10Gig Base-T switch, or other solution?

KazeoHin

KazeoHin

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Sep 7, 2011
Messages
9,055
Hey guys, I'm looking to move into a new place here soon, and I want to network up the whole house for everyone (the wife and her parents) to have full access to media streaming and file storage on their PCs, Notebooks, phones, media-centres, DIY IOT devices, the lot. I want to buy a switch that will be connecting this handful of client machines (20 or more). The server will be providing TV tuners with DVR, general file storage, FHD and possibly UHD media streaming, as well as daily backups. The main issue I have is that a normal Gigabit network would be fine per-user, but when everyone is on at once, I could imagine the host getting a bit bogged down, with even two standard Gigabit NICs getting saturated. Modern switches have plenty of switching capacity to meet this, but the server won't have the network capacity to keep the clients at full speed!

I could always just add MOAR NICS!! but that requires bridging or subnet juggling, an general stuff that's is just a pain in the ass, and (at least to my knowledge level) is a bitch to maintain.

The other option is to go fibre SFP, but damned if I've ever had to work with that, im professionally trained in IT Networking, but I've never had a job where my training was needed (a familliar story for most of us), thus I don't want to gamble and try it out: unless someone who knows a whole lot more than me can re-assure me that it's no different than copper Ethernet.

The other option is to find a gigabit switch with at least one 10gig Base-T port. This would be my holy grail product, but I can't find one. The products that I can find are either 10gig SFP ports, or expensive fully-10gig copper switches. As much as a full 10gig switch would be nice: the effect these switches have on my wallet is not. I'm not opposed to spending money on a quality product that I may use, but I highly doubt ANY client on my home network will require 10gig Ethernet for the next five years.

Can people educate me a bit on what may be required to solve my conundrum? Is it even worth worrying about?
 
you can get 10gbe rj45 for sfp+ i thought?

also you can get 10gbe sfp+ cards for computer and just use the 10gbe sfp+ copper cables instead of fiber
 
I have quite a few devices on my network and only stream for TV as well and haven't run into any issues. Have you measured any of the traffic to "know" that you will be saturating your network connections? It may also be a switch issue as well if you are saturating them.
 
10gig is NOT what you need but if you want it I would run fiber. Cheaper and more effective overall.

Secondly what about 1gbps doesnt work for you? Its super cheap and more than enough for a house.

I run 10gb but have absolutely no need for it at all.

I am using Cisco 4948 swtich Cisco 10gb transceivers and monoprice fiber and intel SR fiber PCI-express cards

Cost about 2k for my setup give or take .... you are looking at several thousand these days to do a full 10g installation in your hom

Also consider fiber because the latency is mind blowing faster than copper can ever be. It does make a noticeable difference trust me. Were talking microseconds of latency opposed to miliseconds. Also fiber is immune to RFI. And its dirt ass cheap on Monoprice for the premade LC/SC/LCSC etc... fibers Make sure you use multimode fiber as the gear and fiber is significantly, and I mean significantly, cheaper than single mode. Your not trying to shoot your data 50km, only a few meters or 10s of meters at most.
 
I also don't think you need 10G for this; OTA channels are 20Mbps, netflix 4k is ~ 16 Mbps; it would take a lot of that to fill up 1G. Do they make a 10GBaseT sfp module? I know I've seen switches with one or two sfp ports and then a bunch of 1G ports; might be an option?
 
I somehow doubt 125MB/sec is going to be a bottleneck for you, but here are your options:

Option 1:
-$500 24-port 1000BaseT with SPF+ port
-$40 10GB SPF+ NIC from eBay
-$25 Twinax SPF+ cable from eBay (replace with over $150 in SPF+ and Fiber if you need more than 5 meters)
----
Option 2:
Well, there is no option two. The only 10GBase-T switch on newegg is $840 and only 8 ports.
 
Another thing is that I plan to have -most- of the home's storage on the server, that includes my art projects. I'm not talking about Netflix streaming, I'm talking about local 4K videos, game saves, possibly surveillance in the future. One user wouldn't saturate a gigabit line (well, I may: saving and loading large (100+GB project files) but I don't want one person's experience to be degraded by me opening up a project in another room, nor do I want to wait an extra 10-20% of load time because my wife is watching a video.
I also want to invest in future tech. I plan on running STP cable through the house, but I'm realistic enough to know that none of those cables will be put to good use in the next 5 years, but hey, they're there for when I need 'em.

My friend in enterprise networking told me that Windows Server 2012 supports NIC teaming out-of-the-box, so I may just grab a decent board with dual Intel NICs and team them. That means I can upgrade additional NICs in the future instead of grabbing a hugely expensive switch.

I may look into Fibre over SFP, or if SFP even has a Base-T connection adapter.

Latency for me isn't a huge issue: it takes more than 20 milliseconds for the monitor to display an image from the video card, more importantly it takes more than a millisecond for the button of a mouse to spring back from an activated position, so I don't think I'll notice the reduction in latency.
 
2- 2 port intel 1gb cards from ebay and bond all 4 either using smb3 on 2012 server or 803.11ad on a Hp 1820 switch.
That will give you 4 potential 1Gb streams.

fyi 2012 teaming only works with windows 8 and above clients all other clients will be at smb2.1 or lower and not use multiple nics. 803.11ad works with any client but not all switches and nics.
 
Last edited:
stormy1 said:
2- 2 port intel 1gb cards from ebay and bond all 4 either using smb3 on 2012 server or 803.11ad on a Hp 1820 switch.
That will give you 4 potential 1Gb streams.

fyi 2012 teaming only works with windows 8 and above clients all other clients will be at smb2.1 or lower and not use multiple nics. 803.11ad works with any client but not all switches and nics.
Click to expand...

Interesting indeed. So my question is, you said 'other' clients are limited to a 1Gbps stream, but does that mean if you have, say 4 NICs joined via .11ad, you can have 4 concurrent gigabit streams to 4 different clients? Or am I not getting it...
 
KazeoHin said:
Interesting indeed. So my question is, you said 'other' clients are limited to a 1Gbps stream, but does that mean if you have, say 4 NICs joined via .11ad, you can have 4 concurrent gigabit streams to 4 different clients? Or am I not getting it...
Click to expand...

Yup. You are putting 4Gbit into the switching backplane. Teaming acts just like the connection was a single port at that bonded speed.

From the clients connected to the 1Gb port's perspective, there would be no difference between 10x1Gb ports teamed and a single 10Gb SPF+ port.
 
KazeoHin said:
Interesting indeed. So my question is, you said 'other' clients are limited to a 1Gbps stream, but does that mean if you have, say 4 NICs joined via .11ad, you can have 4 concurrent gigabit streams to 4 different clients? Or am I not getting it...
Click to expand...
What I have found in limiting testing with the 2012 teaming is that non-win8 clients basically share a single gb nic where traffic to win8 clients is spread out over all the nics.
With .11ad the switch and the nic drivers work together to dynamically balance the load over the nics to any client.

2012 teaming works with different brand nics for example if it had 2 broadcom nics on the motherboard you could team them with 2 intel nics in a add on card.
.11ad on the other hand the nics have to be the same brand and with some of them the same model. I recommend Intel server nics for this.
They are not that expensive used on ebay.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top