Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Add 10 GbE to your system with an M.2 2280 module

cnx-software.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 259 posts

Re: Add 10 GbE to your system with an M.2 2280 module

#21

Post by adwn »

doublepg23 wrote: post #12
martinald wrote: post #9

It's interesting to see just how slow faster ethernet standards have been. Feels like I've had gigabit ethernet at a pretty low cost for nearly 20 years now, but faster than that has been pretty esoteric outside of the datacentre. I guess there really isn't much demand for faster than gigabit speeds even now (outside of servers?)

Maybe once gigabit internet service becomes more widely available, but even for something like a consumer NAS you’re probably bottlenecked by something else no?

My hunch is that for most consumers, there's just no point in getting anything above 1 GbE today, even for their central switch. 1 Gbit/s is more than enough for 5x 4K video streams from their NAS, plus a very fast Internet connection at burst speed. What more do most people need on a regular basis?

Re: Add 10 GbE to your system with an M.2 2280 module

#22

Post by vladvasiliu »

vardump wrote: post #17
martinald wrote: post #9

It's interesting to see just how slow faster ethernet standards have been. Feels like I've had gigabit ethernet at a pretty low cost for nearly 20 years now, but faster than that has been pretty esoteric outside of the datacentre. I guess there really isn't much demand for faster than gigabit speeds even now (outside of servers?)

Getting stuck to 1 Gbps is somewhat crazy, as even the slowest laptop and PC M.2 SSDs can do 10-20 Gbps easy. Fastest ones 50 Gbps+. But I guess most people don't transfer files in their local networks anymore and use their network purely for internet access.

> But I guess most people don't transfer files in their local networks anymore and use their network purely for internet access.

I think this is clearly the case. Most new laptops don't even bother with a wired network port. I've got a new "pro" HP laptop the other day, and it only comes with some cheap Wi-Fi card. And it's not an "entry-level" laptop, and it's thick enough for an RJ-45 plug to physically fit.

I also see more and more desktop motherboards come with integrated Wi-Fi. The desktops at Work (HP) also have had integrated Wi-Fi for a while, and it's not something we look for (they all use wired Ethernet).

Re: Add 10 GbE to your system with an M.2 2280 module

#23

Post by vladvasiliu »

glogla wrote: post #14
doublepg23 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe once gigabit internet service becomes more widely available, but even for something like a consumer NAS you’re probably bottlenecked by something else no?

NAS with SSD can go way faster than the ~ 120 MB/s 1GbE can offer. For NAS with HDD, the benefit is not as big but still there. Also, the main competition is WiFi which is significantly slower than 1GbE in most cases.

Well, seeing how large SSDs are still very expensive (in my mind it's €100 / TB), my hunch would be that if it makes sense for you to spend that much money on the drives, you probably won't really notice the price of a couple of 10 Gb network cards. They seem quite cheap on eBay if you're OK with used.

Re: Add 10 GbE to your system with an M.2 2280 module

#24

Post by martijnvds »

walterbell wrote: post #13
loosescrews wrote: post #5

I have had a lot of trouble with the Marvell AQtion controllers under Linux. They are supposed to work and are plug and play on modern kernels, but I was never able to resolve a bug where the controller stopped working after a few hours. The only resolution I found was rebooting, which made the controller not very useful. The Intel 10GbE controllers are more expensive, but much better in my experience. For anyone loo…

Thanks for the pointer, those are difficult to find via search.

ADT-Link[0] makes a lot of them, with the cable coming out left, right or "front" of the M.2 card, and with the PCIe slots in all kinds of orientations.

[0] http://www.adt.link/

Re: Add 10 GbE to your system with an M.2 2280 module

#25

Post by vladvasiliu »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #15
martijnvds wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of consumer motherboards don't have a lot of PCIe slots wider than x1 (which is not enough for 10GigE), but they often have multiple NVMe capable M.2 slots, that this card would work with. In my home server for instance, which is built on a consumer μATX board, the wider PCIe slots are filled with a GPU and HBA, which leaves no way to add 10GigE without spending a lot of money on a new motherboard and CPU - or f…

> Lots of consumer motherboards don't have a lot of PCIe slots wider than x1 (which is not enough for 10GigE) Isn't it enough given PCIe 4.0?

