I am looking for a decent and affordable 10gb switch. I was looking at the unifi XG series but it is a little bit too high in price for essentially not powering much unifi devices. I am already invested in the unifi world but I am not ready to drop the dough on a unifi poe.
I was looking at the WS-C3850-24XU-S but was not sure if it was still being supported by Cisco or if I can even get security updates without paying Cisco.
I know TP link has an affordable 10gb router but it is unmanaged and non POE. If I could get the best value device to meet my requirements would be great.
I want to hook up my NAS devices to utilize iSCSI. That is my first priority.
I need at least 10GB ports. For storage and compute communication.
few pi devices that have 2.5gb will also be attached but that is more of a want than need.
My priority is to set up the storage/compute backbone to eventually let my end user devices utilize wifi-7 speeds.
Right now my compute and storage is at a bandwidth bottleneck. I’m not sure if I’m better off just biting the bullet with a pro XG switch or if the Cisco WS-C3850 can get me half way there or all the way there. Other suggestions are appreciated as well.
You are probably going to need to get a used switch off ebay if the Ubiquiti one is too expensive. That Cisco one you were looking at seems really nice. Sadly the high prices on new stuff is just how 10gb and poe switches are now days
This is your TP Link Option:
Netgear:
Ubiquiti:
They are all similarly priced. I didnt see any options from Mikrotik int the 10gb and PoE area.
Man that netgear is making the unifi XGs look like bargain switches. I think I will for sure go with the Cisco switches. I just hope they are bearable enough to keep in my home office.
Splitting it up into PoE and “fast” instead of all in one can also sometimes save a lot of money.
Cheap PoE switch from Unifi with only combined with Mikrotik switch with SFP+ or even better QSFP28 (100GBit).
Plus you might get away with DAC at least for some ports, which saves a lot of money and energy.
10Gbit is rather slow after all nowadays
But yeah, you have to tell us first the number of ports with the corresponding speeds and PoE requirements.
You really only need PoE++ 2.5gb ports for having no bandwidth bottleneck on the newest wifi APs. You can get around 2 - 2.5gbps right now through wifi on the fastest stuff in the real world, which is plenty fast for any wireless transfers you would ever be doing, at least for the far foreseeable future. Wifi 8 wont be out for another year or two, and the primary gain of next gen wifi 8 is not higher speeds, but rather higher reliability with the speed you already can get. It will increase somewhat, but still 2.5gb will be no real bottleneck on the future wifi 8 stuff.
So since 10gb and PoE is so expensive, Id also recommend what @ThisMightBeAFish said and split it up into 2 switches. Get a 2.5gb PoE++ switch for your wifi goals, and another switch for your iSCSI homelab needs. Connect the two switches over a 10gb link so you have no bottlenecks at all even when fully utilizing multiple wifi APs trying to reach the NAS.
Thanks for the feedback folks. I am for sure open to a two device solution.
NON-POE
Ideally I want at least (5) 10GBASE-T ports. Stretching to (10) would be ideal.
POE
Just having (1) 10GBASE-T poe++ would be good for pro-xg AP.
(10) 2.5Gb poe would be great for powering and connecting a pi cluster.
Ideally the main priority is to handle the storage network first. I can wait a bit on the wireless network until all of my devices are wifi7 capable.
I am leaning to the CISCO WS-C3850, but I’m not sure if it is compatible with the pro-xg ap and noise are a big deal right now.
The additional POE ports would also be useful for other things as well in the future. But looks like 2027 is the end of support for the WS-C3850 series.
as far as going further in bandwidth for the backend storage I don’t think any of my devices can theoretically reach saturation bonded 10gb. PCI-e 4 is handicapped by x1 and x2 lanes. So theoretically I would be limited to x1 speeds. Who knows maybe in the future I can look at 25gb or 40gb if there is a good qsfp support.
I would stay away from 2.5Gb wifi 7 AP’s. There just isn’t enough uplink to fully take advantage of the wifi 7 at 6ghz. Especially if you are using MLO. You should at least have enough bandwidth to connect 2 wifi clients together at close 2Gb.
@mietzen I guess my total lab budget for Q4 and Q7 is south of $700. Keep in mind the budget is also going into some compute and store capabilities.
@ozlay I was looking at the U7 Pro XG and it seems to support a 10Gbe uplink. Based on their WiFi 7 data rates their theoretical speed at 6ghz seems to be 7.3 Mbps to 5.8 which is a substantial improvement from 802.11ac. Partial reason for the switch budget is going to the U7 Pro XG purchase.
It maybe overkill for my setup so I may just do something a little less powerful.
If you would settle for 8x 2.5 Ports you would have way more options. Also do you really need 2.5G POE for a Pi Cluster? Using a 1G POE switch for the cluster will save you around $400.
