Looks like 10gig is becoming increasingly affordable
- Thread starter Arjun
- Start date
10gb was widely adopted in enterprise use in the early 2010's. In fact, it has largely been dropped now for 25gb, 40gb or even 100gb speeds. This has resulted in cheap 10gb devices being available for years now. It is certainly more affordable than 2.5gb which is really just beginning to show up in devices. 7 years ago I moved to enterprise quality network switches which happened to have 10gb SFP+ ports on them. That being said, I didn't utilize any 10gb connections until just recently when I completely redid my network and replaced all of my equipment, replaced my servers, etc. I've started using 10gb connections between my firewall, networks switches, and several "servers" that host all of my OS/software instances.
I will say that outside of an older Intel 10gb SFP+ PCI-e networking card that needed to be flashed before it would work with non Intel branded optical transceivers, moving to 10gb and fiber connections has been pretty much "plug and play". It's also been cheap. My used firewall device was less than $100 and has 2 10gb SFP+ ports. The two used Brocade 48 port POE network switches I am using now cost about $75 each and they both have 8 10gb SPF+ ports on them (4 ports on each are being used for stacking the switches together - leaving me 8 total SFP+ ports to use). I think the 10gb SFP+ PCI-e networking cards I purchased where around $25 each. The optical transceivers for the SFP+ ports were less than $9 each. Premade fiber cables aren't expensive. I'd be shocked if I have $100 total in all of my fiber runs. Most are short, but I do have a longer run to my office where I have a 9 port (8x 1gb ethernet and 1x 10gb SFP+ port) network switch as well. I bought that switch new and it is probably the most expensive device in relative terms when compared to it's total capacity. I think I paid about $75 for that switch.
I will say that outside of an older Intel 10gb SFP+ PCI-e networking card that needed to be flashed before it would work with non Intel branded optical transceivers, moving to 10gb and fiber connections has been pretty much "plug and play". It's also been cheap. My used firewall device was less than $100 and has 2 10gb SFP+ ports. The two used Brocade 48 port POE network switches I am using now cost about $75 each and they both have 8 10gb SPF+ ports on them (4 ports on each are being used for stacking the switches together - leaving me 8 total SFP+ ports to use). I think the 10gb SFP+ PCI-e networking cards I purchased where around $25 each. The optical transceivers for the SFP+ ports were less than $9 each. Premade fiber cables aren't expensive. I'd be shocked if I have $100 total in all of my fiber runs. Most are short, but I do have a longer run to my office where I have a 9 port (8x 1gb ethernet and 1x 10gb SFP+ port) network switch as well. I bought that switch new and it is probably the most expensive device in relative terms when compared to it's total capacity. I think I paid about $75 for that switch.
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I started using 10 Gbps for the backbone of my LAN in 2019. The affordability was pretty great even then. You just had to do a little research into what to buy on ebay.
I was getting used Mellanox ConnectX-2 cards for around $21-26 each. These each offered one SFP+ (10 Gbps) port.
SFP+ fiber optic transceivers were around $8 each in multi-packs on ebay (best prices I've found since then were closer to $3 each).
For switches I could have bought used enterprise gear for equally insane values (probably $200 or less for 24-48 ports of 10 Gbps, like you can still get today), but the power consumption and fan noise of old enterprise switches is ridiculous for small-scale home use. So I got Mikrotik switches instead.
The price of these units has only gone up (but so has inflation, so meh).
That leaves fiber optic patch cables, which were and are actually priced similarly to cat6 ethernet cable, so no big deal there.
I was getting used Mellanox ConnectX-2 cards for around $21-26 each. These each offered one SFP+ (10 Gbps) port.
SFP+ fiber optic transceivers were around $8 each in multi-packs on ebay (best prices I've found since then were closer to $3 each).
For switches I could have bought used enterprise gear for equally insane values (probably $200 or less for 24-48 ports of 10 Gbps, like you can still get today), but the power consumption and fan noise of old enterprise switches is ridiculous for small-scale home use. So I got Mikrotik switches instead.
The price of these units has only gone up (but so has inflation, so meh).
That leaves fiber optic patch cables, which were and are actually priced similarly to cat6 ethernet cable, so no big deal there.
I was able to pick up a genuine Intel X540T2 10gig card a couple of years back for $45 when they were being cleared out