Why are 10gig switches still expensive?

Cheapest I could find is ~€500-600!?
They’re really not considerate of home networks :joy:

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Because most people have no practical use.
I wonder if somebody could DIY a 40Gb infiniband switch. Those cards are cheap. Repurpose a mining board that has 5 8x slots. My server board could hold 7 cards, but I think the inter-socket link would be a significant bottle neck.

Mikrotik CRS309 can be had for 250€ new.
If you need your PC and NAS to be on 10G with the rest "just connected, ASUS XG-U2008 can be had for 180€
Netgear XS505M is 400-ish €

The NICs for the machines on both ends are more expensive than the stuff connecting them.

Realistically, most people have one big PC, one NAS and the rest does not matter.

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Microtik and Broccade had some more affordable options.
The problem is 10GbE copper can’t just make use of existing lines the way 10/100/1000 could, so the consumer market isn’t as eager to put out a generic 4+1 port router, so nobody is rushing to make a cheapo generic IC for them.
Like, if Linksys puts out a device tomorrow they will be flooded with people running into problems because users will hook it into 50+m CAT5 runs and then complain when it doesn’t work as advertised.

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10GBASE-T also seems to require a lot of power from all but the latest generation ICs, which means heatsinks and higher cost designs for the surrounding bits, and doesn’t support PoE for things like WiFi APs. All of these concerns seem to be why NBASE-T popped up, and we’re currently getting 2.5GbE as the cheap option for CATn cabling.

That basically leaves the SFP+ space for 10GbE, which is more complex.

Sure, but if need be, CAT 7 and CAT 6A are available to consumers. Today sky is the limit, so it really depends for use case. Maybe for very advanced home lab, it’s a way to go, but trend is - 10GE becomes more and more available, especially for small scale deployments.

At least here, in Eastern EU.

Yes it can. You can do 10G on CAT-5 just fine… for a modest span.

Every generation of copper ethernet recommended higher-end wiring, and just had shorter maximum allowable range of each segment if you don’t upgrade your wiring.

Where’s the down vote button.

Exactly.
For very short patches between machines, you can get away with almost anything.

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Have you got a moment for our lord & saviour MikroTik? Got a CRS309 back in 2020 for 350.

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100m on Cat6a and Cat7 cable types
55m on Cat6 cable which is already deployed in many data centres
45m on Cat5e, the most commonly installed UTP cable types

and?

If you you don’t mind using SFP the ubiquiti aggregation switch is pretty cheap. I’ve been using one for a while and it’s been solid.

The actual answer is because of lack of competition and people currently pay the current inflated prices

simple as that

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