Upgraded Home Network 2.5Gb for £130

Armageus · 7 Jul 2022 at 10:20

jonneymendoza said:
ahh ok cool. i may just do that and buy pre made cables.

Are there any keystone jacks that will work on fibre cables if i wanted to run it through walls and add a SFP+ keystone jack or a SFP+ to r4j45 ketsone jack?

I'm not aware of any fibre keystone jacks, as you'd normally terminate your structured fibre at fibre trays (e.g. this), then just use a short patch fibre on each end.

As an alternative to a full rackmount fibre tray though, you can get wall mounted breakout boxes, or even lockable wall boxes:

https://www.universalnetworks.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Wall-Boxes-incl-DDL-2021.pdf

jonneymendoza · 7 Jul 2022 at 12:52

Now this is what I’m talking about!!!

@TOW

Simpampum · 23 Jul 2022 at 18:28

sityeuropa said:
Really you can do 2.5gbps for £50 with just two of them USB3.0 adapters. Don't really need the switch.

Use the USB <> USB on your main computer and NAS for the quick transfers, assign one IP address on the NAS, set up a share on the main PC direct to it.
Then for other devices just use the Gigabit port on the NAS into your router on a different IP.

I use RAID10 on my NAS for quicker reads and writes. I believe it is the recommended RAID for 4 drives. I have just Western Digital blues and it maxes out the 2.5 Gbps fine. More than 2.5Gbps you would need SSDs so it is perfect for my set up.

When set up like this without the swtich, I also had to make my computers motherboard 1Gbps network adapter the priority metric. As before websites would hang trying to reach them through the USB 2.5gbps adapter.

1Gbps main network adapter - metric 50
2.5 Gbps adapter - metric 100.
Lower metric the greater the priority. So Internet requests work as normal.

This the driver for my Synology NAS which works perfect with that adapter pictured.

Releases · bb-qq/r8152

Synology DSM driver for Realtek RTL8152/RTL8153/RTL8156 based adapters - bb-qq/r8152

github.com

It's really cool and inexpensive, just what I need. At the moment I'm reading about RAID levels and want to do it right.

jonneymendoza · 23 Jul 2022 at 18:33

Does raid drives really increases the read and write speeds dramatically?

Armageus · 23 Jul 2022 at 21:24

jonneymendoza said:
Does raid drives really increases the read and write speeds dramatically?

For sequential reads/writes yes, otherwise no.

ChrisD. · 23 Jul 2022 at 21:59

Armageus said:
For sequential reads/writes yes, otherwise no.

Depends, if it’s RAID5 there is no write benefit, only read.

WJA96 · 1 Aug 2022 at 09:11

In the original spirit of this thread I’ve just had one of these delivered

QNAP QSW-2104-2T 2ports 10GbE RJ45 6 port switch

2 x 10GbE ports and 4 x 2.5GbE ports for about £150 retail. No SFP+, just RJ45 connectors so all standard cabling. I think this could be the start of some reasonably priced 10GbE gear. It’s unmanaged but for most home users it will be fine.

jonneymendoza · 2 Aug 2022 at 08:14

WJA96 said:
In the original spirit of this thread I’ve just had one of these delivered

QNAP QSW-2104-2T 2ports 10GbE RJ45 6 port switch

2 x 10GbE ports and 4 x 2.5GbE ports for about £150 retail. No SFP+, just RJ45 connectors so all standard cabling. I think this could be the start of some reasonably priced 10GbE gear. It’s unmanaged but for most home users it will be fine.

Looking good that device but dont forget, you also need a 2.5gbit NIC on the other end.

I found that 2.5gbit NIC are more rare than a 10gbit NIC.

Yea its more than twice the speed of a 1gbit connection but i feel that you may as well jump to 10gbit as its widely available now

WJA96 · 2 Aug 2022 at 08:47

jonneymendoza said:
Looking good that device but dont forget, you also need a 2.5gbit NIC on the other end.

I found that 2.5gbit NIC are more rare than a 10gbit NIC.

Yea its more than twice the speed of a 1gbit connection but i feel that you may as well jump to 10gbit as its widely available now

I don’t necessarily disagree with what you’re saying. We use a lot of QNAP and Synology and most of their devices ship with 2.5GbE 10BaseT connections as standard now. Likewise, most PCs and routers we’re buying are also 2.5GbE 10BaseT out of the box. I just quickly checked what we have available as options on a PCIe add-in card and the QNAP one is £40+VAT, Akasa(!) have one available for £22+VAT and then the next ones are as expensive as 10GbE cards at £85 - £110+VAT and the 10GbE cards will all auto-negotiate down to 2.5GbE or 5GbE so you have some flexibility if you want to start off with a cheaper 2.5GbE switch and then upgrade the switch to 10 GbE later.

And yes, if you can afford it, going straight to 10GbE is the right way to go. I’ve just quoted 3 jobs where instead of putting in a 48-Port 2.5GbE PoE switch I’ve quoted for a non-PoE 10GbE 24-port switch and a 24-port PoE 2.5GbE switch because it’s more “future-proof’ if that’s really a thing.

Simon42 · 9 Aug 2022 at 12:56

WJA96 said:
I’ve just quoted 3 jobs where instead of putting in a 48-Port 2.5GbE PoE switch I’ve quoted for a non-PoE 10GbE 24-port switch and a 24-port PoE 2.5GbE switch because it’s more “future-proof’ if that’s really a thing.

What managed switches are you using for this?

I currently have all UniFi kit other than routing handled by pfSense on a custom appliance, and my two old 24 port UniFi PoE switches are both 1GbE. Ubiquiti seem to be behind on the 2.5 and 10GbE front other than a few top end switches so are there any other brands worth looking at?

WJA96 · 9 Aug 2022 at 13:04

Simon42 said:
What managed switches are you using for this?

I currently have all UniFi kit other than routing handled by pfSense on a custom appliance, and my two old 24 port UniFi PoE switches are both 1GbE. Ubiquiti seem to be behind on the 2.5 and 10GbE front other than a few top end switches so are there any other brands worth looking at?

USW-24-Enterprise PoE and USW-24-XG Enterprise. £2400 for the pair. You can do it cheaper but fundamentally there’s no point because you just end up working twice as hard setting up VLANs if you use Netgear, QNAP or Mikrotik. The absolute over-riding factor with UniFi is ease of deployment.

Upgraded Home Network 2.5Gb for £130

2 x 10GbE ports and 4 x 2.5GbE ports for about £150 retail. No SFP+, just RJ45 connectors so all standard cabling. I think this could be the start of some reasonably priced 10GbE gear. It’s unmanaged but for most home users it will be fine.​

2 x 10GbE ports and 4 x 2.5GbE ports for about £150 retail. No SFP+, just RJ45 connectors so all standard cabling. I think this could be the start of some reasonably priced 10GbE gear. It’s unmanaged but for most home users it will be fine.​

2 x 10GbE ports and 4 x 2.5GbE ports for about £150 retail. No SFP+, just RJ45 connectors so all standard cabling. I think this could be the start of some reasonably priced 10GbE gear. It’s unmanaged but for most home users it will be fine.

2 x 10GbE ports and 4 x 2.5GbE ports for about £150 retail. No SFP+, just RJ45 connectors so all standard cabling. I think this could be the start of some reasonably priced 10GbE gear. It’s unmanaged but for most home users it will be fine.