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

gilesthomas.com

131–140 of 180 posts

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

#131

> The most important question was the structured cabling in the walls; was it CAT-5E or CAT-6, or even CAT-6A? Remember from the last post, 10GBASE-T might work over short runs of -5E (even though officially it's not meant to be able to). This is not quite correct. The primary problem is cross-talk. Copper wire itself will carry the relevant frequencies up to 100m without issue but even with balanced pairs the balanc…

> Cat-6A guarantees less cross-talk with more twists, better balancing, and a plastic separator inside the cable to make the cross-talk more regular and thus easier to cancel out.

This isn't quite right. Cat6A guarantees the frequency and therefore effective bandwidth that is available. But it doesn't talk about physical cable type. A common structured cable for Cat6A is U/FTP which has no plastic separator, no outer shield, but rather each pair is wrapped in foil and is actually less tightly twisted than even Cat5e. Anyone can buy U/FTP cable, but to actually be Cat6A it has to be installed correctly and the installation certified to support Cat6A speeds.

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

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had this issue with old gen Unifi SFP+ to RJ45 10Gbe, 3 failed. Needed gloves to remove them. Bought newer gen and they are warm but i dont need gloves.

Same, just had two fail, in a qnap 100gb switch with a reasonable level of cooling… Meanwhile the 100g optics are actually doing just fine!

The difference between fiber module and RJ45 is massive. I found it funny that Ubiquity own switches (at least my Enterprise 8 PoE - the one they call "vintage" - I kid you not) will set the fan default to 35 (whatever that value means) if you use SFP+ RJ45 module (regardless of temps), and have fans at 0 without the module, when the switch is below 75 celsius.

Ironically, one of my switches with the RJ45 module runs cooler than the one without because Ubiquity does not let you do any fan control on Unifi Enterprise 8 PoE.

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

#133
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…

I had this issue with old gen Unifi SFP+ to RJ45 10Gbe, 3 failed. Needed gloves to remove them. Bought newer gen and they are warm but i dont need gloves.

They can be a pig to remove from the switch too. My god.

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

#134

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".

> I'm nostalgic for the days when Time Machine "just worked".

I’ve used it for a long long time and never knew these glory days.

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

#135
post #88
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main issue is that it is ancient . The cost, power, and length issues meant that it wasn't exactly well-received by the datacenter market back in 2006(!) when it was first released: DAC was the far more attractive option for a link from server to top-of-rack, and fiber was obviously superior (if not plain required ) for anything beyond a hop to the next aisle over. This left an incredibly tiny market, so obviousl…

Right, but for example my fiber ONT only has an rj45 port so I'm stuck using one of these for the link to my UDM Pro. The router and my core switch use cheap DACs.

Have you looked into using an unofficial ONT instead of the one supplied by your ISP? See: https://pon.wiki/guides/install-the-8311-community-firmware-...

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

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

For a very long time I thought Time Machine had become flaky, and I'm sure it's partially to blame, but with my current setup I've literally never observed it corrupt a backup and have to start over. Before I was using one of the common Synology consumer NAS boxes that are often recommended. The NAS didn't report any errors with the drives or its own hardware, but at least once a month TM would glitch on at least one…

Backup failed.

Again. I’m on a Synology, and your comment is interesting.

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

#137
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's wild to me that 10gbit isn't the norm by now 10G was too big of a step up from 1G. The expense and power required made it unattractive. Only recently have the interfaces for 10G over twisted pair become reasonably low power. 2.5G and even 5G are in a much better spot. It's where I recommend most people start as a default.

Yeah, 10GbE-over-copper switches are SO expensive. I bought a Ubiquiti enterprise switch for my home; 10Gb uplink and the copper ports are split between 2.5G and 1G. It's fine because only 1 or 2 clients can even talk 10G, and those are all across the house on Cat5 links anyway so they only negotiate to 2.5 even on a 10G port. As much as I wanted to "future proof" by having a 24 port 10GbE switch... why? I'll just wa…

The new USM Beast looks interesting.

https://techspecs.ui.com/unifi/cloud-gateways/udm-beast?subc...

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

#138

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.

It doesn’t have to be expensive.

You can hook up a few key components cheaply and 10gb pci cards are something like $20.

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

#139

It's interesting how slow the uptake has been. 10GbE is from 2002, 24 years old. It's much worse than IPv6, at least we're up to 50% uptake there. 100 GbE is 15 years old too depending on which standard you think of. (The most common physical layer, SR4, is 11 yrs old) Gigabit ethernet came much faster after 100 M.

I can install 1Gbps using copper cables + RJ45 and household tools. I can't install 10Gbps using a $10 crimper.

Therefore, I have 1Gbps all through my house and 10Gbps between equipment next to the access point.

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

#140

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…

Getting Time Machine to work reliably over a network is painful, even the old Apple-made Airport with built in TM stopped working twice a year.

However, I have multiple Macs where I simply have a USB-C laptop SSD attached for Time Machine and they have worked without issue for years. These laptop SSDs come in huge sizes nowadays, and you don't need an especially performant one, so they can be pretty cheap.

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