10Gbe Switch Suggestions

[Juan Manuel Palacios]

Do you already have 10GbE RJ45 NICs?

I was in a similar boat to yourself, considering a 10GbE jump - the RJ45 switches were ultimately few and far between (and mostly very loud given the higher power requirements of 10GbE over copper); similarly, the NICs were also expensive and power hungry. I ended up buying some dirt-cheap X520 single-port cards and I'm currently borrowing a 4xSFP+ switch (but will likely buy my own soon enough).

Yeah, I do, my NAS is a FreeNAS rig with a SuperMicro X11SSH-LNF4-O with 4 10GbE NICs, to which I'm planning to add an SSD NVMe SLOG device, which will surely saturate a 1Gb link.

I would definitely consider an SFP-based 10GbE switch, but I think I'd still be bottleneck'd by the connection from the WiFi AP to the switch; if I can't push that to something higher than 1Gb, I'm not sure the switch will make any sense. I also found some Aruba devices which are Nbase-T, but they're even more expensive than the Ubiquiti UniFi XG.

 

[Rand__]

Regarding the 10GbE-enabled WiFi AP, you're saying I wouldn't leverage it even if I had two 802.11ac laptops pushing data to the NAS at once through the access point?

well that will depend on a lot of factors. Wifi card in the laptops, access point (total capacity), environment etc.
If you want to maximize you might want to consider multiple access points instead of a single 'big' one?

 

[Juan Manuel Palacios]

well that will depend on a lot of factors. Wifi card in the laptops, access point (total capacity), environment etc.
If you want to maximize you might want to consider multiple access points instead of a single 'big' one?

True enough. I guess until 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) comes along, and all my devices support it (far into the future!), a 10GbE-uplinked Wi-Fi AP doesn't really make that much sense.

So I guess I can skip jumping on the 10GbE train for the time being, because it's looking like I'll hardly leverage it and it's just too expensive.

Thanks for your input!

 

[Rand__]

if you'd use on ac ap per client the aggregate traffic would warrant a 10g connection I assume - just whether you want it that urgently is another question

 

[Juan Manuel Palacios]

But how would I aggregate the traffic of multiple 802.11ac APs through a single 10GbE uplink to a switch? The only way I can think of is by placing what would effectively be another switch between the APs and what-would-be my main 10GbE switch, with the intermediary one having n 1Gb links and at least 1 10GbE uplink.

Or did I misread you?

 

[Rand__]

multiple ap's on 1g connections on a switch with 10g uplinks connected to the nas?
why you need a second switch there?

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

Yeah, I do, my NAS is a FreeNAS rig with a SuperMicro X11SSH-LNF4-O with 4 10GbE NICs, to which I'm planning to add an SSD NVMe SLOG device, which will surely saturate a 1Gb link.

If you're talking about this board, it doesn't have 10GbE onboard so I assume you're already using a 4x10GbE PCIe card...?

I think I'd still be bottleneck'd by the connection from the WiFi AP to the switch; if I can't push that to something higher than 1Gb, I'm not sure the switch will make any sense.

If your wifi connection to the NAS is your primary consumer of bandwidth, then yeah I'd say a 10GbE connection is pretty pointless. Personally I've never seen a single 802.11ac connection get anywhere near 1Gb/s let alone 10Gb/s; I dare say it's possible but only under the sorts of conditions you get in marketing departments.

 

[Juan Manuel Palacios]

multiple ap's on 1g connections on a switch with 10g uplinks connected to the nas?
why you need a second switch there?

Never mind, brainfart. What you were essentially saying, if I'm reading you correctly now, is to provide my NAS with 10GbE connectivity, and progressively build 1Gb dedicated links to the NAS for each Wi-Fi client coming through correspondingly dedicated APs.

 

[Rand__]

yes, that is an option to increase total utilization while maintaining individual maximum performance given that a single ap / client cannot exceed 1g

 

[Juan Manuel Palacios]

If you're talking about this board, it doesn't have 10GbE onboard so I assume you're already using a 4x10GbE PCIe card...?



If your wifi connection to the NAS is your primary consumer of bandwidth, then yeah I'd say a 10GbE connection is pretty pointless. Personally I've never seen a single 802.11ac connection get anywhere near 1Gb/s let alone 10Gb/s; I dare say it's possible but only under the sorts of conditions you get in marketing departments.

OK, that is the biggest egg on my face ever! I'd built this idea in my head that the SuperMicro X11SSH-LNF4 was 10GbE capable, but after you brought it up, and from what I'm reading, it's really seeming like it's not. That mobo uses the Intel i210 ethernet controller, which according to its specsheet actually doesn't support 10GbE. My jails using vnet/epairb NIC devices, bridged to one of my mobo's NICs, claim to have 10GbE connectivity, but maybe because that's emulated in software? I gotta read into that.

But, in any case, that really calls this whole experiment off, as I'm not going to be replacing my NAS hardware any time soon. Now to the bathroom to wipe this egg off my face!

But thanks for the wakeup call before I wasted a truckload of money!