Hey everyone, I'm wanting to set up a LAN with 10 gigabit ethernet in my home, mainly just because I can.
I'm aware of the basics; I'll need cat6a cables and 10GBaseT NICs, however I'm seeing a lot of people on the internet not reaching anywhere near these ideal speeds.
So basically my question to people that know more about this stuff is can you recommend some quality components that are guaranteed to perform well? Also, what kind of conditions are required to get maximum throughput? Everthing's going to be connected to a router running pfsense, and I can add new NICs to all the devices including the router.
Well you'll need 10gbe NICs and a 10gbe switch, none of those things are cheap. There's no point going 10gbe to your router unless your internet connection is faster than 1gbps. Of course if you want to get close to 100% throughput your disks also need to be able to keep up. 10 gigabits is about 1.2GB per second, so you'd need a pretty decent RAID setup on both ends.
Just go for 1Gbps not 10. For most home users even 1 is overkill, but its not very expensive so its nice to have. 10gbps is just goofy with a residential internet connection (unless you have google fiber lol) bear in mind you need switches and NICs in all devices that are compatible with this, plus a wifi AP that can reach high speeds (probably AC for best experience) so that seems simple but its gets real pricey real quick