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10Gb/s Ethernet: switching to a Broadcom SFP+ module

gilesthomas.com

101–110 of 174 posts

Re: 10Gb/s Ethernet: switching to a Broadcom SFP+ module

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fiber optic cable itself isn't that expensive. You can easily get it for less than $0.20/foot. It shouldn't be that much different in price to run fiber verse running cat6. The expensive part is the labor, not the cable.

I think I was more referring to the switches with sfp and the transceivers themselves. I have never tried to get something "low end".

At 10g, sfp+ switches are cheaper and more available than 10gbase-T switches. Fiber transceivers seem reasonable, but I could be off; I've only looked a little at fiber prices, I already have cat5 in the wall, so I'm on DAC for nearby stuff and twisted pair for other rooms for the forseable future. I don't really need 10G, but it provides a bit of fun.

Re: 10Gb/s Ethernet: switching to a Broadcom SFP+ module

#102

I feel like we have moved into the era now where if you were putting cabling in the walls for networking you should be choosing fibre now. Not necessarily because we are definitely at the stage where the home needs it, but because the off ramp is clearly happening for ethernet at 10gbit/s and its really high consumption and heat. Switching to fibre after 2.5gbit/s seems like the thing to do now and plenty of us now h…

Totally agree, I went to fiber years ago, and the decrease in latency makes it _feel_ so much faster than 10G copper, it is not funny. Besides, if you put in the "good stuff" them moving to 40G and beyond is not a problem later on. Like others said, just add a copper line for POE devices, but for systems... its fiber all the way.

That can't be right. The old network must've had a problem somewhere. I'm running 10G copper throughout the house and my latency is ~1ms from the office upstairs to the server in the basement (across three switches). Using moonlight to game for example and it is flawless.

Re: 10Gb/s Ethernet: switching to a Broadcom SFP+ module

#103

tangentially related but useful: A while back I vibed up a script that can bit bang i2c on an x520 to reprogram SFP modules without a dedicated flasher. Hopefully this helps save someone a few $$ if they need to reflash something. https://github.com/dcmc/x520-sfp-flash

That's pretty nifty. Another affordable option I found was this "SFP Buddy" [0] for $50, which at least at the time seemed like it was about 10x less expensive than other market options. No affiliation, just bricked an ONT-on-a-stick once and had to figure out a way to reset it without breaking the bank.

[0]: https://oopselectronics.com/product/SFPB

Re: 10Gb/s Ethernet: switching to a Broadcom SFP+ module

#104
post #28

I feel like we have moved into the era now where if you were putting cabling in the walls for networking you should be choosing fibre now. Not necessarily because we are definitely at the stage where the home needs it, but because the off ramp is clearly happening for ethernet at 10gbit/s and its really high consumption and heat. Switching to fibre after 2.5gbit/s seems like the thing to do now and plenty of us now h…

I would be grateful and happy to have gigabit Ethernet with cat 6A in every room instead of this single landline phone jack and/or coaxial cable. The most important thing is a good conduit in place when the house is built.

Depending on when your landline phone jacks were put in, you might be able to reterminate with rj45 and run something-baseT, although you'll need four pair to hit gigE or better. Works better if your house was wired with home runs to somewhere useful, but even daisy chained runs can go room to room with a switch per room.

Re: 10Gb/s Ethernet: switching to a Broadcom SFP+ module

#105

It's crazy to me to think that I was hoping to move my home network to 10GbE in the next few years, around 2006-2007... Twenty years after most home networking is still at the 2005 level of a 30€Netgear GS108

Wifi got insane upgrades over that time. Wifi 7 is usually faster than most ethernet setups now.

Re: 10Gb/s Ethernet: switching to a Broadcom SFP+ module

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel like we have moved into the era now where if you were putting cabling in the walls for networking you should be choosing fibre now. How many consumer devices have an ((Q)SFP(+)) optical cage? If you're in their pulling stuff anyway , sure, do some OS2, but for most people, for most devices, Cat 5e/6 is more useful, especially since you can do POE(+(+)) over it as well. 5e/6 gets you 10GbE to 55m, and 6A to 1…

Personally, if I was building a house, anywhere I want significant non wifi hardware would have a switch anyway.

