10GBASE-T - Too much speed for home use?

[AndyBeez]

10GBASE-T Ethernet ports are finding their way onto domestic computers. For example, '10G' is a plus $100 order option at the Apple Store. One question though; is anyone fully leveraging the stupid-fast speed of 802.3an/10GBASE-T in a [non-enterprise] household environment? And if so, what are you connecting this too? Did it cost $s to upgrade your network devices and cables? 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_Gigabit_Ethernet

[kripton2035]

I don't think this has any use for home network. my gigabit network from year 2000 is still plenty enough.
may be if you have 10 kids watching netflix in 4k simultaneously ?

[wraper]

IMHO it's only worth if you have some shared storage which needs fast access from multiple places.

[brucehoult]

Depends what you're doing in your home, but 10G is slower than the read/write speed of a mediocre SSD these days, so if you're using one PC as a file server for another one (or have a NAS) you could saturate that easily enough.

The fastest home internet you can get -- at least in my nearest town -- is 1 gig, with actual speed in the mid 900s. So if it's just for sharing internet then 10 G is not needed at present.

[brucehoult]

I don't think this has any use for home network. my gigabit network from year 2000 is still plenty enough.
may be if you have 10 kids watching netflix in 4k simultaneously ?

Netflix says their 4K streams are 15 Mbps, so you'd need well over 50 kids to trouble 1 gig ethernet -- and you only need that for the upstream from their router to the modem (if one device isn't doing both)

[AndyBeez]

Simply, a 10G network requires a 10G infrastructure. Server's need to be 100G monsters just to keep up with the packets.

I don't think this has any use for home network. my gigabit network from year 2000 is still plenty enough.
may be if you have 10 kids watching netflix in 4k simultaneously ?

Netflix says their 4K streams are 15 Mbps, so you'd need well over 50 kids to trouble 1 gig ethernet -- and you only need that for the upstream from their router to the modem (if one device isn't doing both)

A motivation for me to pose this question is a networking speed freak who believes 10G is NOT fast enough for his 4K TV on Netflix! His TV is a 58 inch juggernaut and thus, it needs more speed because it is a bigger screen. Guy's like him are a gift to the marketing suits in marketing suites.

The only 'domesticated' use case for such bandwidth is a $10,000 MacPro video studio, with 8K video stored on a SAN/Raid array loaded with M2 EVO ssd modules. But outside of the Hollywood hills, there is little justification for this level of investment. Maybe in the near-instantaneous future world of the Metaverse 10G will be 'bufferingly' slow, but for now, even inside the enterprise, it's a too much speed for desktop users.

btw My fastest outbound-upstream link is a mere 100Mbps on a 330Mbps FTTP link. When I started networking, 1Mbps over coax was regarded a top enterprise level speed - and was priced accordingly.

[wraper]

His TV is a 58 inch juggernaut and thus, it needs more speed because it is a bigger screen. Guy's like him are a gift to the marketing suits in marketing suites.

It's not even that large. I'd say barely above mainstream 55" size. I have 65" OLED which I don't find that large and my friend has 77" OLED which is something closer to "juggernaut" but you can get 85" LCD monster for like 1000 quid.

[sokoloff]

I have two 10G networks in my house, both for storage. One is for storage replication and VM migration traffic and only covers 3 nodes in a single homelab rack. The other connects the storage arrays to a 10G switch with just 1 10Gbps client and a 2.5Gbps switch for our family desktops to connect to the storage.

None of that relates to internet, which I have only 300 Mbps down and 20 up.

2.5 and 10 Gbps equipment is fairly cheap now. It lets me use a single highly redundant and backed up storage array on all our PCs without it feeling super-slow and just have a smallish NVMe local volume on each PC.

[dobsonr741]

10G makes sense for normal home networks too, for NAS and faster backups. Not just for home labs anymore.

I do Time Machine backups to TrueNAS, and just wish my gear would be 10G instead of 1G.

[james_s]

10G is faster than most people need, but there is no such thing as too much speed. My home network is gigabit and it is adequate for my needs but I do saturate the connection to individual machines regularly while pushing large files around.

[wraper]

The question is how it's supposed to help said TV when it has a 1 Gbit wired interface at best (most likely 100 mbit) and not the fastest WIFI?

[sokoloff]

The exact same way that cryogenically stress-relieved^* HDMI cables will deliver a crisper image quality to that same guy's TV, obviously.

^* - or whatever other things he's been hoodwinked by

[py-bb]

I wouldn't bother with 10G stuff unless you need more than 110mib/sec (like 114mb/sec) sustained speeds.

You can however have one link 10G, for example I got a stack of SolarFlare cards cheap, but 10G switches are really expensive.

10G base T also has higher latency (both in real terms and expressed in terms of packets) due to error correction methods, but we're talking microseconds so this can probably be ignored.

[SiliconWizard]

If you copy/access large files over the LAN, it's definitely worth it.
Otherwise, not so much.
But for $100, I would definitely consider buying the option. Even if you equip your lan for 10G only later on.

