2.5GbE is BETTER than 10GbE - Here's Why [SpaceRex]

[peterg23]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIOfRAKovRo

 

This tutorial goes over why 2.5 GbE is probably way better for you than 10GbE .

[GRRRRRRR]

Well said well said.

 

Always looking for ways to save 1000$+ /year on the electricity bills.

 

[Pri]

A lot of his argument in the video is around power consumption but I don't think he actually tested the power consumption with a wattage meter. But I have.

 

The X540-T2 (dual-port 10GbE card) that I have at idle increased my server power draw from the wall socket from 165 watts to .. 165 watts. I suspect the card pulls milliwatts at idle while maintaining a 10G link.

 

When it comes to load testing it's higher, I measured 15 watts when doing a 10Gb/s iPerf load for 45 seconds. But the CPU burden is also higher so it's hard to exactly quantify all of the power consumption to the network card itself since the iPerf software does produce some CPU load itself just trying to sling bits that quickly.

 

I think though for most of us, probably 99.9% of the time our 10Gb connections will be idle. At most moving a few kilobytes. It's rare you're going to max out a 10Gb connection in your home network but when you do need it, it's nice to know its there.

 

I'm using as I said the X540-T2 which is a 10 year old card now. If you were to instead get a X710-T2L that has a typical power draw per port of 4.1 Watts at 10Gb/s. That number is from Intel directly. That's really not much and that is only when actually using the port at its full rated speed, it's much much less idle.

[tjb_altf4]

I don't know what that silly dot is doing there, but I agree 25GbE is better than 10GbE

[MAM59]

yeah, the video is real crap 😞

The "many 2,5Gbit/s" cards available are all made out of the same chip, one that did not make it to fulfill the 10G specs.

 

Yeah, 10G and up on CAT Cable is a challenge, and a waste of energy.

 

Use fiber and you are safe, cold and have very low power consuption.

[RiDDiX]

On 2/17/2023 at 4:33 PM, MAM59 said:

yeah, the video is real crap 😞

The "many 2,5Gbit/s" cards available are all made out of the same chip, one that did not make it to fulfill the 10G specs.

 

Yeah, 10G and up on CAT Cable is a challenge, and a waste of energy.

 

Use fiber and you are safe, cold and have very low power consuption.

 

Yeah you are right. But even copper cables are working as they should. Anyway as usually many people wont cap 1G at all.

 

I am a lazy technician, why I should rip out all my cat 7-8 cables and change them to fiber. More E-Waste then needed. So I got also a X540-T2. They are usually available at an affordable price and most of them work perfectly. Fiber optic cable is getting cheaper, but there are still too many options.

With fiber optic cables, you have to pay attention to which loop you take as well as then the respective "switch adapters".

Anyway fiber will be the goal overall in the future.

 

You should just think about the direction of your own possibilities and those of the hardware. After that, you should decide how and where to invest in something. Time, patience and money as well.

[MAM59]

7 hours ago, RiDDiX said:

why I should rip out all my cat 7-8 cables and change them to fiber.

If they are really cat 7 or cat 8 you don't need too (btw I would ADD fiber, not pull out anything). But here network is "historically grown" started with RG-58 Coax 30yrs ago and evolved to Cat 5, Cat 5e, Cat 6 and more... At the end you don't know anymore which wallet has which cable quality (yeah, I know, "documentation" would be the magic word, but I am also part of the "lazy technicians" 🙂 ).

So even working lines do not guarantee working 10G. After some bad experiences ("works, works not, works most of the time, works sometimes, works less and less") you have the alternative, change everything to CAT 7/8 or change everything to fiber.

And then fiber is much cheaper and less complicated. I now have only ONE cable where there have been 16 CATs before to certain destinations.

 

7 hours ago, RiDDiX said:

but there are still too many options.

There are only 3 options currently:

1) multimode or single mode (use bidirectional or use single lines for each direction, multimode electronics is usually cheaper)

2) Plug Type (allthough you can easily get patch cables with different plugs on each end)

3) cable quality, OM3 is currently "normal" (the cyan ones) and good for up to 40G, OM4 is available and more expensive, should be good for 100G and up they say

In most cases 1 and 2 are given by the switches / SFP+ modules you buy and 3 is a question of "how fast will I go in 10yrs" ?

 

7 hours ago, RiDDiX said:

So I got also a X540-T2

Looking into the shelf behind me, I see about 5 or 6 cards of this type laying around and beeing useless. Waiting for somebody to make an offer 😉

[Baggi0]

On 3/1/2023 at 5:47 AM, MAM59 said:

Looking into the shelf behind me, I see about 5 or 6 cards of this type laying around and beeing useless. Waiting for somebody to make an offer 😉

long shot I know but I’m after a couple of these if you still have them 😂

[MAM59]

1 minute ago, Baggi0 said:

long shot I know but I’m after a couple of these if you still have them 😂

Too long shot, sorry. They were picked up just last week by somebody on Ebay.

[Baggi0]

17 minutes ago, MAM59 said:

Too long shot, sorry. They were picked up just last week by somebody on Ebay.

Just week late after 6 months of them being available is just my luck 😂

 

Thanks for the quick reply 👍

[xyzeratul]

If you are talking about CAT cable, 2.5G is the better choice right now, cheap and low power consumption, ready for the next gen Wifi 7 AP and routers.

 

But 10G fiber NIC right now is dirt cheap right now, if you don't mind the used one, and the switch for it is also cheap, only problem is no adapter for laptop, you are running a desktop PC, it's awesome.

 

So why not both😁, I am using a 4(2.5G)+2(10G fiber) switch, mainly using the 2.5G right now, and plan to upgrade my NAS when I have desktop PC.