So just bought a 2 port 10gig ethernet card for my pc which is running a windows gaming vm and figured I might as well get a switch for it so I can connect both ports back to my router. What do you think would be the cheapest switch I can use? The router has 10gb ethernet but I guess I could use sfp+ to copper for the connections from my PC. Any suggestions for what the cheapest route would be?
What type of ports does your NIC have? RJ45? SFP+?
If you’re okay with SFP the Ubiquiti USW-Aggregation is pretty good value. I’ve been using one for a while.
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RJ45
One sfp+ to rj45 copper transceiver, about 60 dollars, a cat6 cable to one of the network card’s ports.
Forget about the second port, you wouldn’t be able to use it anyway when using your PC as client and even if you use it as a server you would need a pair of clients able to pull 10gb each concurrently to make use of that…
I don’t think I really explained myself properly but my ISP router already has a 10gb ethernet port on it and I just bought a $20 10gig ethernet card for my computer but it comes with two ports. I was thinking of passing one of those ports too my windows VM on my computer so both could have wired connections to the router instead of using the virtio adapter. Looking around there doesn’t really seem to be any just cheap 4 port 10gb ethernet switches so might just abandon the idea.
Just a question, what speed plan do you actually from your ISP?
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do you actually from
but who was phone?Dunno what the actual plan is but I get around 1.75gbps down and 1.06 up so I could get away with 2.5 but the actual router itself has 10gig and dunno if it can handle 2.5.
I reckon 2.5 Gbps switches are going to be cheaper for you. This one just came out recently. But plenty of non-managed options as well.
Yeah 2.5 would work but I just got an elcheapo intel X540 based card so it only does 1/10 gig and nothing between. It was only $20 so really I could just keep on using the vertio nic on my vm and still get the full bandwidth from my isp for my actual desktop. I figured that there would be some cheap 10gb ethernet switches since the card was so cheap but I guess not.
10G copper is expensive and power hungry, so it never caught on. SFP+ switches also never price dropped enough either. So for the foreseeable future 2.5Gb is where its at, though still not cheap enough yet to be an instant buy.
Unless that router can supply 20G of connectivity to anywhere, this will not result on any gains.
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10GBase-T SFPs run very hot, with manufacturers even including instructions to never have two of them right next to each other… So just avoid that. Plus they’re just not cheap.
$150 + $20sh - Trendnet 10G Switch TEG-S750, 5 port, NEVER USED, No Original box 710931140705 | eBay
I just added one of these to my network
If you are ok with either the VM or the host having 2.5gb this would give you 10gb backhaul and another 10gb port. The question is for you need both…
In my experience the virtio network driver is effectively line speed, it’s a solved problem thanks to years of data centre hyperconverged kit. Unless you are hammering the port on the host and still want all the bandwidth for the VM, I doubt you would notice the difference day to day.
The switch is good though, low idle power unlike the Netgear beast it replaced and it is passive.
It was more just for both having 10gig links rather than trying to get 20gb of connectivity.
@rcxb That would be a decent option if I could find one used here in leafland, crazy how that and an 8 port switch are around the same price. Gigaplus and mokerlink both have 8 ports for around $350
@Airstripone yeah it was more for just gaming and transfers between the desktop and vm but again I really should get a NAS going instead of all the drives in my main system. Think I’m just going to stick with just one connection as that’s really all I need.
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I have 2 of the Mikrotiks CRS305. You get 4 sfp+ 10g ports, and one eth port.
Also has a tonnn of onboard management features if you want to play. $140 + sfps
It seems like your entire purpose is avoiding VirtIO on the VM. YMMV, but I believe the performance loss due to VirtIO is very minimal. I would test this using iperf3.
I may be missing something, but I do not see a benefit from 10Gbit networking in your environment. I would save the money/use on something else.