[nightfire]

On workstations a 10 GBit/s port is beneficial when you have to push lots of data over the network to a NAS or similar storage unit. This can happen for backup purposes (and not to overesxceed the backup window) or if you are working with photo editing or video cut, where most of the data reside on a NAS or similar server, or second workstation.
But: To do this, you need stable switches- the ordinary 500$ halfmanaged switch can also go into hiccup due to small buffers.

[Halcyon]

I use 10 Gig to all my servers and the trunk from router to switch. The gear is actually quite affordable. I deliberately wired my house with Cat 6 cable knowing that I would be upgrading to 10 Gig at some point. I ended up doing that a few years ago.

I don't use it to its maximum advantage but it's good knowing I have the headroom should I need it. I was finding I was maxing out 1 Gigabit quite often, especially when dealing with large files on my NAS.

[py-bb]

I use 10 Gig to all my servers and the trunk from router to switch. The gear is actually quite affordable. I deliberately wired my house with Cat 6 cable knowing that I would be upgrading to 10 Gig at some point. I ended up doing that a few years ago.

I don't use it to its maximum advantage but it's good knowing I have the headroom should I need it. I was finding I was maxing out 1 Gigabit quite often, especially when dealing with large files on my NAS.

Link/model of switch? (Affordable 10G gear that isn't a lucky auction on ebay - link me!)

[Halcyon]

I'm using the Ubiquiti USW-Pro-48 with a Netgate 7100 router which I realise isn't a cheap solution for home users, but there are cheaper switches out there which will give you a 10 Gig "core" to your network for example the Mikrotik CSS610-8G-2S+IN

The 10 Gig Ubiquiti DAC cables are dirt cheap.

[sokoloff]

DAC cables are one of those things that seem like they should be expensive but are remarkably cheap, so I use them for my short backup network.

Fs.com is a good vendor to know about. Fast and fair pricing (maybe not the lowest on everything, but time has value as well).

[metebalci]

I have 10G LAN and WAN at home. Other than special cases, for home use, it only matters if you have a reasonably fast NAS and/or 10G+ WAN (Internet) connection.

At the moment, I have one all 10G, one hybrid 1/10G managed QNAP switches, two 1G (HP and Cisco) managed switches and a Cisco AP. Although QNAP would not be my first choice normally, it is the most quiet 10G switch I tried so I keep it. I have CAT 6 cabling inside walls, and it works fine. DAC is an easy solution for short distance and SFP+ switches are cheaper and more quiet but ethernet is still more flexible. Having a switch with at least a few dual personality ports is nice to have.

[mariush]

Link/model of switch? (Affordable 10G gear that isn't a lucky auction on ebay - link me!)

You say you're in Afghanistan ... so kinda tough for people to ship you switches there.

If you're in US or some bigger country, I'd suggest emailing/contacting unixsurplus.com to give you a list of switches with 10gbs sfp+ ports they have available and more affordable.

They don't list everything they have on their website. Last year around September I asked what they could do in $300 and they had 2 units of Juniper EX4200 EX4200 (24 x 10g SFP+ and 4x1g SFP with two power supplies) for $275  .. specs here : https://www.juniper.net/content/dam/www/assets/datasheets/us/en/switches/ex4200-ethernet-switch-with-vitual-chassis-technology.pdf

Something interesting they have is a Quanta T5032 with 32 QSFP+ 40g ports for $419 : https://unixsurplus.com/quanta-t5032-ly6-switch/ 
Description says it uses Atom but it's PPC : https://www.qct.io/product/index/Switch/Ethernet-Switch/T5000-Series/QuantaMesh-T5032-LY6#specifications

40g to 4 x10g SFP+ DAC cables start from around $40 for the 1 meter versions, so around $10 per 10g port.

40g doesn't seem that popular anymore, as people moved to QSFP28, with 10/25/50/100 gbps ... you can get qsfp+ cards for $50 ex. https://unixsurplus.com/mellanox-cx353a--adapter/
qsfp28 can be bought at around $110 ... example 109$ for low profile 100g card : https://unixsurplus.com/Mellanox-MCX455A-Single-Port-100GB-QSFP18-Low-Profile/


Servethehome forum - the Great Deals section is also worth checking out : https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?forums/great-deals.8/
from time to time very good deals (which go away fast) are posted there.

Look also at previous posts for switches and bookmark those sellers or add those switch models you like to your ebay searches / bookmarks etc

[madires]

If you have only short runs of ethernet cable <= 30m good old Cat5e usually works also fine with 10GBASE-T. Alternatively there's 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T in case you need just a small boost. Beyond that I'd go for glass fiber anyway because of less trouble (high speed ethernet can be quite finicky about TP) and the upgrade path.

[wraper]

If you have only short runs of ethernet cable <= 30m good old Cat5e usually works also fine with 10GBASE-T. Alternatively there's 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T in case you need just a small boost. Beyond that I'd go for glass fiber anyway because of less trouble (high speed ethernet can be quite finicky about TP) and the upgrade path.

From what I've read it works fine up to about 45m.

[DavidAlfa]

I don't think this has any use for home network. my gigabit network from year 2000 is still plenty enough.

Gbit in the year 2000? By then we were still going from 10M to 100M ethernet, no way!

[madires]

From what I've read it works fine up to about 45m.

Yep, Cat5e and Cat6 up to 50m under good conditions. Cat6a or better up to 100m.