So having seen some better pricing on switches, mainly the 2.5gb speed switches but also on some 10gb switches, I was looking to upgrading my house to faster networking, if possible.
The house is pretty much wired from the top floor to the basement, yes I have a full sized basement with some computers in it.
However I only wired the house using CAT5e cabling.
Shorter runs between the computers and the switch I have CAT6 cabling but I have this one single long run of CAT5e from the top floor to the basement, it is a 100 foot cable.
Will it provide adequate bandwidth for say 2.5gb speeds without having to replace it ?
Since many of the 10gb switches support slower speeds like 2.5 and 1 would it communicate at the slower speeds without replacing the cable run or will it plain not work at all ?
I think the only speed that gets skipped a lot is the 5gb speed for some reason.
If you leave the port settings to auto it will try to negotiate 10Gbit and if it fails it won’t link. But you’ll be able to force a slower link speed manually
Is the 100ft cat5e cable hard to replace? Or is it run through conduit?
If you can easily just pull a new cable through by taping it to the old cable on one end then Id say just replace it anyway. You can get a 100ft Cat6A S/FTP cable for $50 nowadays. This will guarantee you problem free 10gb connection
Thanks for all the advice, I will have to consider my options and see what can be done.
However, it will not be easy to run new cabling as it is NOT in any conduit but rather snaked through ceilings and walls between the top floor and the basement.
Not really out of my budget but not sure I really need that many ports and it appears they are POE switches, nice if I had need for powering devices like cameras and the like
I basically have a 16 port gigabit switch on the top floor which feeds the connection to an 8 port gigiabit switch in the basement.
I was looking to upgrade both the 16 port model to something like an 8 ~ 16 port 2.5gb or faster on the top floor and another 5 ~ 8 port device in the basement.
I do have a mixed case use in my house as I do own many tablets and of course smart phones to use the Wifi connection on my ASUS router.
Also not being used are the myriad of Bluetooth supported connections on pretty much all my mobo’s now as I don’t have any Bluetooth devices to connect onto.
Yes I have some Logitech Wireless KB’s and Mice lying about too which get used from time to time but I really prefer being wired.
They are UPOE…which is Cisco speak for Poe++ (802.3bt)
So you can power PTZ cameras and whacky access points with 4 radios lol
You never think you need that many ports…until you start wiring
FWIW I have used these in production and have one st home.
FYI these are recently eol
Which is why the prices have crashed. This may also be relevant
• 1999: Cisco Catalyst 5000 Series
• 1999: Cisco Catalyst 6509 Series
• 2003: Cisco Catalyst 3750 Series
• 2006: Cisco Catalyst 4500 Series
• 2006: Cisco Nexus 7000 Series
• 2008: Cisco Nexus 5000 Series
• 2008: Cisco Catalyst 2960 Series
• 2011: Cisco Catalyst 4500X Series
• 2013: Cisco Catalyst 3850 Series
• 2013: Cisco Nexus 9000 Series
• 2017: Cisco Catalyst 9300 Series
• 2017: Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series
• 2019: Cisco Catalyst 9600 Series
…more recent stuff is unobtanium
But from my perspective,
•
2008: Cisco Nexus 5000 Series
•
2008: Cisco Catalyst 2960 Series
•
2011: Cisco Catalyst 4500X Series
•
2013: Cisco Catalyst 3850 Series
•
2013: Cisco Nexus 9000 Series
These are all viable choices for homelab in 2023. Each has some caveats but all are good devices. Only the 3850 supports mGig.
In the mGig department…Aruba 2930s are the functional equivalent of the 3850, but the HP release cycle is different than Ciscos, they were released later and are still supported AFAIK and so aren’t really viable price-wise. Similar story with Brocade/Ruckus. I’m not sure about other switch vendors, those are the three I have experience in and know the product lines for.
