I am formulating my plan to upgrade my network to 10gbit. I have my opnsense lan being used by a ASUS 10gbit nic. I have ordered three others to experiment with. I have 7 desktops that I want to put a new nic in. I am planning on getting a switch last. Mainly want to look for the best deal on the switch.
It seems like my plan will either be using a sfp switch with adapters for rj45 or just get a rj45 main switch. What are your suggestions for my lab? I really want to get my proxmox and truenas builds up and running first with 10gbit. Then go onto my other non server systems.
Anyone have suggestion of how best to get this done? What switch should I be looking for in terms of deals.
For Mikrotik it might be since they’re a European company. It’s been a while since I was in the market, so I’m not sure what the availability of their stuff is right now.
I’ve also camped on a product listing at amazon before, and then pounced when something showed up used there, but that may actually be more risky than ebay these days.
I would think most people buying 10g switches are buying managed switches. If you want anything other than a cookie cutter totally flat network, then that’s what you’re going to need.
is it safe to daisy chain switches? i know it is safe. how much of a performance penalty is it?
I am thinking about getting a 8 ports 10g base t and have a second 4 or 5 port 10g base t. That would cover all my devices and allow for wifi access points. That is the benefit of asus wifi, ai mesh use a back haul 5ghz band for mesh and have another 5ghz for connected devices.
When unmodded, you can hear it from another room with doors closed loud…
Also, the noise is not steady, it keeps ramping up and down the fans and it is very annoying …
STH lists it at 41.8 dba, which isn’t something you’d want to have right next to you on your desk all day long, but shouldn’t be a problem when tucked away somewhere out of sight.
The mod is also pretty easy. Just grab a few 40mm fans and swap them out.
I know, I even bought the fans, then sold the switch and bought an used brocade with less rj45s (that I didn’t need) and more SFPs (8) and 24 poe ports for the same price (used) and while the brocade is noisier the fans do not ramp up and it is actually less unpleasant in the location I use it as opposed to a constant ramp up/down …
noise is highly subjective, so to me it was noticeable in another room at that distance but there’s options for silencing it (by spending more money)
For my use case it was just not worth the effort (to me)
I’d suggest if you go for it to buy it from a place you can send it back if it turns out to be too noisy
So I went from The mikrotik (30W with 8 cables connected, 4 of which SFP) plus a cisco SG-200-26 (12W) plus a passive POE injector (0w, other than the conversion loss of the power supply and the inefficiency of said power supply)
to a Brocade ICX 7250-24P that uses ~ 75w for the same loads and includes POE for two Mikrotiks leaf switches (5W each) and three Ubiquity APs (5W each)
An almost even exchange for my setup, but again it heavily depends, the 7250 uses 45W at idle, it just is more efficient because I am using one PSU instead of three/four … and less RJ45s and more SFPs…