out and killed that off pretty quickly. So now you're looking at about $100 for one. Luckily my server's motherboard came with a 10Gbps NIC built in. I was able to find a cheap Asus dual-10Gbps card on ebay for $85 and a single Aquantia based Asus 10Gbps card for $65.

In the home space though, I think those switches that only have 1 or 2 10Gbps ports and 8 1Gbps ports actually make sense. Alot of homes these days are having some kind of NAS or such for various things. The NAS can be on the 10Gbps port, while all the PCs are on 1Gbps. The fact is 1Gbps is sufficient for what most home users do, even backups. But with the server/NAS being on a 10Gbps link, it means no one person can just saturate the NAS's bandwidth. So if Susie's computer starts doing a backup to the NAS, Johnie's movie he's watching with plex off the NAS doesn't start to stutter.
Yeah, I have two of their cards. Quite upset about the Marvell buyout too. There simply isn't enough competition and when someone like Aquantia disappears, there's even less competition. Aquantia based cards can still be had for less than $100, but only just.

I'd like something with two or three 10Gbps ports and then 2.5Gbps for the rest, but I guess we might see one of those soon enough. At the time I built my NAS I was expecting to use it a bit more than I've ended up doing, but it's so nice when you move large files around, as it's so much quicker than over Gigabit.
 
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