this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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I wouldn't want to calculate what it'd cost to replace all my switches with 25G capable ones.. then all the network cards.. You'd have to have a really specific application to justify it.
Just cost me 1K to replace 3 NICs, 1 router, and 2 switches to freaking 2.5Gb.
I got one of the 2.5 x 8 + 10 switches StH reviewed for like $80, and x520 nics are $20. I'm happy with it for homelab stuff!
Nice! I bought some used 10g UniFi stuff (dream machine and switch) for $500 and a pair of 10g NICs and a SFP+ cable for $80 on eBay. All in CAD. Already had some UniFi WAPs.
Homelabbing has been such a fun hobby, if a little expensive at times.
10Gbps used enterprise equipment is pretty cheap on eBay. Biggest problem I've had is getting compatible SFP+ adapters for the NICs.
Flexoptix reprogrammable tranceivers are a godsend for that. We use them almost exclusively at work and so do quite a few of ours customers (Universities and other places of higher education). But it's probably hard to justify the cost of a reprogrammer box for a household. You can buy their transceivers pre-programmed though.
FScom has something similar, but I can't vouch for those, never tried. Their patch cables are fine though.
You won't but I will
Switch: mikrotik CRS504-4XQ-IN ($799.99) Cabling: QSFP28 to 4 x 25G SFP28 DAC ($63.00 per cable) NICs: Intel XXV710 25GB ($349.0)
I don't know how many machines you have so for two machine it's cost you $1562.97 and maxing out the switch would cost you $6651.83 but do you really have sixteen machines that need or can even physically saturate a 25GB line?
I think it's more reasonable to get something similar to ubiquiti's USW-Pro-Aggregation and have three machines capable of the full speed and 28 machines capable of half rate speeds (at a much lower cost per machine)
What about a router?
Both switches mentioned are L3 switches meaning they are a routers too.
I have no idea how well a L3 switch would work on a residential WAN connection. But don't L3 switches lack features like NAT, DHCP, DNS, Firewall, port forwarding, etc?
DHCP and DNS (and Firewall, but I guess you don't have a 25 Gbit/s FW) are of course easily moved elsewhere, but what about the others?
Well this is getting into the weeds a bit but TLDR it depends on the L3 switch.
For the mikrotik switch I mentioned, it runs the same RouterOS v7 as their actual routers. Anything you can do on a single purpose router you can do on the switch albeit at a slower speed for applications as the CPU in the switch isn't as good.
For the ubiquiti switch... I'm not actually sure as ubiquiti's L3 implementation is not exactly ideal (bordering on broken depending on who you ask)
Thanks!
I have only played around with L3 switches in packet tracer and iirc they missed a bunch of router features, not sure though.
Either way, packet tracer uses pretty old IOS versions and Cisco is pretty annoying so it wouldn't surprise me if they locked it down on purpose.
That's the early adopter tax. Same as it ever was.
Buy a media converter and do 25G -> 40G and run a 40GbE home net. Retired 40Gb gear is ludicrously cheap.
Edit. Or just stick a two port 100GbE card in your router, use an adapter to step one port down to 25Gb and run 40Gb off the other to the rest of the network.