Today I got a 2Gb/1Gb internet installed. The ISP provided modem has a 2.5Gb port. My EdgeRouter 6P only has gigabit ports and a single SFP (non-plus).
Google didn’t turn up any site that would say that SFP can go beyond 1Gb, and surely companies would have “2.5Gb” SFP modules on the market if it was possible. I did find a one from FS SFP-2.5G-T, but have no idea about their reputation or if the product works.
I know that even if I managed to get 2Gb into my router, the 1Gb ports would still be a limiting factor. It’s more about my curiosity. The rest of my internal network is good up to 10Gb tho.
the device (switch or router in this case) carries the features. the transceiver and cable must support the features.
so a 2.5gb compliant SFP based transceiver plugged into the SFP port on the EdgeRouter 6P would only ever connect to anything at 1gb because that is all the EdgeRouter supports.
say you take a cat 6 cable and plug it into a computer and the other end you plug into a 10meg hub from 1996. the cable here has zero affect on this, and while the PC and cable to do much more, the hub limits the connection accross the cable to 10meg.
Time for a new router with SFP+ and 2.5G or 10G ports
Or build a forbidden router out of commodity hardware and plug the NIC into your modem. With an existing homeserver, it’s about one PCIe slot and a VM away.
2.5G and SFP+ sadly are mostly expensive enterprise stuff. Industry doesn’t think enough people have crossed the Gigabit barrier yet.
An N305, N200, or N100 from AliExpress can get you up to speed. You won’t need it, and probably wont notice a difference. But if we all thought like that, we’d all have money to blow on other habits… Like golfing, hunting, racing, or whatever people do when they aren’t trying to split the atom with a file transfer of a vm image which is there only to support the file transfer in the first place.
Get weird and have fun. Oh, and get some wifi radios, or put the vendor router in bridgemode and keep it for wireless… until you pick a Koolaid flavor and start drinking. I hear engenius makes a good brew. Geerling drinks the WAX from Netgear. Lots of folks (myself included) settle with unifi’s Aldi price flavor-aide.
