I notice that some Routers and NAS' are now being advertised with 2.5G ports. I'm always interested in experimenting with the latest tech ( even though I don't need it! lol ) and I also see that there are some motherboards now with 2.5G onboard, but where are the 2.5G NIC's for retrofitting to older PC's? Are there some around?
2.5G NICs
- Thread starter pp111
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Yeah you can get them. None on OCUK as far as I know. Around £30, whereas a standard one is around £10. Considerably cheaper than 10G if you need that extra boost.
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I think he means home tech. But I have seen some standard motherboards are coming with 10G Ethernet now. Probably aimed at content creators.
Soldato
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It's the lack of suitable switches that's the problem at the moment. Unless someone knows of a reasonably priced multiport 2.5GbE switch?
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Or will be once there's any stock. A step in the right direction anyway.
Yes you are right.
Cost is relative. Given the cost to upgrade each host to 10Gb (or 2.5) and it’s storage system to something fast enough to both get the benefit and large enough to make meaningful use it for more than a few mins as well as making sure the CPU can actually keep up, then a switch isn’t that expensive.
At this stage 10Gb is just getting started in the consumer space, enthusiasts have likely gone to managed switches with LAG, then potentially SFP+ on ex-enterprise kit and done appropriate storage upgrades to keep up. The Mikrotik CRS309 Is under £300 for 8xSFP+ (£37.50/port), the 4 port CRS305 is less than half that for 4xSFP+ (£30/port), alternatively the Netgear XS508M is unmanaged and offers 8x10Gb via RJ45, but it’s still north of £320 (£40/port).
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The QNAP QSW-1105-5T mentioned above is getting into what I'd consider as reasonable territory. Cheap enough to have for when a bit of extra speed would be nice but not essential.
For my usage, 10GbE would be an extravagance, and as I wouldn't be able to use all of the bandwidth most of the time anyway probably not much faster than 2.5GbE. With 2.5GbE I'd actually be able to use it to its full extent and wouldn't feel the need to be upgrading other hardware to keep up with the available network speed.
For my usage, 10GbE would be an extravagance, and as I wouldn't be able to use all of the bandwidth most of the time anyway probably not much faster than 2.5GbE. With 2.5GbE I'd actually be able to use it to its full extent and wouldn't feel the need to be upgrading other hardware to keep up with the available network speed.
True to an extent, but I'd say most half decent ones would easily saturate 2.5 Gbps. My QNAP will read and write at over 500 MB/s and that's just conventional HDDs (4x IronWolf's in RAID5). The sort of NAS devices which come with the ability to have 10 Gbps either through a natic NIC or a PCI slot can usually read and write well in excess of 500 MB/s.