Why is it so hard for me to go the 2.5GbE route when it’s so cheap compared to 10GbE? There’s nice stuff like m.2 to 2.5GbE for $10, pcie x1 to 2.5GbE for $20. On top of that there’s 4x 2.5GbE pcie cards that are pretty cheap too. And fanless. But I still look over at 10GbE.
Because you don’t need 2.5Gbps if you’re not doing any kind of remote storage, and if you are, 2.5Gbps → 10Gbps is noticeable for large transfers.
… and you hate spending on a new switch - or would hate to add yet another switch.
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Because 2.5Gb is actually just gigabit, but without dedicated up/down channels. It’s bizarre that it even costs money at all, and even if the network cards are cheap, the switches still aren’t, especially if you don’t want something that’s going to fail in a year or two. Also, every 2.5gbe chip you can buy at that price has major known issues, like platform compatibility, premature failure, instability, poor compliance, poor performance, etc.
2.5Gb just sucks. As someone who uses it(because it’s still a little faster than a pretty fast mechanical drive, and hey it fits in a blocked pcie1x slot next to NH-D15 fins) it really just isn’t good.
If you need to plug it into a switch, it’s not cheap. If you’re going point to point, 10GbaseT isn’t too bad anyway.
Listen to your mental blockage. It knows best.
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This. 2.5 Gb is this awkward kinda in between.
its a bonus for home users as even hard drives will out run 1 GbE these days, but its really not good enough for decent network performance when using flash storage and/or iSCSI over the network. It won’t keep up with an SSD.
But yes. Save your money and go for 10 gig (or faster) if you can afford it. Way better.
It won’t be too long before 25 and 40 gig starts coming onto the used market at a reasonable price from decommissioned server stuff.
Essentially there’s no killer use for 2.5. It’s just not a decent enough upgrade over 1GbE for anyone to give a shit about enough to deal with replacing network hardware, dealing with shitty drivers from shitty hardware vendors that make the hardware, etc. You just know a 2.5 gig Nic on sale for $10 is going to have the worlds shittiest driver developer team.
Motherboard vendors love it as they can slap a bigger number on the box (BIGGAR NUMBER MORE BETTER!!!1!!), but in terms of real world its a total fucking waste of time.
I have 2.5 gig capable NIC on my desktop… I see no point in upgrading anything to make use of it.
Run fibre in your wall people, don’t bother with cat7 and up.
Cat 5e is enough for anything that need a poe or a simple eth port
Everything else is worth the adapter to never have to pull another cable 
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For regular home use… just use wifi, seriously. WIFI 6 and later is plenty fast enough for end user shit so long as you have 1 or more decent access points for a normal house.
As you say, hard wired POE for cameras, etc.
Unless its contained within your lab environment (which you can RDP/VNC/ssh to over wifi happily), you probably don’t need faster than what actual modern WIFI can provide. Anyone out there still running old 802.11N access points… Seriously… its time to upgrade, the performance difference is just nuts in terms of bandwidth at range.
25/40/100gig can stay in the rack, or between a couple of machines on a bench in the study. no need for 25/40/100 gig to the bedroom, seriously. UHD can stream over way less than gig 
Seeings this comments make me a bit sad I just bought a 2.5 gigabit router and is feeling a bit of buyers remorse.
Ill be fine guys. 
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Lols, its OK if you have high speed internet or whatever, and it wasn’t too much of a price premium.
But if you already have working gig network… not worth it. Unless your shit breaks. In which case… if its not much more…
that said modern high speed WIFI is > gig now, so if you don’t have something with a faster port than that your access point will be bottlenecked by the port… in theory. if you like sitting 60cm from the access point.
The PC engines that I had for router (only 2 port) is going EOL with no more firmware updates, hence the purchase of 4 port 2.5 GbE. I was eyeing their 10 GbE but its so much cost for uncertain use case.
We shall see. I can always donate the recent purchase to relatives should the need arise.
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I just realized my Netgate has an internal 2.5g uplink to the onboard 4 port switch for LAN.
So yeah I have a 2.5 gig router too. sort of.
Either way internet is too shit to make use of it but hey.
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Its funny because I dont have GbE internet but I want a faster internal network.
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cards wise, I see 40gbe pretty cheap already. the real cost is in the cables, though, and the time to sort out the cluster of different FSP revisions, transceivers, and such. Cabling costs as much as the cards these days.
Great for plugging into that all-nvme nas we all definitely really have and run software or edit video directly off of, but only from a single desktop computer in the same room, for some reason.
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I have gb, and soon will have 8gb internet, that doesn’t mean i don’t need my local data to be here ASAP
I personally still have all my steam game on an ISCSI share, and nolonger run a local cache like i was on windows, but TBF i don’t have any loading issue on the type of game i play with a single 10gb interface.
I use to have 2, but one SFP+ need to be replace and the rack is quite stuck against the wall …
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I have fiber mounted to my ceiling.
My network card can do 2x 25Gbit, my “core” switch is 8x 10G, my “less janky NAS” has 2x 2.5Gbit, and so I had to get a 2.5Gbit switch for the price of the 8x 10G, which blows massive 
1G makes sense for normal use
10G is “fast stuff”
25G can be done at home
Price wise, I just did >10G because it is peanuts more than 2.5G stuff.
If I go fibre I have to drill through 50cm (19.68") of 100 year old concrete, if I don’t bend the fibre 90° around a door post.
so?
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Bosch-1-in-x-12-in-HSS-Round-Hammer-Drill-Masonry-Drill-Bit/4185399
I use a cheap hammer drill, and reasonably priced large drill bit for all my masonry work.
People get scared of having to drill through stone and brick, but its really not that big a deal. Just use PPE (Mask, glasses, ear) and get it done.
I wouldn’t worry about bend radius. If you use OM4 and it’s less than 300 meters, you should be fine @ 10G even with micro bends. If it does cause issues, just use the bend insensitive fiber. Still Worried About Bend Radius? Come and See the Bend-Insensitive Fiber Optic Cables | FS Community
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wow… indeed gigabit look like big. 2.5g mean = 238megs speed transfert.
10g mean about 992megs of trsf. And there is tons of adapter card that can be get just by skipping 1 or 2 cofee at 10$ each.
I will need to respectfully disagree here. While modern WiFi is certainly faster than older technologies, it is also inherently more unreliable. I can’t begin to recount the number of times I’ve had WiFi mysteriously disconnect or, more commonly, suddenly tank in bandwidth for no obvious reason. For that reason, I tend to use wired technologies (yes, I use Powerline for some devices 
) especially for large downloads. Living in an apartment makes the WiFi situation even worse.
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What do you mean, having 30-ish wifi networks both on 2.4 and 5GHz is an issue?! 
Yeah, Wifi in the city is BAD. May work when your next neighbour is two cornfields down the road, city, forget getting anywhere close to lab-condition speeds.
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