As others have said, the card also has to be PCIe 4.0. On the used market, I mostly see PCIe 2.0, which means they need quite a lot of lanes.

There's also the fact that people usually use "older" components to build home servers, and if I'm not mistaken, PCIe 4.0 is only supported in fairly recent CPUs, and with not that many lanes; whereas my desktop from circa 2012 comes with something like 40 PCIe 3.0 lanes.

Re: Add 10 GbE to your system with an M.2 2280 module

#26

Post by shrx »

> Applications that may make use of the module include machine vision in industrial applications, high throughput network data transmission, high-resolution imaging for surveillance, and casino gaming machines.

Does anyone know why is this useful in casino gaming machines?

Re: Add 10 GbE to your system with an M.2 2280 module

#27

Post by fulafel »

martinald wrote: post #9

It's interesting to see just how slow faster ethernet standards have been. Feels like I've had gigabit ethernet at a pretty low cost for nearly 20 years now, but faster than that has been pretty esoteric outside of the datacentre. I guess there really isn't much demand for faster than gigabit speeds even now (outside of servers?)

People have been using faster ethernet in workstations for a long time, in data intensive jobs. But indeed the commodization has been going much slower than previous gens. My pet theory is that it goes back to the stall in internet connecitivity speeds, which in turn is caused by people jumping en masse to slow and flaky wifi and cellular connectivity. This then causes popular apps to adapt aggressively to low bandwidth and keeps apps requiring high bandwidth out of the mainstream.

Re: Add 10 GbE to your system with an M.2 2280 module

#28

Post by fulafel »

glogla wrote: post #14
doublepg23 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe once gigabit internet service becomes more widely available, but even for something like a consumer NAS you’re probably bottlenecked by something else no?

NAS with SSD can go way faster than the ~ 120 MB/s 1GbE can offer. For NAS with HDD, the benefit is not as big but still there. Also, the main competition is WiFi which is significantly slower than 1GbE in most cases.

Spinning HDDs are faster than this as well, 250-300 MB/s sequential read seems common per drive, and in a home setup you might have a couple of those in a RAID-1 giving 500-600 MB/s read BW.

Re: Add 10 GbE to your system with an M.2 2280 module

#29

Post by pkulak »

adwn wrote: post #21
doublepg23 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe once gigabit internet service becomes more widely available, but even for something like a consumer NAS you’re probably bottlenecked by something else no?

My hunch is that for most consumers, there's just no point in getting anything above 1 GbE today, even for their central switch. 1 Gbit/s is more than enough for 5x 4K video streams from their NAS, plus a very fast Internet connection at burst speed. What more do most people need on a regular basis?

Working with files on a network share? Though, I do all my photo editing that way and it feels local over 1gbe. I could see video editing benefiting from it. Pretty niche though.

Re: Add 10 GbE to your system with an M.2 2280 module

#30

Post by eatbitseveryday »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #20
martinald wrote: post #9

It's interesting to see just how slow faster ethernet standards have been. Feels like I've had gigabit ethernet at a pretty low cost for nearly 20 years now, but faster than that has been pretty esoteric outside of the datacentre. I guess there really isn't much demand for faster than gigabit speeds even now (outside of servers?)

It's kind of chicken and egg. It's not worth buying a 10G switch when all or nearly all of your devices are gigabit and it's not worth buying 10G cards for any device when you have a gigabit switch. What you need for the transition is for premium brands to start pushing 10G ports as a feature, e.g. Apple needs to add it to Macbooks and the Mini and start using it to bludgeon competitors who don't have it. Then once t…

> for premium brands to start pushing 10G ports as a feature, e.g. Apple needs to add it to Macbooks and the Mini

https://www.apple.com/mac-mini/specs/

> Gigabit Ethernet port (configurable to 10Gb Ethernet)

Post reply on HN