In my house, I've got a switch at tvs with multiple devices.

One place with two desktops has a switch, although when I finish up some stuff, I'm going to reterminate the phone line that's there as rj45 so both desktops can get 2.5G to my 2.5G switch. Could be sfp+, but they're mini-itx.

The kitchen desktop has its own 2.5G port; the printer next to it is on wifi because I don't want to buy a 2.5g capable switch for them to share. Mini-itx again

My work desktop has 10g-baseT.

Fiber would work for all of that, I guess.

But then I have a tv with just one device on 100base-TX. And the access points don't have spf, and aren't near other equipment.

Re: 10Gb/s Ethernet: switching to a Broadcom SFP+ module

#107

I feel like we have moved into the era now where if you were putting cabling in the walls for networking you should be choosing fibre now. Not necessarily because we are definitely at the stage where the home needs it, but because the off ramp is clearly happening for ethernet at 10gbit/s and its really high consumption and heat. Switching to fibre after 2.5gbit/s seems like the thing to do now and plenty of us now h…

Totally agree, I went to fiber years ago, and the decrease in latency makes it _feel_ so much faster than 10G copper, it is not funny. Besides, if you put in the "good stuff" them moving to 40G and beyond is not a problem later on. Like others said, just add a copper line for POE devices, but for systems... its fiber all the way.

I wasn't aware there was a substantial latency difference between fiber and copper. Some googling suggests copper might be .4-.8c and fiber might be a more reliable .6c? But even if there was a huge difference in speed of light through the medium, inside a home aren't the distances so short that it wouldn't matter?

Re: 10Gb/s Ethernet: switching to a Broadcom SFP+ module

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go with single mode only for new installs. Biggest install cost is labour. The cable and optics are cheap now, and with the future (200Gbps+) being multiple wavelengths in parallel[1], we’ve pretty much hit the end of the road for MMF. [1] https://www.tiafotc.org/ieee-802-3-ethernet-standards-update...

> Biggest install cost is labour. Okay? If I had to run cabling through a wall, I'd make sure the guy sets it up so that I can use the cable he installs to pull new later. My time's free when I'm doing something that I don't mind doing, and I don't mind easy cable pulls. > ...(200Gbps+)... Don't you need 16x PCIe 4.0 for those guys? With everything other than workstation and server boards having exactly one 16x slot,…

You can get boards with pci-e 5.0 x8/x8, which might bottleneck your gpu enough to see on benchmarks, but wouldn't bottleneck your nic, if you have a pci-e 5 nic (which might actually be a 400Gbs nic, whoops)

Anyway, priorities. Nic in the cpu slot, gpu in the chipset slot :p

Re: 10Gb/s Ethernet: switching to a Broadcom SFP+ module

#109
To calibrate the discussion, you can get 10GB/s Wifi 7 these days spending less than $200 on a router. No need to drill a single hole in your house/apartment.

Ethernet is dead for home usage. I wish companies gave a damn, but no, for the past 25 years we are stuck at 1GB/s. Only recently some laptops and motherboards started shipping with 2.5GB/s ethernet options.

Re: 10Gb/s Ethernet: switching to a Broadcom SFP+ module

#110

To calibrate the discussion, you can get 10GB/s Wifi 7 these days spending less than $200 on a router. No need to drill a single hole in your house/apartment. Ethernet is dead for home usage. I wish companies gave a damn, but no, for the past 25 years we are stuck at 1GB/s. Only recently some laptops and motherboards started shipping with 2.5GB/s ethernet options.

> Ethernet is dead for home usage.

If you need internet for work related audio/video conferencing, and you share your screen, wired is the way to go. Over time you can tell which colleagues are on wireless and those that are wired in.

Perhaps you're making the case that wifi7 is as good or better than wired but I would argue that depends on your physical setup and possible interference issues.

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