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10Gb/s Ethernet: what I did to get it working in my home

gilesthomas.com

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Re: 10Gb/s Ethernet: what I did to get it working in my home

#41
The only thing I'd caution anyone else looking to do the same is doing a software router/fw like the Portectli is it's usually not hard to get the raw bandwidth to look nice with big flows but the new connection latency, connections per second, jitter, and QoS handling tend to suffer vs something with hw offloads (which is what most are used to even with cheapo gigabit home AP+router+switch combos). It's also not usually the cheapest way to get the 10G class NAT/L4 FW bandwidth, but it is usually the cheapest way to get "full" FW functionality if you don't care as much about the performance.

If you want a full FW solution that can actually FW+NAT at 10G bidirectional without breaking a sweat then something like the FortiGate 90G is the cheapest thing I've found that performs really well across the board. Great QoS, great latency, amazing throughput performance (does well with even small packet sizes in a single stream), easy enough to use UI (once you get oriented), low power. If you want to enable all of the NGFW stuff (e.g. AV and IPS) then it'll dip below line rate though.

If you just want something that NATs/connection direction oriented filtering like a "normal" home router then something like the MikroTik CCR2004 can get you better than the performance they got on the VP2440 + give you 12 ports of 10G SFP+ to work with. If you were planning to do "fancy" FWing/functionality beyond a normal home NAT FW (with decent managed switching built in) then the feature set will be a bit limiting, of course.

Re: 10Gb/s Ethernet: what I did to get it working in my home

#42

I'm extremely happy after upgrading my network to 10gbit copper ethernet. It was much more expensive than I thought it should be, but worth it even if I only max it occasionally. Now I can easily fully saturate my 10gbit ethernet doing a first Time Machine backup or transferring files to my M.2 SSD NAS which saves me waiting rime and is satisfying to watch. It's wild to me that 10gbit isn't the norm by now and tech p…

Heh it's honestly wild to me anyone needs over a gig. My work has a one gig fiber line supporting hundreds of employees and usage generally remains below 10%. The high expense of 10gig is, in part, because it isn't widely necessary and the people buying it are willing to pay extra.

I put 5Gbit internet into my home (fiber) to build my startup. I'm processing terabytes of data. I have over 100TB of storage in my basement. I can regularly saturate my internet connection. That said, I remember well when a 1Gbit connection provided enough bandwidth for a 500-person call center for daily workloads (back about 10 years ago).

Re: 10Gb/s Ethernet: what I did to get it working in my home

#43

I'm extremely happy after upgrading my network to 10gbit copper ethernet. It was much more expensive than I thought it should be, but worth it even if I only max it occasionally. Now I can easily fully saturate my 10gbit ethernet doing a first Time Machine backup or transferring files to my M.2 SSD NAS which saves me waiting rime and is satisfying to watch. It's wild to me that 10gbit isn't the norm by now and tech p…

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Re: 10Gb/s Ethernet: what I did to get it working in my home

#44
post #35
post #26

Unfortunately the blog didn't link to the SFP+ module they're using, but everyone should know there's effectively 2 different generations of 10gbit sfp+ to ethernet^H10BASE-T modules. The old gen, labeled as 30 meters, draws ~3 W, and gets extremely hot (to the point it'll usually cause link flaps), and the newer gen, usually labeled as 100m or 80m, draws ~1.5 W, and runs much, much cooler. Example of the new gen: ht…

Thanks! 10Gb Eth is insane for exactly this reason (optical SFP+ modules are way cheaper and more reliable)

Minor nitpick but they are both considered Ethernet. The 4 pair copper one is 10GBASE-T.

Re: 10Gb/s Ethernet: what I did to get it working in my home

#45
post #35
post #26

Unfortunately the blog didn't link to the SFP+ module they're using, but everyone should know there's effectively 2 different generations of 10gbit sfp+ to ethernet^H10BASE-T modules. The old gen, labeled as 30 meters, draws ~3 W, and gets extremely hot (to the point it'll usually cause link flaps), and the newer gen, usually labeled as 100m or 80m, draws ~1.5 W, and runs much, much cooler. Example of the new gen: ht…

Thanks! 10Gb Eth is insane for exactly this reason (optical SFP+ modules are way cheaper and more reliable)

I don't agree that it is insane. It is less efficient than ideal, but 10gbit over copper is not necessarily dangerously hot or difficult to power.

