Hello All,
I had been waiting and waiting for the unifi switches to come back into stock here in Australia and its literally been a show stopper. I have been waiting since late last year.
I am toying now with the idea of jumping up to 2.5G gear as an easy replacement.
I can get the add in cards easy and cheaply (intel based)
I was wondering if anyone has any reasonable hopefully 24 port 2.5G managed switch suggestions that I could look at to throw into my network setup.
I would rather have a decently sized switch if i can just have to save running 3 switches (i already have 1 for my POE cameras)
I dont mind if it is likely second hand gear as my current switch is second hand.
Thanks all
perfect enthusiast home switch? 4+ 10g ports, 8+ 1/2.5g poe ports, 8+ 1/2.5g/5g ports.
The 12 port 10/5/2.5/1 poe switches are like $2k which is lol no country. Engenius has an msrp $800 8+4 port that’s tbh the best deal out there (10gb all ports, 4x 1/10, 8x 1/2.5/5/10 w or w/o whole-switch poe).
Mikrotik has a few that come close.
Ubiquti dream machine is close ish but ehhhhhhhhhhhhh
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Thanks @wendell.
What is the happy middle ground? can i find an 8 port or something and then just end up running a combination of 24 port x 1G switch, 8 x port poe 1G switch and whatever i can grab at 2.5G??
yeah thats where I have been landing myself. Theres some great deals in 24x1g w/2-4 10g uplink.
Something like that in a 2.5g flavor would also be acceptable, but the pricing is all out of whack. ~$200 regularly comes up in my bot searches for 24x1g + 2x10g used/refurb
the 2.5g version of that is like $1200 lolnope
Dammit… well sounding like there goes that Idea on 2.5G…
Do you have any suggestions for a decent 24 port 1G managed switch (as i was waiting for the 24port unifi one) and I can just bond them to get the higher speeds im after for particular device)
ebay. Suuuuper cheap on ebay. Crazy cheap. I just picked up a 48 port 25g + 6x 100g switch running ONIE (open source) for $1500.
I’d rather add 25g nics to my setup than get ripped off. Or like $200 for what you’re wanting on the used market
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Bonding will only increase the speed for quite particular protocols and workloads.
It works well if you have lots of clients (and so for servers), but between one device and another odds are you will see no improvement.
Much more reliable option is to get some cheap SFP+ 10gb gear and direct attach cables - if you must use Cat5/6 you can potentially use RJ45 SFP+ modules where required.
Do you have any connection in particular that you need to be faster? If so, bumping that one connection to 10Gbit while leaving the rest at gigabit could be cheaper/less work.
Recently got to play with Meraki stuff, price is insane though.
Meraki MS350-24X
Maybe you can find a used FS S5850-24XMG somewhere?
Way cheaper would be something like the Mikrotik CRS312-4C+8XG-RM
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I’ve been looking at upgrading to 2.5G switch too. Everything is overpriced.
My home network is unifi and I am testing out a unifi enterprise PoE 8 port switch but I think it’s going back to amazon cuz I don’t think its worth the $500 I paid for it.
I did consider pulling the trigger on this 2xSFP+ 8x2.5g switch by TP link: https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-TL-SG3210XHP-M2-Multi-Gigabit-Integrated-Protection/dp/B092VFS6K3
Until I read the reviews about hardware being unreliable and dying often and how loud that thing is - the only solution is to drop $20 extra to replace the stock fans with Noctua but when you do this that $350 purchase becomes closer to $400… then I have a Omada device on my unifi network.
If you are Unifi - I think a hidden gem is the Switch Aggregation – Ubiquiti Inc. for $269 for 10 SFP+ ports. This switch accepts up to 4 RJ45 transceivers for multigigabit (warning increases power draw).
There are honestly nothing 2.5GB switches that are affordable - jumping to 10GB for $270 + (maybe $30 on ebay on 2-3 used RJ45 transceivers) and getting my NAS proxmox devices on $20 dual sfp+ NICs is the path I am likely to take.
Also a good candidate I was looking at that’s a hidden gem is the QSW-M2116P-2T2S
16 x 2.5gb ports
2 x 10GbE ports
2 x SFP+ 10g
PoE
$800 MSRP - you may get lucky on a used one in ebay if you are lucky to find unicorns.
Note that’s 20 total usable ports. So $40 a pop per port.
The $269 unifi 8 port cost $33.63 per port + cost of sfp modules and I get unifi integration with my existing network.
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SFP+ comes with its fair share of paint points. The switch will have to support the DAC. At least for me when I got my brocade finding cables that would work between my brocade and cisco switch was next to impossible.
I was looking on ebay and all the L3 10g + switches have skyrocketed in price. Was eyeing a QSFP Arista for a skylake server build. I am assuming SMBs are tired of paying Cisco prices plus the smartnet maintenance.
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Some vendors have been taking over a year to deliver new equipment you’ve paid for - Cisco especially. (I had one device that was two months away, then month by month got pushed back until I finally got it after 8 months). So lots of businesses have been going to the second hand market to get equipment today, not to mention hanging on to their old stuff.
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Netgear has a managed switch that isn’t too close from that territory:
4x1G + 2x1/2.5G + 2x1/2.5/5G + 1x1/2.5/5/10G + 1x10G SPF+ = 10ports
Lower 8 ports are POE with 180W envelope.
I picked one up for ~$350 end of 2021 but just recently the prices have shot up to $500 (supply chain issue?).
I noticed. the secondhand market has been very aggressive lately. We haven’t purchased any of the high bandwidth data center equipment, but even on the office enterprise gear its been tough getting the equipment. I figured that the folks over at CDW would be having a field day.
I know this is a bit old of a thread now, but these are the options I know about today:
QNAP link wont work for some reason but it is the model QSW-M2116P-2T2S for $800
In my opinion, the QNAP is best because it gives you the best port density to price with PoE, and supports 10gb PoE++ which is extremely useful going forward for high end access points.
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