Does anyone care about 10Gb LAN? (Poll)

[phill]

Are you guys just not interested in old gear? Or just like it from brands you can find at Walmart? Serious question. 10G has been around far longer than 2.5/5 and you can get single mellanox cards far cheaper on something like eBay, than the fancy anodized red asus cards. Likewise you can get Cisco broadcom, HP, etc etc etc 10G sfp and Ethernet switches for a few hundred. Which is on par in price with most ubiquity or mikrotik stuff.

I have seen an odd amount of hate on the forums for the better part of a year on 10G networking in general but I can’t help but wonder if it stems from simple ignorance, maybe unwillingness to believe it is a viable option, or maybe they just see a name like “Arista” and get nervous.

I can't agree more with this having just got a 10Gb network setup in my home Running on Cat5E without any issues.

My internet barely hits 1Mbps and I don't have a NAS so nope.

I think that's more of a reason to have a NAS and a good intranet It was one of the reasons I made that choice a few years ago and I've never looked back

As I started above, I had recently managed to have my home internet upgraded and made into a monster and when I was looking and thinking about it, why have a 1Gb download, to then only have a 1Gb network at home. Transferring data and downloading at the same time, not going to work without slowing things down (can't have it, unacceptable.... ) so I decided to give something a try and try to find some bits and pieces that would work how I wished it too.

So with a Threadripper system that had a 10Gb network LAN adaptor and I thought hang on, so I grabbed a 10Gb Asus card and away we went. I had recently thought I should have gone for another card but still Having also found a couple Enterprise cards that have dual ports, it was just a dead cert to do stupid things

Much to learn about it and the 8 port 10Gb TP Link switch I have is annoying as the fan is terribly loud even without anything connected but as soon as funds allow, I'll be switching it out for a 24 port model instead. I know that's completely overkill in my current network setup with about 24 cables around the house but I guess at least I have expansion, not to mention only a few devices have the 10Gb LAN connections... Onto complete overkill network upgrade soon

(Apologies, hopefully not too much 'talking' there I'll leave now )

 

[Assimilator]

I voted no, for the simple reason that I haven't used wired ethernet in the last 3 year... and contrary to my initial expectations, it's been absolutely fine. Wireless ethernet has become Good Enough - in terms of ease of setup, reliability and speed - for ordinary consumers, that high-speed wired links simply aren't the necessity that they used to be. And that means 10GbE isn't as necessary in consumer products as 1GbE was, which - since 10GbE chips are still relatively large and power-hungry - also means there's a massive economic disincentive for manufacturers to concentrate on 10GbE. It's a vicious negative feedback loop.

Personally I'm glad, because wireless is absolutely the future. And yes, I have run Cat5 in multiple ceilings of multiple houses in my time.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Personally I'm glad, because wireless is absolutely the future. And yes, I have run Cat5 in multiple ceilings of multiple houses in my time.

Wireless is still not full duplex though, so far from ideal during a lot of situations.
WiFi has advantages for sure, but it can never replace wired.

 

[P4-630]

Also a WIFI user here, the only thing I have wired is my TV, since WIFI for Smart TV is crapshoot....

 

[TheLostSwede]

Also a WIFI user here, the only thing I have wired is my TV, since WIFI for Smart TV is crapshoot....

I have exactly the opposite experience where the WiFi works (barely) and the wired Ethernet is a crapshoot.
For some reason our Samsung TV has the worst wired Ethernet I've ever come across, with the 100 Mbps interface barely managing 4 Mbps upload speeds. No, it's not the wiring that's faulty.

 

[defaultluser]

As I started above, I had recently managed to have my home internet upgraded and made into a monster and when I was looking and thinking about it, why have a 1Gb download, to then only have a 1Gb network at home. Transferring data and downloading at the same time, not going to work without slowing things down (can't have it, unacceptable.... ) so I decided to give something a try and try to find some bits and pieces that would work how I wished it too.

You do know how an Ethernet switch works, right? Every network cable gets the same dedicated 1 Gbps bandwidth

this could only be justified if you were downloading from the internet while maxing-out your local nas (everyone else has uninterrupted bandwidth to network storage).

 

[eidairaman1]

Changed my vote "Do you want 10Gb LAN on a Motherboard?" to YES.

Do I need it now? No, but my motherboard has it.

If i needed higher function I would just buy a lan card. Most at best connectivity is 1Gibibit.

 

[phill]

You do know how an Ethernet switch works, right? Every network cable gets the same dedicated 1 Gbps bandwidth

this could only be justified if you were downloading from the internet while maxing-out your local nas (everyone else has uninterrupted bandwidth to network storage).

I do, but if I'm downloading on the same PC that I'm transferring to that's limited to a 1Gb connection, to half its performance, which I don't want Plus its not all about the connection speed as such but the drive speed/performance from the server/other devices.
Each time you can access the NAS from another device, the performance will take a hit and it will be 50% of what it could be with a 1Gb connection. If the server can operate at 10Gb and the rest 1Gb, at least then the 10 machines that could access it before things start slowing down is a bonus

 

[theFOoL]

I voted no bc everything is wireless at least here. Cost a arm and a leg to hire people to route or drill holes in walls

 

[Muck Muster]

Yeah, I heard that. 10 years ago, Comcast sent a guy to setup high speed internet for our neighbor, across the street. To save time, he spliced into our internet line and just decelerated our high speed connection. When they got through fixing it, it looked pretty odd with all the useless cabling.

