I’m trying to get a fast connection between my workstation and a local NAS box. Both have been upgraded with an Asus 10Gbit card. Both also still have onboard 1Gbit NICs.
So is it better to get a switch like the Netgear GS110EMX, which has 8 Gbit, and 2 10Gbit ports, or do I keep using my 1Gbit switches and lay a dedicated RJ45 Cat 6 between the workstation and the NAS, and create a static route?
I’m confused because why would you only have 2 10GBit ports? You should at least have 3 so you could daisy chain switches.
I also considered getting a larger 8 port 10Gbit switch, and while they do cost a lot more, I could handle the 400 EUR price tag, but not the exorbitant size (considering the size of the board inside) and noise level. Seems they still can’t make desktop 10Gbit switches yet.
Anyway, what are the pro’s and con’s of the cheap switch vs static route? Thanks for any wisdom shared.
Id say simplest is to hook currnt eth cable (cat5e or better) to the 10gbits between devices
Hook 1gbit workstation to isp
Setup internet connection sharing for 1gbit with ports needed by nas and additional router/pc/nas to be run off nas box 1gbit(gets ics to its 10gbit with ports needed by the new hop in network chains devices)
If windows workstation goto adapters page and right click sharing
Advanced sharing properties button opens ports editor(prefilled with tft ftp etc simple choices)
I added xbox ports and dish sat box before on laptop wlan to ethernet on said devices
10 min setup as port needs were few(tcp/udp)
2 port 10Gbps is designed for uplink.
You should be cautious for mix rate on single lan using low end device, it may reduce your single connection speed to the speed of slowest port depend on switch. It happens when 1Gbps first came out, and still happens on low end 1Gbps switches today.
I will suggest test it or find some proper review first.
Thanks for the input sofar. Seems the direct link gets your vote sofar.
Being bored, I looked into reviews of the Netgear XS508M 8-Port 10-Gigabit switch (unmanaged). Some folks have quieted it down replacing the fans, but a single review at Newegg caught my attention: apparently, these don’t even switch when you activate jumbo frames. So the cheap 10GBit switches really are no good either (I can only think of one alternative, the Buffalo, and I have poor experiences with that brand).
Since these lower end switches were released over 2 years ago, I’m depressed nothing better and smaller has hit the market since.
Guess I’ll go dig in my boxes of cables looking for a cat6 long enough…
I’d do a peer to peer connection between the boxes unless you’re going to need to expand this to other boxes in the near future. 10g RJ45 switches that aren’t approaching 4 digits aren’t common yet. There are SFP+ switches that aren’t too horrendous but the cheapest one i know of is by Mikrotek, and anything with a decent OS is still going to be expensive.
Thanks. I am going to expand this, somewhere next year though, so it depends on how you’d define ‘near future’ I doubt prices will change or new switches will come out by that time, but I’m still going to wait. If anything it gives them time to fix stupid bugs like the one from Netgear.
A direct connection using a piece of cat5e/cat6/cat6a (depending on distance) would usually be cheaper than a switch with a pair of 10G ports. (~$140 for a pair of sfp+ on a CSS326 ?)
Having a switch with 10G ports would be simpler than having a triangle between nas, desktop, and switch. (Dedicated line forming one of the edges working at 10G).
If you go with a direct line/cheaper option, you don’t necessarily need static routes or NAT. You’ll need to make sure you’re accessing the NAS from the desktop on the IP that NAS has on its 10G port.
Some protocols like SMB (samba/cifs?) can automatically figure out what the best set of interfaces and IPs is (SMB multichannel), but different devices might be running SMB such that they’re not configured to do this, or might be running old versions of samba that don’t support this. Most protocols require knowing the single canonical IP of the other host/peer to be able to operate.
You could also bridge your 10G link with your 1G link, either on your NAS, or on your desktop, or both assuming you have some kind of filtering (either via spanning tree support, or using a firewall), but how the hosts deal with two interfaces in the same subnet and loops, is usually anyone’s guess…it might even bring your network down until you unplug and restart a bunch of things.
Dedicated link between NAS and workstation for 10G, separate gigabit for internet. That way you’re not spending a ton of money on a 10G switch you don’t need yet. Wait, they’ll get cheaper with time.
I doubt prices will change or new switches will come out by that time, but I’m still going to wait. If anything it gives them time to fix stupid bugs like the one from Netgear.