I have a MikroTik CRS304-4XG-IN on my office desk with three out of four ports at 10gbit and it is perhaps 20 degrees above ambient on the outside. Warm but not hot. Passively cooled design.

A normal Windows laptop runs hotter than that when idle.

Re: 10Gb/s Ethernet: what I did to get it working in my home

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh it's honestly wild to me anyone needs over a gig. My work has a one gig fiber line supporting hundreds of employees and usage generally remains below 10%. The high expense of 10gig is, in part, because it isn't widely necessary and the people buying it are willing to pay extra.

I put 5Gbit internet into my home (fiber) to build my startup. I'm processing terabytes of data. I have over 100TB of storage in my basement. I can regularly saturate my internet connection. That said, I remember well when a 1Gbit connection provided enough bandwidth for a 500-person call center for daily workloads (back about 10 years ago).

That puts you in an extreme minority, even amongst enterprise businesses. Many medium sized enterprises have storage that looks like "a couple dozen TB total" for hundreds of staff.

Having 100 TB of storage in your home basement is an even more extreme minority than that. ;)

A gigabit connection is more than enough for a 500-person call center today.

Re: 10Gb/s Ethernet: what I did to get it working in my home

#47

I'm extremely happy after upgrading my network to 10gbit copper ethernet. It was much more expensive than I thought it should be, but worth it even if I only max it occasionally. Now I can easily fully saturate my 10gbit ethernet doing a first Time Machine backup or transferring files to my M.2 SSD NAS which saves me waiting rime and is satisfying to watch. It's wild to me that 10gbit isn't the norm by now and tech p…

It's wild to me Time Machine works on your network. Are you just doing "first backups" over and over again, or have you somehow achieved the very rare state where Time Machine can run for, say, a week at a time without falling over? Sorry, this is snarky and off topic, but I'm nostalgic for the days when Time Machine "just worked".

Time Machine to a network share via Samba has been pretty reliable for me - only once has it corrupted itself in the five+ years I’ve been using it.

Amusingly enough Time Machine to a local drive failed completely.

Re: 10Gb/s Ethernet: what I did to get it working in my home

#48
post #5

I might have been lucky, but in the one home and one office were I've connected 10gbit switches and PCIe cards, it has just worked. Especially the office was a nice surprise, because it is at least 20 meters (probably more) of unknown cabling and at least one unknown patch panel between the utility closet where the NAS lives and the desk area. The cables were run 15 years ago, so I expected it to be cat 5, but clearl…

Same. I ran CAT6 from one end of our house to the other, because my home office is in the opposite corner as the fiber coming in to the router. After running that, and manually crimping everything, it Just Worked from the first time I turned everything on. That felt pretty good.

Re: 10Gb/s Ethernet: what I did to get it working in my home

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I put 5Gbit internet into my home (fiber) to build my startup. I'm processing terabytes of data. I have over 100TB of storage in my basement. I can regularly saturate my internet connection. That said, I remember well when a 1Gbit connection provided enough bandwidth for a 500-person call center for daily workloads (back about 10 years ago).

That puts you in an extreme minority, even amongst enterprise businesses. Many medium sized enterprises have storage that looks like "a couple dozen TB total" for hundreds of staff. Having 100 TB of storage in your home basement is an even more extreme minority than that. ;) A gigabit connection is more than enough for a 500-person call center today .

Much works on 10/100 if you wanna know the truth about it - but it is really nice to hit full speeds when copying terabytes around.

Re: 10Gb/s Ethernet: what I did to get it working in my home

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I put 5Gbit internet into my home (fiber) to build my startup. I'm processing terabytes of data. I have over 100TB of storage in my basement. I can regularly saturate my internet connection. That said, I remember well when a 1Gbit connection provided enough bandwidth for a 500-person call center for daily workloads (back about 10 years ago).

That puts you in an extreme minority, even amongst enterprise businesses. Many medium sized enterprises have storage that looks like "a couple dozen TB total" for hundreds of staff. Having 100 TB of storage in your home basement is an even more extreme minority than that. ;) A gigabit connection is more than enough for a 500-person call center today .

If that 500-person call center is a BPO, they'd have trouble with today's data-heavy workloads. I do agree, though. I'm in an extreme minority when it comes to this much bandwidth in my home.
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