 

[AusWolf]

There's no point. My great British broadband can't even do 100 Mbps, let alone 1 Gbps or 10.

I voted no bc everything is wireless at least here. Cost a arm and a leg to hire people to route or drill holes in walls

That too. No chance drilling in a rented flat.

 

[caroline!]

I can't agree more with this having just got a 10Gb network setup in my home Running on Cat5E without any issues.


I think that's more of a reason to have a NAS and a good intranet It was one of the reasons I made that choice a few years ago and I've never looked back

As I started above, I had recently managed to have my home internet upgraded and made into a monster and when I was looking and thinking about it, why have a 1Gb download, to then only have a 1Gb network at home. Transferring data and downloading at the same time, not going to work without slowing things down (can't have it, unacceptable.... ) so I decided to give something a try and try to find some bits and pieces that would work how I wished it too.

So with a Threadripper system that had a 10Gb network LAN adaptor and I thought hang on, so I grabbed a 10Gb Asus card and away we went. I had recently thought I should have gone for another card but still Having also found a couple Enterprise cards that have dual ports, it was just a dead cert to do stupid things

Much to learn about it and the 8 port 10Gb TP Link switch I have is annoying as the fan is terribly loud even without anything connected but as soon as funds allow, I'll be switching it out for a 24 port model instead. I know that's completely overkill in my current network setup with about 24 cables around the house but I guess at least I have expansion, not to mention only a few devices have the 10Gb LAN connections... Onto complete overkill network upgrade soon

(Apologies, hopefully not too much 'talking' there I'll leave now )

I just get a new hard drive whenever the need arises.

I voted no bc everything is wireless at least here. Cost a arm and a leg to hire people to route or drill holes in walls

Had a 50m long ethernet cable going from the basement to my room through floors and stairs before I repurposed the old phone wiring for regular Eth, peaks out at 10Mbit/s but that's still 10 times faster than my internet so it's never saturated to cause packet loss or noise.

 

[ir_cow]

Thanks for the comments people! This is great for understanding people's perspective on 10 Gb LAN.

 

[The red spirit]

I voted no, for the simple reason that I haven't used wired ethernet in the last 3 year... and contrary to my initial expectations, it's been absolutely fine. Wireless ethernet has become Good Enough - in terms of ease of setup, reliability and speed - for ordinary consumers, that high-speed wired links simply aren't the necessity that they used to be. And that means 10GbE isn't as necessary in consumer products as 1GbE was, which - since 10GbE chips are still relatively large and power-hungry - also means there's a massive economic disincentive for manufacturers to concentrate on 10GbE. It's a vicious negative feedback loop.

Personally I'm glad, because wireless is absolutely the future. And yes, I have run Cat5 in multiple ceilings of multiple houses in my time.

I actually also use wireless. It got cheap and good. You can have nearly bottom of the barrel router some inexpensive wifi cards or USB sticks and it will be reasonably fast. I can watch 4k30 YT without issues. Not even ping is poor.

 

[The Von Matrices]

I voted no. Not because I don't want 10Gb connections. I actually have a 10Gb SFP+ optical connection from my PC to the network switch and a 2Gb/s internet connection.

I voted no because I know that the feature will only show up on $700+ motherboards, which I wouldn't be buying anyway. Add-in cards give much more flexibility and can be reused between system upgrades.

 

[The red spirit]

Add-in cards give much more flexibility and can be reused between system upgrades.

There are even USB to ethernet adapters. Those are even more reusable. You can even connect Android phone to wired internet if you want.

 

[Pawelr98]

Yea i think that kinda sums it up, since gigabit gear now is cheap as chips, and sure if you could (can you?) get like a 16 port 10G switch for say $100 (which would be an awesome deal yea) you still need a 10G card for every machine too - which adds up.

It's not that it's unreasonable, it's just if like my house there are 5 machines i'd want to be on the 10G segment to be even worth the effort. And looking at say $50 for the cheapest 10G PCIe cards that adds up fast.

It's enough that I kinda have to justify the spend to make everything 10G other than it being awesome lol. I kinda hoped that the 2.5G and 5G might have come down to being maybe same price as cheap 1G cause in that case you don't even have to really think about it. While 2.5G would still be roughly twice as fast, that's still like $30 a card and you'd still need a switch - and some of the old 10G switches that might be cheap enough pre-date 2.5G and 5G so they won't negotiate those so it just keeps squeaking outside of "impulse upgrade" price lol

2.5Gbit cards are more like 15-20$, just use aliexpress, not amazon/newegg/whatever.
RTL8125 is the standard for 2.5Gbit/s these days, inexpensive Realtek chip.

Big HDD's these days can push quite close to 300MB/s sequential, which happens to be about what the 2.5Gbit/s is capable of.
So it's not like you need an SSD to see gains from above gigabit speeds.