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Comment by bhouston | Hacker News Reader

I have, but now I have cable running along the base boards. That isn't optimal. Also I have 10G networking, so the ethernet switches are hot and expensive.

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    > Also I have 10G networking, so the ethernet switches are hot and expensive.

I never understand why anyone needs anything faster than 1G (other than to flex for Internet points). Seriously, how often do you need to move data faster than 100MB/s? Almost never. FYI: A 2.5G switch should be fine. There are many fan-less options here: https://www.servethehome.com/the-ultimate-cheap-2-5gbe-switc...

DLT drives can saturate a 1Gbps link. Makes it hard to prevent shoe shining when backing up file servers.

If you have a NAS, for one. Fill it with SSDs and you can even saturate 10Gbps.

"I never understand why anyone needs anything faster than 1G".

i just upgraded my home network from 40g to 100g. g, not m. Anyone who does video knows the pain of 10g.

"Anyone" is of course a shorthand for "nearly everyone, but of course there are some exceptional people with exceptional needs".

I don't think your situation is common.

I was thinking about this and it is very expensive. And do I need 10G really? I do not think so. I did calculated few things when I was thinking about 10G and most probably I will not saturate 1G for few years. And with phones ans laptops mostly WiFi is used anyways.

So can I ask you what is the advantage for using 10G equipment in your case? Even something really dull like network card costs around 100€.

10G is awesome for (1) downloading steam games - many are +50GB these days, (2) downloading Ollama models, (3) downloading ISOs, (4) downloading app/OS updates and (5) I have a NAS also on the 10G network for media backups.

I have symmetric 3Gbps fibre to the home via Bell Canada and it reports 4.5Gbps via fast.com.

If I get this new job I'm definitely upgrading everything to 10G.

My PCIe5 SSD can do 14 GB/s, or about 112 gbit/sec.

Did some research. 10gbe cards are about $30, 100gbe qsfp28 cards are about $300, 100gbit 100m transciever about $100.

I’ve got Virgin cable and can pull 6Gb a minute from fast.com. Your hypothetical 50Gb steam game would take a whole 9 minutes assuming steam can saturate my connection. So that’s like enough time to hit start download , make a brew and come back to the pc. Why bother.

You don't need an expensive switch. Five port 2.5G + SFP+ with poe can be pretty affordable and shouldn't run very hot.

That downgrades transfer speeds though to just 2.5G.

Which is fine? It's getting capped to 3 at your modem anyways... And the difference here is reaching the "doesn't matter" phase.

Like - 50GB at 3gbps is ~130 seconds, ~160 seconds at 2.5gbps, and ~400 seconds at 1gbps

You're always waiting at least a couple minutes, and never more than 10 for that download.

Personally - I have a couple 10gbps switches that run my backbone in my house (NAS, k8s cluster, HomeAssistant, etc) and I have a 2gbps symmetric wan, but all of the offices (my wife and I both work from home, plus the media room, plus the kid's playroom) all just run 1gbps switches.

They're cheap, normal office work basically never saturates those speeds (even multiple conference calls with video is a-ok), and there's just not enough value in bumping up to 10gbps across the whole house compared to the equipment cost.

The 10gbps switches live in the basement and just connect those zones.

You are completely right that I can always just wait. I prefer not to though... there are a lot of times when it is amazing to have 10G between my main machines.

The devices attached to the 2.5G switch, will be limited to 2.5G per connected port. There won't be any slow down on any other connections. If you still want 10G in the basement, put in a 10G SFP+ switch (they can be had for $15-20 per port and use DACs to control the heat some). You'll only have one shared 10Gbps to the rest of the house, but that is really unlikely to be saturated.

XikeStor SKS8300-8X costs about 100$, can do L3 routing, has 8 10G SFP+ ports, no fan and consumes ~9W. I'm running it in my homelab without any issues.

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